Our trainers all have expert knowledge of the Civil Service and how it functions. Together they make up an impressive team who will be able to guide the trainees through the complexities of Whitehall, Westminster and beyond.

George Oliver MBE
Parliamentary Consultant

George will be on hand to offer his expert advice and take the delegates through their 6 month certificate.

George Oliver worked at the former Department for Education for 23 years. He spent 11 of those years working in a parliamentary environment, 5 years as an Assistant and then Deputy Parliamentary Clerk to the 1974-79 Labour administration, one year as Assistant Private Secretary to the Minister for Higher Education and Civil Science in 1984 and as Parliamentary Clerk to successive Secretaries of State and junior Ministers from 1989 to 1993.

During his time as Parliamentary Clerk he wrote a ‘Parliamentary Clerk’s Handbook’ and the DFE Guide to Primary Legislation in Parliament’. George is currently an independent consultant who arranges and runs seminars and speaks on all aspects of Parliamentary procedure relating to both Houses of the Westminster Parliament. He is an Associate Lecturer for the Government Group at the Civil Service College.

He was elected as a Member of Crawley Borough Council in May 1998 until May

2002.

Martin Stanley

Chief Executive of the Competition Commission

www.competition-commission.gov.uk

• Author of How to be a Civil Servant - the standard text about Civil Servants' professional skills, duties and responsibilities
• Editor of a website for and about the British civil service

www.civilservant.org.uk

Detail

Martin was appointed Chief Executive of the Competition Commission in 2004. The Commission is an independent body which decides whether large firms may be allowed to merge with one another, investigates whether particular markets are working satisfactorily, and acts as a Court of Appeal from certain decisions by utility regulators.

Martin was born in 1948 and grew up in the North-East of England where he attended the Royal Grammar School , Newcastle-upon-Tyne . He then studied chemistry and economics at Oxford University .

Martin joined the civil service in 1971 and first worked in the Inland Revenue before moving to the Department of Trade and Industry where he held a number of senior positions. In particular, from 1990 to 1992, he was DTI’s Principal Private Secretary, i.e. he led the teams which supported the day to day activities of the Secretary of State and other Ministers.  Martin then transferred to the Cabinet Office where he was Director of the Regulatory Impact Unit, responsible for helping Government Ministers and Departments find the right balance between under-regulating (and so failing to protect the public) and over-regulating (and so failing to preserve freedoms, or creating excessive bureaucracy).

From 2000 until 2004 Martin was Chief Executive of the Postal Services Commission (Postcomm), the Government department that regulates the UK postal services industry.

Barry Forrester

Civil Service Commission

Barry is a career civil servant who has spent much of his time in personnel and human resource management (and can even remember the days when such work was known as Establishments!). He was Director of Personnel for a government agency until 1997 when he moved to the Cabinet Office to take policy responsibility for Civil Service non-pay terms and conditions of employment. For the past 3 years he has been supporting the Civil Service Commissioners on a range of policy reviews.

Sir David Madel

Former Member of Parliament

David Madel was educated at Keble College , Oxford . He was an Advertising Executive with the Thomson Organisation for  six years before becoming an MP.

In the House of Commons, he became a Parliamentary Private Secretary to Ministers at the MoD and served on numerous Select Committees.

He was a member of European Legislation from 1983-97, Administration from 1992-97, Transport from 1995-97, and became a Member of the Chairmen’s Panel in 1997.

In Opposition after the general election in 1997, he became a Whip. His interests included education and employment, amongst others.

Sir David was the Member of Parliament for South Bedfordshire from 1970-83 and for South West Bedfordshire from 1983-2001, when he stood down.

Geoff Langsdon

Parliamentary Training Consultant; Former Civil Servant

Geoff in an independent consultant specialising in policy making and policy skills training. Geoff spent most of his civil service career working on health and social security issues, both as a private secretary to Ministers and as a policy advisor. An independent consultant for the last six years, he works with most central government departments, and a number of agencies, often in his role as an Associate with the Civil Service College. Recently he has taught for the Open University on undergraduate Government and Politics courses.

Tony Bray

Tony Bray of Aquarius International

Tony has established a reputation for designing and delivering a wide range of training courses and workshops for a variety of UK industries. He has also written 18 books and training packages on management topics, published by the UK ’s leading publishers of training materials, with sales exceeding £2m.

