David Frost, Baron Frost

The Right Honourable The Lord Frost CMG PC
Official portrait, 2021
Minister of State for EU Relations
Incumbent
Assumed office 1 March 2021
Prime Minister	Boris Johnson
Preceded by	Office established
Chief Negotiator of Task Force Europe
Incumbent
Assumed office 31 January 2020
Prime Minister	Boris Johnson
Preceded by	Office established
Prime Minister's Europe Adviser
In office 24 July 2019 – 1 March 2021
Prime Minister	Boris Johnson
Preceded by	Sir Olly Robbins
Chief Negotiator for Exiting the European Union
In office 24 July 2019 – 31 January 2020
Prime Minister	Boris Johnson
Preceded by	Sir Olly Robbins
Succeeded by	Position abolished
British Ambassador to Denmark
In office 1 May 2006 – 31 October 2008
Monarch	Elizabeth II
Preceded by	Nicholas Browne
Succeeded by	Nick Archer
Member of the House of Lords Lord Temporal
Incumbent
Assumed office 8 September 2020 Life Peerage
Personal details
Born	David George Hamilton Frost (1965-02-21) 21 February 1965 (age 56) Derby, England
Nationality	British
Political party	Conservative[1]
Spouse(s)	Jacqueline Dias ​ ​ (m. 2003; div. 2018)​ Harriet Mathews ​ (m. 2018)​
Education	Nottingham High School
Alma mater	St John's College, Oxford
Occupation	Diplomat
Profession	Civil servant
Awards	Life peer CMG

David George Hamilton Frost, Baron Frost, CMG, PC (born 21 February 1965), is an appointed member of the House of Lords and former diplomat serving as Minister of State at the Cabinet Office since 2021. A full member of Boris Johnson’s Cabinet, Frost has also served as Chief Negotiator of Task Force Europe since January 2020.^{[2][3][4][5][6][7][8]} He previously served as Chief Negotiator for Exiting the European Union from 2019 to 2020 and as the Prime Minister's Europe Adviser from 2019 to 2021. He was elevated to the House of Lords as a life peer in September 2020.^[9]

Lord Frost spent his early professional career in the FCO, becoming HM Ambassador to Denmark, EU Director at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), and Director for Europe and International Trade at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (DBIS).^[10] He served as special adviser to Boris Johnson when he was Foreign Secretary in Theresa May’s government. It was announced in June 2020 that Frost would succeed Sir Mark Sedwill as National Security Adviser after Sedwill's departure in September 2020. David Quarrey took over the role of acting National Security Adviser while Lord Frost was completing the Brexit negotiations.^[11] On 29 January 2021, before ever taking up the position "full-time", Frost was replaced as UK National Security Adviser.^[12]

Frost became a full member of the Cabinet, and a Minister of State at the Cabinet Office, on 1 March 2021.^[13]

Early life[]

Frost was born in Derby and was educated at Nottingham High School as a free scholar from 1976 to 1983, before going up to St. John's College, Oxford,^[10] where he took a first-class degree (MA) in French and history. His studies majored on medieval European history and medieval French.^{[14][failed verification]}

Diplomatic career[]

Frost joined the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) in 1987, and shortly after was posted to the British High Commission in Nicosia where he learned Greek and was responsible for covering Greek Cypriot politics and the Cyprus problem. In 1993, he was posted to the UK Representation to the EU in Brussels as First Secretary for Economic and Financial Affairs, where he worked on issues such as the EU Budget, the economic and financial implications of enlargement to Central Europe, and the Euro. He was then posted to the UK Mission to the United Nations in New York, where he covered Human Rights and Social and Economic Affairs.^[10]

Frost returned to London to be successively the Private Secretary to the Head of the Diplomatic Service, Sir John Kerr (now the Baron Kerr of Kinlochard), and Deputy Head of the European Union External Department, covering international trade policy issues and relations with the Balkans and Eastern Europe.^[10]

Frost was promoted Economic Counsellor to the British Embassy, Paris, in 2001, where he was responsible for reporting and lobbying on all aspects of French economic and commercial life, together with its EU policy. He returned to London to be Head of the EU (Internal) Department and then Director for the European Union in the Foreign Office. In this period he led work on a range of economic and social issues, notably the resistance to the initial Working Time Directive, and the negotiation on the EU's multi-annual Budget framework. He was a member of the UK's leadership team during its EU Presidency in 2005.^[10]

From May 2006 until October 2008, Frost served as HM Ambassador to Denmark and was appointed Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George in the 2006 Birthday Honours. He was then Director for Strategy and Policy Planning in the Foreign Office from October 2008 to October 2010, before being seconded to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills where he served three years as Director for Europe, Trade, and International Affairs, HMG's most senior trade policy official.^[10][15][16]

Post-diplomatic career[]

Frost left HM Diplomatic Service in 2013 to become CEO of the Scotch Whisky Association, a trade association;^[15] he was admitted as a Liveryman of the Distillers' Company^[17] in 2016. It was in his capacity as CEO, he authored a pre-Brexit Referendum article,^[18] for Portland Communications, in which he supported the case for remaining in the EU’s Single Market and said that leaving this would be “fraught with economic risk”.

