Lord Frost was made a minister in the Cabinet Office in February this year, after serving as Britain’s chief Brexit negotiator since July 2019.
He led the UK team during trade talks with Brussels that reached a successful conclusion in December last year.
Now with the trade deal in place, he was due to become the national security adviser in the coming weeks, but will stick to the Brexit brief for now.
Born in Derby, Mr Frost earned a scholarship to Nottingham High School before studying French and history at St John’s College in Oxford. He joined the Foreign Office in 1987, his first posting taking him to the British High Commission in Cyprus.
In 1993 he experienced his first taste of working with the European Union when he was posted to Brussels as the First Secretary for Economic and Financial Affairs. After that he was sent to the United Nations.
He was the UK Ambassador to Denmark between 2006 and 2008 before becoming the UK’s senior most trade policy officer in the Department of Trade. He left the diplomatic service in 2013 to head the Scotch Whiskey Association – but returned as special adviser to the government when Mr Johnson became foreign secretary.
He also served as a member of the Advisory Council of Open Europe, a Eurosceptic think-tank.
When Mr Johnson became prime minister, Mr Frost was back on board and duly negotiated a deal that would enable Britain to leave the EU at the end of January last year and then move on to trade discussions with the bloc.