Westminster Explained

Dr Nicholas Baldwin FRSA
Dean and Director of Operations, Wroxton College of Fairleigh Dickinson University
Nicholas Baldwin is a highly experienced lecturer, specialising in Parliament, British Government and politics.
He served as Special Assistant to the Liberal Party Peers in the House of Lords in the early 1980s, and in the 1983 general election was a parliamentary candidate. In the summer of 1984 he was appointed lecturer and tutor in British Government and Politics at Wroxton College, and in August the following year he was appointed Head of the College – the chief academic, administrative and financial officer with responsibilities for the organisation, development, management and operation of the College. It is a position he has held since then. In addition, he continues to carry a full teaching load as lecturer and tutor in British Government and politics.
Dr Baldwin is also a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Legislative Studies and a member of the External Award Boards for both the Professional Certificate in Public Sector Delivery and the Certificate of Managerial Skills. He has lectured widely in Great Britain and abroad and has also been responsible for organising a large number of national and international conferences on political, business, criminal justice, public administration, communications and health-care matters, including between British MPs/Peers and American Congressmen.
In 2000 Dr Baldwin was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA).

Amanda Bausor
Policy and Communi­cations Training Consultant
Amanda is an experienced trainer in the following areas: written communication, submissions and briefing, ministerial correspondence, report writing, minute writing and grammar. She has designed many writing programmes for government departments and the private sector. One programme she has co-written has a ‘Recommended by the Plain English Campaign’ accreditation.
Amanda Bausor worked for the Department of Health in various management, advisory and decision-making roles. She then followed her interest in writing and training and became involved with Parliamentary business, including Ministerial correspondence.
She is now an independent training consultant and an Associate of the National School of Government. She works for its government and management and development groups with many Government Departments and agencies in the UK and abroad. Some of her recent projects include working with the Prime Minister’s correspondence unit, the States of Jersey and international work in India.
She is a member of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development.

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.

Tony Bray
Director, Aquarius International
Tony Bray 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 £2 million.
At 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 were spent as a manager in the Management Training College, delivering and managing the implementation of core management training programmes.
Before working in BT Tony graduated from the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and served as a troop-commander in the Royal Corps of Transport.

Martin Brebner OBE
Former Civil Servant
Martin Brebner retired from the Department for Trade and Industry in spring 2005 after 37 years in a variety of posts. Most recently he was bill team leader for the Equality Bill, and previously worked on the Communications Bill and Postal Services Bill. In the late 1990s he was Secretary of the Post Office Review and edited the Post Office Reform White Paper. Before that he had worked on the reconstruction of the Lloyd’s insurance market. He was appointed OBE in 2002.

Susan Calthorpe
Policy and Communi­cations Training Consultant; Director, The Clive Davis Partnership Ltd
Susan lectures on a range of issues such as effective briefing and policy skills. She works as an associate lecturer at the National School of Government, and she also trains a number of public and private sector organisations including the Immigration and Nationality Directorate of the Home Office, the Crown Prosecution Service, Reed Business Publishing, in areas such as presentation skills, writing skills, press releases, communications, and Parliamentary briefing skills.
She has travelled internationally and nationally for a range of other government departments.
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.

John Cannon
Parliamentary Training Consultant; Former Civil Servant
John Cannon has 30 years’ experience working in government as a civil service policy adviser, consultant, trainer and VATman. He has an MA in personal and organisational development.
In addition to work on privatisations, he has worked as a Select Committee Liaison Officer in the UK and led the Bill team for putting through legislation in Australia. He advised British and Australian Ministers on energy matters and advised South Africans, Ugandans and Cambodians on policy development.
John has recently carried out a functional review for the UK Charity Commission and is currently writing a strategy paper for the Cabinet Office on relations with the voluntary and community sector. He has trained civil servants across Europe including Hungarians, Montenegrins, Cypriots, Germans and Finns.

Simon Courage
Facilitator and Consultant, Director of Familia Consulting
Simon is the director of Familia Consulting. He is an accomplished facilitator and consultant specialising in public services. He works with a wide range of clients, including central government departments and agencies, local authorities, the NHS and police bodies and voluntary and community organisations.
Simon’s areas of expertise include working with top teams and partnerships, developing strategy and mechanisms to ensure delivery, developing approaches to tackling social exclusion and organisational change and design.
Simon is committed to improving public services to reduce poverty and alleviate its effects. He was the chair of a Local Strategic Partnership in a deprived area for a year and is now the chair of a regeneration association in south London.
Previously, Simon worked for five years as a senior consultant at the Office for Public Management and, before that, for 12 years in central government, including the Department for Education and Skills, the Department for Work and Pensions, the Cabinet Office and the Treasury.
He holds a degree in linguistics and international politics.