After Boris Johnson became Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, Frost was appointed in November 2016 as his special adviser,^[19][20] serving until Johnson resigned from office in July 2018.^[10]

In early 2019, Frost became CEO of the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry.^[21] He has also served as a public commentator on the European Union, global economic and commercial issues, and multilateral diplomacy, as a member of the Advisory Council of the eurosceptic think tank Open Europe,^[10] and between June and October 2016, through his industry role as head of the Scotch Whisky Association, as a member of the Scottish Government's Standing Council on Europe advising on Brexit.^[20][22]

Johnson government[]

Brexit negotiations[]

Frost was the United Kingdom's Chief Negotiator for Exiting the European Union during the Brexit negotiations in 2019 which resulted in the revised Brexit withdrawal agreement. After the UK left the European Union in January 2020, Frost led the UK's negotiations with the EU on a free trade agreement during the Brexit transition period.

The UK government led by Boris Johnson pursued a desire to trade freely with the EU while being subject to as few EU rules as possible, and especially not to the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice.^[23] For its part, the EU insisted that the price for UK access to the European Single Market was compliance with EU subsidies, social, environmental and other regulations to avoid distorting competition in the single market.^[23] Another major point of contention was fisheries. Part of the impetus for Brexit was the British desire to regain full control over their fishing waters, whereas EU coastal states demanded to retain all or most of the fishing rights they enjoyed under the EU's Common Fisheries Policy.^[23]

The trade agreement, negotiated under increasing time pressure due to the end of the transition period on 31 December 2020, had to address all of these issues.^[24] Formal trade negotiations, in which Michel Barnier represented the EU and Frost represented the UK, began on 31 March 2020. They were originally due to be concluded by the end of October 2020.^[25] However, negotiations continued^[26] and formally ended on 24 December 2020 when an agreement, the EU–UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement, was reached in principle after ten negotiating rounds.

UK National Security Adviser nomination[]

On 28 June 2020, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced his nomination of Frost for a life peerage and as UK National Security Adviser, succeeding Lord Sedwill.^[27] The Financial Times reported that this was unpopular with military and security services, who felt Frost was underqualified.^[28] The appointment received criticism from former Cabinet Secretary Lord O'Donnell and former National Security Adviser Lord Ricketts due to concerns that the Civil Service's impartiality was being eroded by appointing a special adviser in this role.^[29] The appointment was also criticised by previous PM Theresa May in Parliament, who highlighted its political nature, and said that Frost does not have proven expertise in national security.^[30]

Created a life peer, titled Baron Frost, of Allenton, in the County of Derbyshire, on 12 August 2020, he was introduced to the House of Lords on 8 September 2020.^[31]

A FOI response stated that Frost continued as Chief Negotiator to the EU as of October 2020 and David Quarrey took over the role of acting NSA.^[11]

On 29 January 2021, before he could take up the role full-time, Frost was replaced as UK National Security Adviser by Sir Stephen Lovegrove.^[32][33][12] Instead, Frost was appointed as the UK Representative for Brexit and International Policy.^[34]

Minister of State for the Cabinet Office[]

Frost has been a Minister of State in the Cabinet Office since 1 March 2021 and a full member of the Cabinet.^[13] He also succeeded Michael Gove as the UK chairman of the EU–UK Partnership Council.^[35] His first action, on 3 March, was to exempt British companies from certain regulations when shipping food to Northern Ireland.^[36] In June 2021, he wrote an article in the Financial Times calling for the EU to revisit the Northern Ireland protocol, saying the "EU needs a new playbook for dealing with neighbours, one that involves pragmatic solutions between friends, not the imposition of one side’s rules on the other and legal purism" and noted the government had underestimated the effect of the protocol.^[37][38]

Personal life[]

In 1993 Frost married Jacqueline Elizabeth Dias, divorcing in 2018;^[39] he married Harriet Mathews later that year.^[10]

In March 2020, Frost displayed "mild symptoms" of COVID-19 and accordingly self-isolated.^[40]

See also[]

• Brexit

References[]

External links[]

• David Frost, Baron Frost on Twitter
• David Frost at www.gov.uk
• Lord Frost's parliamentary profile