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Taxpayers paid to send MoD official to work for elite bank Rothschild & Co

The secondment, which comes as ministers court private finance, ended on same day we asked the government about it

By Ethan Shone
Taxpayers paid to send MoD official to work for elite bank Rothschild & Co
Several defence officials are currently seconded to work in the private sector, but the government does not publish details of these arrangements
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Taxpayers paid for a Ministry of Defence official to spend almost a year working for an elite investment bank that’s seeking to increase the role of private finance in military budgets, openDemocracy can reveal.

The staffer was seconded to Rothschild & Co in February last year and recalled to the MoD on 5 January 2026 – the same day we contacted the government to ask about it.

They were placed in the bank’s geopolitical advisory department to work under Mark Sedwill, who was the UK’s cabinet secretary and national security adviser until 2020, when he left office and was appointed to the House of Lords.

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