Dr Nigel Forman
Former MP and Minister
Nigel is an experienced trainer in the following areas: Parliament and politics, European Union, the constitution, legislation, policy development and evaluation, Whitehall, media, working with Ministers.
Dr Nigel Forman was Conservative MP for Carshalton and Wallington from 1976 to 1997. He was Minister for Further and Higher Education at the then Department of Education and before that had been Parliamentary Private Secretary to Lord Carrington at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and to Nigel Lawson at the Treasury.
He is the author, with Nicholas Baldwin, of Mastering British Politics, (4th edition, Macmillan, 1999) and Constitutional Change in the United Kingdom (Routledge, 2002).
He has taught at several universities and is an honorary senior research fellow at the Constitution Unit, University College London.

Janet Fortune
HR Skills Consultant
Janet is an experienced trainer in the following areas: human resources, people management, engaging employees, local government and its interaction with the civil service, managing change, stakeholder and partnership management.
Janet is a European HR consultant who specialises in working with senior management teams on organisational development in the UK and across Europe. She has been in HR for over 20 years working in the private sector and in local and central government. She was the head of HR for the deputy Prime Minister’s Office where she led on a number of key organisational development programmes including HR transformation, programme and project management and leadership. She was the head of HR policy and development at Brighton and Hove Council where she also headed up the business consultancy division.
Janet is an experienced manager of large organisational change programmes and a qualified NLP business practitioner. She is an active member of CIPD and is on the Sussex branch committee and a number of national network groups.

Brian Glickman
Freelance consultant, speaker and writer
Brian was previously a senior civil servant in the Department for Education and Skills. In a 25-year career as a civil servant Brian held many posts. He was Private Secretary to two Ministers for Higher Education, worked on several pieces of legislation, ran large operations, one with an annual budget of over £250 million, and is experienced as a manager and leader, implementing change and in project, programme and contract management.
Brian has held policy posts which have included: introducing the GCSE; bringing in National Curriculum assessment; teacher supply and recruitment; and local government reorganisation. While a Director in the Government Office for London, Brian had responsibility for promoting employment, enterprise, business and the people side of regeneration on behalf of three Government Departments.
As a speaker Brian has contributed to events for the LSE, QMW Public Policy Seminars, Bath University, the Civil Service College and the London Leadership Centre, among others. The topics he has covered include: leadership and management, Government/business relations, and various aspects of social policy.
Brian is currently writing a volume of essays.

Clare Gorham
Freelance Journalist and Media Consultant
Clare currently works in media consultancy, coaching in media and TV presentation skills.
She has worked in a variety of journalistic contexts, including a weekly column for The Voice newspaper, guest editor of Celebrating Sisters lifestyle magazine, editor of Pride Magazine, after working there as a journalist and she has had articles published in the Guardian, the FT, the Mail, Evening Standard, Sunday Times and the Sun. Published magazine articles include Aspire Magazine, The Big Issue, Cosmopolitan, Company, Red, Second Generation, Touch, Trace and the Guardian Weekend.
She has also worked in television, for such programmes as Sky News, The Richard Littlejohn Show, as a commentator and contributor. She was the main presenter on Scene One, a cultural/ arts programme for Sky TV and also a co-presenter on Raw TV, Carlton Digital’s magazine/ lifestyle/current affairs programme. Clare has also worked as a reporter for BBC London news and on Barry Norman’s Movie Show – Sky One.
Commissioned programmes and documentaries include The Colour Of Love, for which she wrote and presented a documentary on trans-racial adoption for Channel 4; Mission Divine, when she wrote and presented a documentary exploring the correlation between politics and spirituality in India for Channel 4, and three short films made for the BBC focusing on the laws surrounding drugs and prostitution in King’s Cross.
Film appearances include A Bunny Girl’s Tale and Random Acts of Intimacy, both short films commissioned by the British film industry.

