The Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) has been forced to open up its panel to major UK law firms as it seeks expert legal advice on negotiating trade deals in the wake of the Brexit vote, The Lawyer can reveal.
The decision will see its legal spend skyrocket, with leading firms including Clifford Chance and Herbert Smith Freehills understood to be pitching for the work.
Its Public International Law (PIL) panel has previously been restricted to barrister appointments only. However, the FCO has extended the invitation to pitch for places to some of the UK’s biggest law firms.
Firms have until the end of October to submit applications.
An insider said the FCO has informed firms the PIL panel will be subsequently used by the Department for International Trade and the Department for Exiting the EU – also known as the Whitehall Brexit unit – in their own trade negotiations as Britain prepares to leave the union.
The Brexit department has already run up legal bills of £270,000 solely on internal legal counsel, it emerged last month. Minister David Jones told Parliament that so far “no spend has been incurred in relation to external firms”. That sum is expected to dramatically shoot up when it begins using PIL panel law firms.
According to the tender documents, the PIL panel “advise the Government on matters of public international law and international trade law”. The panel is split into three tiers, with the top level appointments awarded to firms and barristers with “in excess of 10 years practice experience” in order to “deal with the most complex public international law matters”.
The FCO and attorney general’s office are turning to commercial law firms for advice on a complex set of deals to establish the UK’s place in the world after Brexit, including hashing our free-trade agreements in Europe and internationally, and a membership deal with the World Trade Organisation.
By opening up its panel, the FCO has offered UK law firms a crucial seat at the table when major decisions on international relationships after Brexit are made.
However costs associated with public bodies drafting in the top private firms for legal advice have already caused concern.
Herbert Smith Freehills recently hit headlines for its work representing part publicly-owned bank RBS on its £4bn shareholder dispute over its 2008 rights issue. The firm has already run up a bill of more than £100m and that figure is expected to rise.
Clifford Chance also found itself at the heart of a row in February related to law firm charge-out fees. The Centre for Policy Studies (CPS) found the magic circle firm was among a group of City lawyers charging clients more than £1,000 an hour.
The new Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs has had many years experience in negotiating
trade deals ( ever since the UK joined the Common Market and we had to find new customers for our lamb and wool) . I am sure that their fees would be more reasonable
than 1000 an hour – as would mine be, if any intellectual property advice is required…
The Conservative Government seems to be treating the Referendum as though there has been an Election. Far from being conservative, they think the world is their oyster. In the 18th c, Jean -Jacques Rousseau (Swiss, venerated as ‘Un Grand Homme de la Nation’ in the Pantheon, Paris), author of ‘Les Droits de l’Homme’ which are the foundation of not merely the French Revolution of 1789 but the American Revolution of 1776, and Human Rights Law in the UN, said of the English Parliament 100 years after the British had a Bill of Rights, “The people of England regards itself as free; but it is grossly mistaken; it is free only during the election of members of parliament. As soon as they are elected, slavery overtakes it, and it is nothing.”
We still have no written constitution apart from the definition of a Constitutional Monarchy that dates back to 1688 and a Glorious Revolution which was hardly a people’s revolution. If everyone is still supposed to buy into this class-based myth for its lifestyle, what kind of ‘vision’ does the Government have now that they have replaced the 18th c country house set with Victoria and Albert? (currently on ITV)
Back in 1996 when Malcolm Rifkind (Scottish) was Foreign Secretary, the year before the Conservatives lost the election to New Labour, The Foreign and Commonwealth Office, (which used to fund the World Service , renowned for its impartiality , whose transmitter on the Suffolk coast is no longer operational since digital broadcasting became the norm) commissioned a book, still available, called ‘ Scenes from a relationship: Britain’s German Heritage’ (Television Facilities Unit, Foreign and Commonwealth Office) including companies that were known to have worked for the Nazis. Nobody will mention the war because feelings are still raw in many people’s memories and there have been other wars since.
In 2004 the National Audit Office issued a report (on the web) on the value of Freeview to the British license fee payer . The BBC is now funding the World Service. People will now have to have separate licenses for laptops etc so a new generation may well miss out completely on what was once a centralised culture. Many of the young do not watch TV or listen to the radio or read newspapers. Once again the public pays a tax without any input into the structure of the system. We are just consumers of culture, not creators of it. The BBC have spent vast amounts on new studios when radio mostly ran the Empire. They have a Royal Charter which was intended to present objective news, education and information around the world, however, the relationship of BSkyB to Freeview and Rupert Murdoch’s domination of the media needs scrutiny post Brexit.
Given the time span of Europe’s laws from Roman times, (Even though it was Ancient Greece for its Democracy and Art and France for its Modernity post revolution that were being emulated post war) when it is only 71 years since the end of the last world war, it might be a good idea for the Foreign Office to bypass all these legal costs and for Boris (as Foreign Secretary) to ask Rupert Murdoch what his vision is when time is running out for capitalism in its current form. The Times of London was founded by Benjamin Franklin in 1785 and he was American. Rupert Murdoch is a naturalised American. We pay to watch American elections in which we can’t participate via a license fee that is in effect a tax. NO TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION. It is this aspect of Human Rights Law that needs tackling first and foremost. If The Word is supposedly English Law and that law is made in Parliament. The media assume all kinds of messages but for pre- 1972 England, ‘The past is another country; they do things differently there’.