With a background in management with British Telecom Tony had a variety of management roles, including Call Centre Management, Statistics, Personnel, Estates and International Relations. His final five years in BT was as a manager in the Management Training College , delivering and managing the implementation of core management training programmes.

Prior to working in BT Tony graduated from the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst before serving as a troop-commander in the Royal Corps of Transport.

Hugh Lennon
Parliamentary Training Consultant
Former Civil Servant

Hugh Lennon joined the Civil Service as an electronic engineer, supporting the RAF in developing Radar and Navigation aids internationally. He moved on to work on radiation hazards associated with radar.

Subsequently he worked in personnel management of Ministry of Defence “specialist” staff (eg scientists and engineers) and then took on more general personnel work. 

He was the policy lead on Equal Opportunities and Race Relations in the MOD, in particular covering the introduction of Ethnic Monitoring for Civilian Staff.

He was seconded to the Cabinet Office/Civil Service College to develop and train on new courses targeting Fast Stream students and aiming to develop both policy and interpersonal skills.

Now a self-employed development and training consultant, Hugh works in both the public and private sectors.

Tim Williams
Parliamentary Training Consultant

Tim Williams is an independent consultant specialising in Whitehall ’s interaction with Parliament and Parliamentary procedures training.

He joined the Civil Service in November 1967 and for most of his career worked in the DTI and its predecessors (such as the Board of Trade and the Ministry of Technology). Before becoming Parliamentary Clerk, he worked in the regional policy, overseas trade, aerospace and management organisation sections of the Department.

Tim Williams became Parliamentary Clerk to the Department of Trade & Industry in April 1989, serving under both Conservative and Labour Administrations, before retiring in March 2005.

Patrick Nicholls
Chairman, Young Britons’ Foundation
Former Conservative Minister

Patrick Nicholls was the Member of Parliament for Teignbridge from 1983 to 2001.

He served Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher as an Employment Minister and an Environment Minister. He was a Vice-Chairman of the Conservative Party under John Major and served as a Shadow Minister under the then Leader of the Opposition, William Hague.

Patrick works as a political lobbyist with Foresight Communications Ltd.

Robin Pedler
Associate Fellow of Templeton, the college of Oxford University that specialises in Management Studies.

He is Academic Director of the European Training Institute, Brussels . He is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations.

He studied at the Sorbonne and the University of Cambridge , graduating with first class honours. Research and writing interests: public affairs, EU process and politics, trade policy.

He had a varied career in international management, culminating as Director, External Relations Europe, with Mars. In 1991 he returned to academic life.

He now works with both industrial managers and civil servants. He has conducted  ‘EU Presidency ‘ training with government officials in Belgium , Finland , Sweden and UK . He has also worked extensively in recently joined states. He is a consultant on international trade.

He lectures in English, French and Spanish and also speaks Dutch and German

Address: Templeton College , Oxford University , Oxford 0X1 5NY – UK

Email: robin.pedler@templeton.oxford.ac.uk

Jimmy Hood MP
Member of Parliament, Labour

An ex-miner, a Scots émigré to Nottinghamshire and back again, Jimmy Hood has exchanged the coalface and the picket line for the committee corridor.

Since 1992 he has been chairman of the European Legislation Committee, and since 1998 the European Scrutiny Committee, which vets regulations coming from Brussels and makes recommendations.

He is also a member of the Speaker's Panel of Chairmen, who chair Bill committees - important and detailed work, which is largely unreported. He was also a member of the Defence Select Committee in the 1997 Parliament.

Born in 1948, he was educated at the Lesmahagow Higher Grade School at Coatbridge and Nottingham University . He followed his father down the pit and worked as a mining engineer for twenty-three years, mostly in the Nottinghamshire coalfield and was an NUM official for fourteen of them.

He was a member of Newark and Sherwood District Council for eight years before he succeeded Judith Hart as MP for Clydesdale in 1987. His 1997 majority of nearly 14,000 was cut by more than two-fifths in 2001 after a 5 per cent swing to the Scottish National Party. His majority in the new enlarged constituency of Lanark and Hamilton East in 2005 was nearly 12,000.