Ibrahim Hasan
Freedom of Information Specialist
Ibrahim Hasan is an expert on data protection, freedom of information and surveillance law. He is a director of Act Now Training and a consultant with IBA Solicitors.
Ibrahim was previously principal solicitor at Calderdale Council and has worked for Bradford Council and Nottinghamshire County Council. He has also held positions as an associate with the Institute of Public Finance and a non executive director of an NHS Trust.
Ibrahim is very much in demand as a presenter at courses and conferences throughout the UK. He has conducted training sessions for many national organisations as well as local authorities and the NHS. His notable clients include the Scottish Executive, the Independent Police Complaints Commission, English Partnerships and various Government Departments. He has even travelled to China to train young Chinese and Hong Kong lawyers on behalf of the Law Society and the Bar Council.
Ibrahim acts as an adviser to the Local Government Association and is an examiner for the British Computer Society’s Certificate in Data Protection. He was also on the Home Office Consultation Group for the Freedom of Information Bill.

David Hinchliffe
Former MP and Select Committee Chairman
David Hinchliffe was the Member of Parliament for Wakefield, and was Chairman of the Health Select Committee. From 1992–95 he was a shadow spokesperson for Health. He was previously the Vice Chairman of the Backbench Health and Social Services Committees.
From 1971–74 he was a Wakefield City Councillor, and from 1979–88 he was a Wakefield Metropolitan District Councillor.
Before entering Parliament he was a social work tutor and social worker. He was educated at Wakefield Technical College, Leeds Polytechnic and Bradford University.

Judith Jewell
Managing Director, Indigo
Judith is managing director of Indigo & Associates Ltd, a learning and development company. Her particular interests are management and personal development; mentoring; team building and team development; creative thinking, writing and business skills.
Judith started her working life in the Department of Health as an auditor – not considered one of the most popular professions. But it did provide plenty of experience of systems, of management, and in dealing with difficult situations. She then worked for a few years as a senior lecturer at the National School of Government. Judith has trained as a Redwood trainer in assertiveness and is a Fellow of the Institute of Internal Auditors. She likes to get involved in things – she is a magistrate on Kingston-upon-Thames bench, an executive member of Kingston Racial Equality Council, and a governor of Roehampton University, as well as enjoying more creative pursuits like cooking and eating adventurously.
Her first book, Brain Fitness @ Work, was published by Hamlyn in 2003.

Geoff Langsdon
Parliamentary Training Consultant
Geoff is an experienced trainer in the following areas: policy making, policy skills, handling Parliament, Civil Service Code and ethics, speechwriting, leadership, management, media.
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 adviser. 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 of the Civil Service College. Recently he has taught for the Open University on undergraduate government and politics courses.

Hugh Lennon
Parliamentary Training Consultant
Hugh is an experienced trainer in the following areas: submissions and briefings, speechwriting, negotiating skills, policy skills, organisational change, media.
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.

Zoe McNeill-Ritchie
Policy Skills Trainer
Zoe McNeill-Ritchie is an accomplished trainer specialising in communications and briefing skills, policy development and the world of Government and Ministers. She is a former senior civil servant with over 15 years’ experience at the heart of Government, providing policy advice to Ministers in HM Treasury, the Foreign Office and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. She has a degree in law from Cambridge University and holds the Certificate in Training Practice from the CIPD.
Zoe started her career in 1981 as a policy official in HM Treasury, advising Ministers on a range of policy areas including education, health and international finance. She was appointed by John Major as his Private Secretary when he joined the Treasury as Chief Secretary in 1987.
In 1992 Zoe joined the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, handling policy on UK relations with southern European states and Gibraltar, and was then posted as a Diplomat to the British Embassy in Athens, working primarily on political reporting on the Balkans war and on joint activity with the Greek Government to tackle terrorism and drug smuggling.
After the general election in 1997 Zoe moved to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, advising Ministers on policy relating to the British Library, Public Lending Right and a number of other cultural bodies. She was then promoted to head the Strategy Unit, working directly to Ministers and the Management Board on broad areas of policy and departmental management issues.
Zoe joined the Cabinet Office in 2000 as a senior lecturer in policy and government, a role which included management of the Civil Service Fast Stream training programme. Since then, she has worked on a wide range of training programmes at the National School of Government, mainly in the areas of policy development, consultation, policy analysis, strategic communications, Ministerial briefing and other communications skills. She has been an Associate since 2003 and has also worked in this capacity for other organisations, including in the voluntary and private sectors. She has trained civil servants across all government departments, as well as internationally (eg Ethiopia and Afghanistan).

