The attempted Clinton-CIA coup against Donald Trump

[Paul Rigby]

Is this why ex-Foreign Office boss wants a ban? Mandarin who dragged Queen into state visit row is paid by arms giant on Trump's hit-list

• Lord Ricketts, permanent secretary from 2006-2010, slammed planned visit
  
• In public letter, he said Theresa May had put Queen in 'very difficult position'
  
• It has now emerged he is adviser to Lockheed Martin, which took financial hit
  
• Last week, Trump announced contract was slashed by $600million (£478m)
  

By IAN DRURY HOME AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT FOR THE DAILY MAIL
PUBLISHED: 22:02, 31 January 2017 | UPDATED: 23:59, 31 January 2017

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-...slash.html

A former Foreign Office mandarin who dragged the Queen into the row over Donald Trump's state visit is paid to advise a defence company that has taken a huge financial hit from the new president.

Lord Ricketts, permanent secretary at the department from 2006-10 before becoming David Cameron's national security adviser, questioned whether the US leader was specially deserving of this exceptional honour'.

He hit out at Theresa May's ill-judged' move, saying it had exposed the Queen to a furious row about Mr Trump's controversial travel ban on seven Muslim countries.

The invitation had put the monarch in a very difficult position', he said.

But it emerged that his intervention happened to coincide with President Trump announcing that a contract with US aerospace giant Lockheed Martin would be slashed.

On Monday, the White House forced the company to cut its price for supplying 90 new F-35 stealth fighter jets by $600million (£478million). The full cost of delivering the tranche of state-of-the-art aircraft was $9billion (£7.2billion). Britain is set to buy 48 of the jets.

Last night critics expressed concern that Lockheed's top British strategic adviser was undermining President Trump's trip to the UK because of his treatment of the defence manufacturer.

But Lord Ricketts, 64, strenuously denied there was any conflict of interest and insisted he had spoken out only as an ex-FCO official who had been in charge of the department's Royal Visits Committee.

The Prime Minister's invitation to Mr Trump sparked an outcry in the UK, with more than 1.6million people signing a petition calling for it to be scrapped. Lord Ricketts, who was given a peerage in Mr Cameron's resignation honours list last August, intervened in the row with a letter to The Times.

He told Radio 4 yesterday: I think if you did it two or three years into the Trump presidency, the controversial early policy announcements would have been out of the way, things would have settled down.

It would have been possible, I think, to have invited the president... to come on an official visit to have political talks, to have whatever programme he wanted, go and have tea with the Queen, but without the full panoply, the full accolade of a state visit quite so quickly.'

Lord Ricketts became a strategic adviser to Lockheed Martin UK in September last year just eight months after quitting the diplomatic corps. He has listed his role with the firm in the Register of Lords' Interests but is not required to set out his remuneration.

Former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith last night lashed out at the former top bureaucrat.

He said: Everyone is entitled to their own opinion but I have to say it is abusing his old role by coming forward at this point to suggest the Government has put the Queen in an invidious position by holding a state visit for the president.

Not only did he backtrack on his initial idea that the visit should be cancelled, he also failed to declare his interest in a company that President Trump has lectured about the ludicrously over-priced aircraft. There looks to be a conflict of interest.'

Tory MP Philip Hollobone said: The Queen has not been put in a difficult position at all. She hosts visits for heads of state from around the world, from the most important countries, and she has done that throughout her reign. Britain does not agree with all the policies of these countries. Questions are being asked about why Lord Ricketts intervened now and whether there is a potential conflict of interest.'

Lord Hague said: A Queen who has been asked over the decades to host tyrants such as presidents Mobutu of Zaire and Ceausescu of Romania is going to take a brash billionaire from New York effortlessly in her stride.'

Lord Ricketts told the Mail last night: My intervention was purely personal, drawing on my experience at the Foreign Office. I had a personal point to make into this debate and as a former senior civil servant, I was stating my view in public. There is absolutely no conflict of interest.'

A Lockheed Martin UK spokesman said: Lord Ricketts was speaking in a private capacity and his views are not those of Lockheed Martin.' Mrs May's spokesman said she did not accept' the adviser's view.