First Review of the National Security Strategy 2010 Oral and Written Evidence

JOINT COMMITTEE ON THE NATIONAL SECURITY STRATEGY First review of the National Security Strategy 2010 Oral and written evidence Contents ORAL EVIDENCE ....................................................................................................................................... 2 Rt Hon Baroness Neville-Jones - (QQ 1-43) ........................................................................................ 2 Admiral Rt Hon Lord West of Spithead – (QQ 44-87) .................................................................. 18 Rt Hon Oliver Letwin MP – (QQ 88-120) ......................................................................................... 37 Sir Peter Ricketts – (QQ 121-159) ...................................................................................................... 57 WRITTEN EVIDENCE ............................................................................................................................ 74 Cabinet Office 01 ..................................................................................................................................... 74 Cabinet Office 02 ..................................................................................................................................... 81 Cabinet Office 03 ..................................................................................................................................... 93 Cabinet Office 04 ................................................................................................................................... 101 Cabinet Office 05 ................................................................................................................................... 104 ADS Group Limited ............................................................................................................................... 112 Dr Jim Broderick, Daneshill Associates LLP .................................................................................... 117 Professor Nigel Lightfoot ..................................................................................................................... 122 Mark Phillips, RUSI ................................................................................................................................. 128 Dr Sue Robertson .................................................................................................................................. 134 World Vision UK ................................................................................................................................... 147 Rt Hon Baroness Neville-Jones - (QQ 1-43) ORAL EVIDENCE Rt Hon Baroness Neville-Jones - (QQ 1-43) MONDAY 4 JULY 2011 Evidence heard in Public Questions 1 - 43 Members Present Margaret Beckett (Chair) Mr James Arbuthnot Sir Alan Beith Malcolm Bruce Lord Cope of Berkeley Lord Fellowes Lord Foulkes of Cumnock Lord Harris of Haringey Lord Lee of Trafford Baroness Manningham-Buller Paul Murphy Baroness Ramsay of Cartvale Lord Sterling of Plaistow Baroness Taylor of Bolton Keith Vaz Lord Waldegrave of North Hill ________________ Examination of Witness Rt Hon Baroness Neville-Jones DCMG Q1 The Chairman: Thank you very much for coming, Lady Neville-Jones. Welcome to the Committee. This is the first evidence session that this Joint Committee has held in this Parliament. As you know, our role is both a specific and potentially rather a wide one in that we are specifically charged with considering the National Security Strategy and its wide implications. We decided that we would begin this by taking evidence from former Security Ministers, so we have you today, which we very much appreciate, and we will have Lord West of Spithead in September. After that, we will take evidence from the Government. As you can see, we have quite a substantial membership and a number of colleagues want to ask questions. I am mindful that we all have limitations on our time, so we will try to be as 2 Rt Hon Baroness Neville-Jones - (QQ 1-43) succinct as we can, but we hope to be able to cover some ground. You have been a long- standing advocate—I understand a proponent even—of the need for a new government security architecture. I would be grateful if you would say briefly why that is. Baroness Neville-Jones: Certainly, Madam Chairman. Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak to the Committee. On your first point, it is right that for a long time I have been a proponent and advocate of the need for a national security machinery, obviously following on a national security concept. I would say that there are two broad reasons why I thought that that was where the UK ought to go. The first sprang from my experience in government as an official. In the early 1990s I was a chairman of the Defence and Overseas Secretariat, as it then was. In that position, which was occupied at Deputy Under-Secretary level, I felt that the centre of government lacked drive and authority in relation to departments and that even the capacity to co-ordinate—you will see that I feel that the centre should do more than just co-ordinate—was extremely limited if only because the Permanent Under-Secretaries, if they so chose, could in effect decline to co- operate. There was a limit to what officials could do to bring policy issues together in a form suitable for ministerial consideration. The second reason was the march of events. It seemed to leap out at one after 9/11 that you could no longer separate—if it ever had been sensible—defence and foreign policy from domestic security. These were now deeply interwoven. Terrorism was the obvious but not the only example, frankly, of the way in which the two now interlocked. It therefore became imperative to have both methods of operation as well as a forum for consideration that brought the two together. What the National Security Council does is clearly an adaptation from American thinking, but I hope that it is fitted for the requirements of Cabinet government and not for the separation of powers. It gives an opportunity for Ministers from the relevant departments, these days very much including the home departments, to be part of national security policy-making. Q2 The Chairman: You say that that was your view and that was why you came to be a proponent, but has your experience since led to your amending that view in any way? Baroness Neville-Jones: If anything it has strengthened my view that we have done the right thing. I believe that the previous Government’s CONTEST framework, which, as you know, we have endorsed and followed, has made a major contribution to thinking in counterterrorism. Part of its internal logic was to bring domestic and foreign together, but what was still lacking, even when the previous Government went so far as to set up NSID, was the creation of a forum within which that kind of concept could be taken fully and properly. For instance, something like PREVENT could be discussed by all Ministers with an interest in it. On the whole, the creation of the National Security Council has given us the two elements that we need for the machinery of policy-making and, I hope, the mindset that leads to looking at these issues within a national security framework. Perhaps I might say that the one thing that has not happened—the party canvassed this in opposition—was the notion of a single budget. There is indeed the single security count, but there is no wider pooling of moneys, as they are still departmentally allocated. We need to see how that works out in practice. The previous Government tried the experiment of pooling, which I do not think worked terribly well, and there is of course a constitutional problem, which is that parliamentary committees want to see accountability to them, so perhaps this Committee may be able to do something in that area. It is a fairly difficult one and it is not easy to see sweeping solutions that are compatible with a Secretary of State’s responsibilities. But we need to devise some measure of flexibility so that we can allocate 3 Rt Hon Baroness Neville-Jones - (QQ 1-43) resources at mid-term or according to need, if it arises. That is because one thing that a national security concept should be able to give us in policy-making is greater flexibility than perhaps we have had in the past. Q3 Baroness Ramsay of Cartvale: Has your experience of serving on the National Security Council since it got up and running—you have been a part of it—in any way changed your views on how it should be constituted and what business it should employ itself with? Baroness Neville-Jones: It has been going a year, which of course is a relatively short time. During that period quite a lot of its work and its meetings, apart from the ongoing tasks of things like Afghanistan and serious consideration of countries with which we are deeply involved, such as Pakistan and of course Libya, have been devoted to the various commitments made in opposition to review various aspects of policy. It is fair to say that the National Security Council has brought about a standard of inquiry and a searching nature of questioning into the papers put before it, which I think is an improvement on what I had previously seen in government as an official. So my answer to the question is, “So far, so good”. It think that it is performing quite well, but I am conscious of the fact that a year of what I hope is going to be a long-term Government is not a long time in which to test it. Some of the answers to your questions will come when we see how adequately,

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