Patrick Nicholls
Former MP and Minister
Patrick Nicholls specialises in all aspects of politics and the workings of Westminster and Whitehall.
Patrick was the Conservative Member of Parliament for Teignbridge, in the South West of England, from 1983 to 2001. He served as an Employment Minister and an Environment Minister under Margaret Thatcher’s administration. He was a Vice-Chairman of the Conservative Party under John Major and served as a Shadow Minister under the Leader of the Opposition, William Hague.
Patrick Nicholls works as a political lobbyist with Foresight Communications Ltd, is a consultant with the leading London law firm, CVS Solicitors, of Albemarle Street, and writes and lectures extensively on a range of political issues.
Patrick Nicholls is a Freeman of the City of London and a Knight Commander of the Order of St Catherine of Sinai.

George Oliver MBE
Parliamentary Training Consultant
George is an experienced trainer in the following areas: Parliament and politics, legislation, policy, Whitehall, speechwriting, policy development.
George Oliver worked at the former Department for Education (DfE) for 23 years. He spent 11 of those years working in a Parliamentary environment, five 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 a Member of Crawley Borough Council from May 1998 until May 2002.

Julian Oliver
General Secretary, EurActiv
Julian Oliver works as the General Secretary of EurActiv. EurActiv was set up in 1999 by three people and now involves about 25 persons, plus subcontractors and partners’ staff in Central Europe. Together with this extended team, roughly 50 people work around the EurActiv trademark.
The users include officials from EU institutions, management consultants, information specialists, researchers or webmasters from both Eastern and Western Europe. They are consulted on major changes to the website, evaluate these changes and suggest improvements.
EurActiv brings together the skills of professionals with experience in EU affairs, journalism, information and communication as well as Internet technology. For its content, EurActiv relies not only on its own editorial team but also on numerous content partnerships, as well as links to the national press and the EU institutions.

Robin Pedler
Associate Fellow, Templeton College, Oxford University
Robin Pedler is an Associate Fellow of Templeton, the college of Oxford University that specialises in management studies. He is academic director of EIS Training, Brussels.
He studied at the Sorbonne and Cambridge University, 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. He has also written numerous publications.

Dr Nieves Pérez-Solorzano
Lecturer in Politics, University of East Anglia, Norwich
Nieves is a lecturer in politics at the School of Political, Social and International Studies at the University of East Anglia (UEA), Norwich. She is a member of the ESRC Centre for Competition Policy and the editor of the UEA Papers in European and International Studies. Her contribution to the ESRC Centre for Competition focuses on EU competition policy reform and the institutionalisation of competition agencies in Central and Eastern Europe.
Her current and most recent publications include ‘EU Accession and Interest Politics in Central and Eastern Europe’ in Perspectives on European Politics and Society, Vol 5, No 2, 2004; ‘Organised Business Interests: Lessons from the EU Constitutional Process’ in Transnational Associations, Issue 2/2004.

Dr Eryl Price-Davies
Director of Studies for Media, and Principal Lecturer, Thames Valley University.
Eryl Price-Davies is director of studies for media and principal lecturer in the Faculty of Arts at Thames Valley University.
He has research interests in community broadcasting and community media internationally. He took his doctorate at King’s College, London and is the co-author of a research report into community radio in a global context, which was used to inform UK Government proposals to introduce the new tier of community radio that is now being established. He is a member of the Radio Studies Network, with responsibility for teaching and learning, and a member of the Radio Academy.
He is also currently working with UNESCO in an advisory capacity, researching community radio and civil society in developing countries.

Tess Thompson
Senior Organisational Development and Training Consultant
Tess has extensive experience in design, facilitation and delivery of key change programmes and effective management development interventions. Her particular strengths include change management, performance management, leadership development, customer care programmes and creating competency frameworks. She has worked in Europe and delivered programmes with multi-national delegates.
Among other recent achievements, she has created a new performance management system linking reward to performance for 240 people in a new joint venture and developed a customer care programme for the finance division and customer services department of a rapidly growing financial organisation.
Tess is an associate lecturer for residential programme for students on the master’s programme with the Open University Business School and a guest speaker at the 2004 Conference for the British Psychological Society on performance coaching.