He has sponsored three Private Members' Bills, one to outlaw under-age drinking. He was convenor of the Scottish Group of Labour MPs, and a former chairman of the parliamentary group on ME. He is now secretary and treasurer of the group for relations with British overseas territories.

His hobbies are gardening, reading and writing.

Susan Calthorpe
Policy & Communications Training Consultant Director, The Clive Davis Partnership Ltd

Susan is an Associate Lecturer at CMPS, and lectures on a range of issues such as effective briefing and policy skills. She also trains a number of Public and Private Sector organisations including the Immigration and Nationality Directorate, the Crown Prosecution Service, reed Business Publishing, in areas such as presentation skills, writing skills, press releases, communications, and Parliamentary briefing skills.

Susan is the Director of the Clive Davis Partnership, which is a Public Relations and Marketing Agency. It supports the needs of a wide range of clients including CB Richard Ellis, Aston Martin, Fujifilm, Wimpey Homes, Marks and Spencer, London Borough of Sutton, and London Underground. The Partnership has maintained constant business growth through word of mouth, recommendation from clients, and has achieved a turnover projected at just under £3/4 million for the current financial year.

Amanda Bausor
Parliamentary Training Consultant; Former Civil Servant

Amanda Bausor is a training consultant who specialises in all aspects of written skills. She designs, delivers and evaluates training programmes for administrative, senior and professional staff in central government and in the private sector.

These programmes include: Effective Writing, Advanced Writing Skills, Report Writing For Specialists, Minute Writing and Effective Ministerial Correspondence, Working with Ministers for Fast Stream Civil Servants as well as a short programme on English Grammar. The Effective Writing programme she co-wrote for the Civil Service College has been awarded a ‘Recommended by the Plain English Campaign’ accreditation.

Roberta Woodcock
Roberta Woodcock AdvDip(T&D), MITOL, FICB, FIAB

Roberta is a freelance training consultant, holding a post graduate diploma from Cambridge University .  Prior to starting her own company she worked extensively in public sector finance, including HM Treasury, and has experience of the private sector having worked for accountancy practice and a FTSE100 treasury department.  She specialises in public sector finance training and organisational development. She is a CiPFA lecturer in Public Finance and Governance and Public Policy modules.  She is currently undertaking a range of assignments with central government agencies and NDPBs.

Tess Thompson
Senior OD and Training Consultant

Extensive experience in design, facilitation and delivery of key change programmes and effective management development interventions. Particular strengths include Change Management, Performance Management, Leadership Development, customer care programmes and creating competency frameworks. Has worked in Europe and delivered programmes with multi-national delegates.

KEY ACHIEVEMENTS:

Created a new Performance Management system linking reward to performance for 240 people in a new joint venture; this involved the initial design, delivery of training and learning interventions and post implementation evaluation.

Developed a customer care programme for the Finance division and Customer Services department of a rapidly growing Financial organisation.

Provided 1:1 Executive coaching for Senior Managers/Director level during a period of significant change within a retail sector PLC.

Created a Competency Framework, including the design and facilitation of a Leadership programme for delegates from 10 Countries, for the International division of a PLC.

Associate Lecturer facilitating for the residential programme for students on the Masters programme with The Open University Business School

Guest speaker   at the 2004 Conference for the British Psychological Society on Performance Coaching.

Martyn Bond
Former Head of UK European Parliament Office; Director, Information Europe Ltd; Special Adviser, The Federal Trust

Martyn Bond currently works as Special Adviser on Publications and Enlargement for The Federal Trust for Education and Research in London . He was formerly Director of the Trust from 1999 to 2002, and before that was Director of the European Parliament Office in the United Kingdom for ten years. He worked in Brussels in the Secretariat of the Council of Ministers from 1974 to 1989, with a short break to represent the BBC in Berlin from 1981 to 1983.

He has edited several books, including A Tale of Two Germanies (Atomium Press, Brussels, 1990), Eminent Europeans (Greycoat Press, London, 1996), The Treaty of Nice Explained (Federal Trust, London, 2001), and Europe's Wider Loyalties: Global  Responsibilities for the New Europe (Kogan Page 2002). He frequently lectures on European issues to audiences in the UK and abroad. The Federal Trust website is at www.fedtrust.co.uk