Philip Hammond has set aside up to £412m of additional funding to help Whitehall deal with leaving the European Union following criticisms that the civil service cannot cope with Brexit. Additional resources of £26m each year by 2019/20 will be provided to Liam Fox’s Department for International Trade and the Foreign Office. The top civil servants’ union said that the money would do little to ease the problems because of impending cuts of 18% that were announced in 2015 by the then chancellor George Osborne. Civil servants have not handled trade negotiations directly for 40 years because these were negotiated by the EU. Extra money to Fox’s department will take its budget to just over £400m a year when combined with resources moved to the new department from UK Trade and Investment and the old business department.

Source: The Guardian November 23, 2016 18:49 UTC