Paul Brothwood

How parliamentary work on water and fisheries shaped my approach to sustainability By Paul Brothwood I'm Paul Brothwood. Before I became an Operations Manager in electricity distribution and a Chartered Environmentalist, I worked as a Chief of Staff in the European Parliament from 2014 to 2019. My work brought me into discussions about water security, hydropower, fisheries and natural resources. At the time, I did not think of those assignments as the start of my sustainability work. I was dealing with practical policy questions, often in contested political settings. Looking back, I can see how they shaped the way I weigh evidence, infrastructure choices and their effects on people and the environment. That period also took me to Dakhla in Western Sahara and to Somaliland, where I became involved in the case of poet Abdirahman Abees. In 2019, I spoke as a petitioner to the United Nations General Assembly's Fourth Committee on Western Sahara. These experiences were different, b...

By Paul Brothwood Paul Brothwood spent seven years working as a Chief of Staff across the European Parliament and House of Commons.  From 2014 to 2019, I worked in the European Parliament. I then served as a Chief of Staff within a Conservative parliamentary office in the House of Commons from 2019 to 2021. Paul Brothwood on his final day as Chief of Staff in the House of Commons in October 2021, marking the end of seven years working across the European Parliament and Westminster. Those years taught me how to organise competing priorities, communicate under pressure and support decisions subject to public scrutiny. They also showed me that announcing change and delivering change are two different tasks. This photograph was taken at my desk on my final day in the House of Commons in October 2021. It marked the end of a seven-year parliamentary chapter and the start of my return to business and operational leadership. Working in the European Parliament My work in the European Parlia...