Dr Graham Timmins
Head of Department, Jean Monnet Professor in European Integration Studies, Senior Lecturer in Politics, Stirling University
Dr Graham Timmins joined the Department in 2000 as a senior lecturer having previously been Head of the Department of History, Politics and Languages at the University of Huddersfield. He is currently Head of Department at Stirling University as well as a Jean Monnet Professor in European Integration Studies. Dr Timmins graduated in Russian and Soviet Studies from Portsmouth Polytechnic in 1986 and went on to obtain an MPhil in Soviet and East European studies from the Glasgow University in 1990 and a PhD in political science from the Huddersfield University in 1997.
Graham’s research interests are in the areas of European integration, security and German politics. He is active in several research projects examining European security in the post-Cold War period and has a specific research interest in European Union-Russian relations. He is also an executive committee member with the Association for the Study of German Politics and is the book reviews editor for German Politics.

Graham Topping
Presentations Skills Trainer
Graham has led workshops in presentation skills for master’s students at the London School of Economics for seven years. He brings to this work a range of skills from elsewhere in his life.
He is a freelance journalist for national and international magazines (communicating information); he has directed his own theatre company for 19 years (performance skills), and has been a sports coach for even longer.
He is the author, with Peter Levin, of Perfect Presentations! (McGraw-Hill/Open University Press 2006).

John Turnbull
Freelance Editor
John has been watching Westminster for more than 20 years as a BBC reporter, parliamentary and political correspondent and freelance broadcaster and producer. He has presented Today in Parliament and Yesterday in Parliament, edited The Week in Westminster and People and Politics, and contributed to such programmes as Look North, North of Westminster, On the Record and The Westminster Hour.
On Radio 4 he has produced The Brandreth Rules with Gyles Brandreth, written and produced the historical series Not While I’m Alive… with Brian Walden, and produced a celebration of 25 years of Parliamentary broadcasting, Drama in the House.
He is a contributing editor to Dod’s Constituency Guide and has written profiles of MPs since 1999, including all 646 members of the current Parliament, published as Vacher’s Parliamentary Profiles in May 2006. He is a visiting lecturer in journalism and politics at Leeds University.

Garth Ward
Project management training expert
For the last 17 years he has been a consultant lecturer at Cranfield School of Management. For ten years he was director of the master’s course in project management and responsible for the Project Management Group. As such, he was responsible for a portfolio of short courses covering project management skills and techniques from physical / technological environments to service based organisations. In addition, Garth has developed and ran in-company courses and the highly regarded ECITB seven-day short course for engineering contractors. For three years his two-day negotiation course was voted the best elective on the MBA Programme.
His industrial experience includes over 20 years as a project manager for both client and contractors, with a broad range of fields of experience.
Garth is a member and past chairman of the UK Association of Project Managers Education and Training Group and is a former external examiner for Salford University School of Management, MSc in Project Management.

Tim Williams
Parliamentary Training Consultant
Tim is an experienced trainer in the following areas: Parliament, legislation, Whitehall, interaction between Westminster and Whitehall.
Tim Williams was appointed Parliamentary Clerk to the Department for Trade and Industry (DTI) in April 1989 and has, therefore, service under both Conservative and Labour administrations.
Tim headed a team of eight, working with Ministers and staff in the Department to ensure that the Department’s involvement with Parliament was carried out effectively and with due regard for procedures in all respects. He joined the civil service in November 1967 and for most of his career has worked in the DTI and its predecessors. Before becoming Parliamentary Clerk he worked in the regional policy, overseas trade, aerospace and organisation sections of the Department.

Roberta Woodcock
Financial Training Consultant
Roberta is a learning and development professional, holding a postgraduate Advanced Diploma in Training and Development from Cambridge University. She is also a Fellow of the Institute of Training and Occupational Learning and a Fellow of two international book-keeping institutes: the International Association and the Institute of Certified Book-keepers.
She is a lecturer with CIPFA (Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy) lecturing in public finance and governance and public policy; and an associate of Insight Management and Systems Consultancy Limited and the Financial Training Company.
Roberta spent four years with HM Treasury, before which she worked for the Prison Service performing roles in finance system implementation, support and development and then as their financial training manager. Other spells in central Government have been with the Property Services Agency and previously as a collector of taxes with the Inland Revenue.