A report published today by a high-powered independent commission argues for much tighter coordination of the UK’s security and international operations, arguing that the government must improve collaboration “by integrating all of the policy instruments at its disposal and by joining up the activities of the various government departments and agencies”.
The Institute of Public Policy Research (IPPR) report, Shared Responsibilities, was produced by the IPPR’s Commission on National Security in the 21st Century, which is chaired by former UN High Representative for Bosnia Paddy Ashdown and former NATO secretary general George Robertson.
Speaking to Civil Service World, commission member Sir David Omand said: “It’s a dangerous world. We’ve got to get ourselves organised, and this is going to involve working outside the normal departmental boundaries.”
Omand, a former Home Office permanent secretary and Cabinet Office security and intelligence coordinator, explained that the commission hasn’t “suggested major reorganisation, because wherever you draw the boundaries, people are going to have to work across them” – but he urged quicker progress towards cross-government security coordination, warning that “if we don’t go in this direction, we will struggle to keep up our security in the face of a whole range of threats”.
One key recommendation is for the establishment of a ministerial National Security Council to oversee all the facets of security, controlling a cross-departmental security budget designed to “overcome the traditional departmental obstacles of who’s going to pay, which department is going to take the lead”, said Omand.
At a local level, he added, the work of the military and of civilian staff must be tightly coordinated – an ambition that demands a new agency and, sometimes, a single ‘in-country’ chief to oversee all the government’s activities. “You can’t solve conflicts by military means alone, yet while it’s relatively straightforward to apply military resource it’s extremely hard to mobilise civilian resource [like prison or police officers], because they’re not organised in that way,” Omand explained.
The National Security Council, said Omand, should be chaired by the prime minister – but in his absence, a very senior cabinet minister should take the lead. Similarly, the cabinet secretary should be supported by a deputy of permanent secretary rank dedicated to working on national security issues. Complementing this upgrading of leadership on the policy side, the intelligence community should be brought together under “a senior official to be the coordinator of intelligence activity”.
The report also recommends that the Department for International Development’s objectives be broadened from a narrow focus on tackling poverty, enabling it to work on reconstruction and stabilisation activities in areas of conflict – and thus to better support the UK’s wider objectives.
