Fox Letter exposes Tories’ difficulties over cuts in defence

A letter from Defence Secretary Liam Fox to David Cameron, and leaked to the Daily Telegraph, has exposed a fundamental difficulty for the government, and specifically the Conservative party, in reconciling cuts and maintaining defence readiness.

The main plank of this government’s policies has been to reduce the country’s structural deficit, mainly by announcing deep cuts in public spending.

This may make them unpopular, but a smaller state is at least a traditional part of Tory thinking, and the much heralded big society plans, and the government’s friends in the press have persuaded most that cuts in some degree are needed.

But when it came to power the government also wanted to put national security, in the widest sense at the heart of it policies, with David Cameron setting up a new national security committee in the first week of his government.

And the letter from Dr Fox to Mr Cameron shows that the cutting agenda could hurt the government politically, it said: “Party, media, military and the international reaction will be brutal if we do not recognise the dangers and continue to push for such draconian cuts at a time when we are at war.”

The Tories have traditionally been the party of defence, the country is at war, and the previous government was criticized for under-equipping troops fighting in theatre.

But the chancellor is insisting that defence spending is not to be ringfenced, and that leaves the Conservatives (because Liberal Democrat members of the government are to an extent immune from this) vulnerable.

The government has said that it will replace Trident, at the initial cost of £20 billion, and I have previously described the disagreement between Dr Fox and Chancellor George Osborne, who insists that that money will come from the defence budget, not central spending.

Cutting £20 bn from operational budgets, including body armour and armoured vehicles for troops in combat, to fund a nuclear programme which nobody hopes we have to use leaves the government open to criticism that it is increasing danger for personnel and has blood on its hands.

It may be that the government tries to dodge that particular issue by putting off the Trident issue until the next parliament, but even if it does, the cuts being suggested would still be fertile ground for critics of the government.

Cuts to schools and hospitals maybe unpopular but they don’t have the visceral impact, or media coverage of bodies being driven through Wootton Bassett.

And it is natural Tory supporters who will feel most betrayed if either it appears the country’s nuclear deterrent is being downgraded or that British troops are in more danger because of the government’s cutting agenda.

This issue has been one of the most difficult for the government and has caused incidents a number of times in the first six months of it’s administration.

My guess is this will be a large thorn in David Cameron’s side for many months to come.

Threat to UK from Somalia has increased - MI5 Chief

Jonathan Evans, chief of the Security Service (MI5) has claimed that there is a significant threat to the UK from terrorists training in Somalia.

Mr Evans also said the threat to the UK from dissident Irish Republicans has increased over the last year.

At a speech in London yesterday, Mr Evans told the Worshipful Company of Security Professionals, a "significant number of UK residents" were training with Islamist militants in Somalia to be able to carry out terror attacks.

He said: "I am concerned that it's only a matter of time before we see terrorism on our streets inspired by those who are today fighting alongside al-Shabaab [an Islamist militia in Somalia]."

He went on to say Somalia was growing as a base for British extremists, with the focus moving form tribal areas of Pakistan, which now accounted for half the plots against the UK instead of 75 per cent.

The Security Service boss said: "Al-Shabaab ... is closely aligned with al-Qaida, and Somalia shows many of the characteristics that made Afghanistan so dangerous a seedbed for terrorism in the period before the fall of the Taliban."

Mr Evans also warned that there were more signs of co-ordination and co-operation by dissident and often hitherto splintered Irish republican groups, he said there had been a 50 per cent increase in attacks, with 30 launched this year compared to 20 throughout the whole of 2009.

I have argued a number of times in this blog that the war in Afghanistan has become a terrible distraction to efforts against interntaionsl Al Qaeda inspired or related terrorism.

Uk and US operations in Afghanistan began with the intention of disrupting Al Qaeda operations bases and personnel; to prevent more attacks being planned and launched from the country.
But now western troops, and crucially, their supporting intelligence structures, including SIS, Security Service and GCHQ are busyfighting a local insurgency, the Taliban.

There is very little threat to the UK at home from the Taliban, if at all; even Mr Evans says the plots against Britain in the region stem from Pakistan, not Afghanistan.

Meanwhile extremists and dissidents are comparatively free to train, organise and plot while the security forces are looking the other way.

Britain has found itself stuck in a seemingly intractable fight in Afghanistan, and it is very difficult to know what to do.

Declaring victory and withdrawing would seem to once again abandon the country to a horrible fate, and would also be seen, rightly, as an ignominious retreat.

But to carry on regardless put the country at great risk of having the security resources pointing the wrong way, and should another attack take place in Britain, I believe, the distraction of fighting the Taliban insurgency will have been a contributory factor.

Chancellor: MOD must pay for Trident

The UK chancellor George Osborne has insisted that the billions of pounds that it will cost to buy a replacement for the UK’s Trident missile system must be met by the Ministry of Defence.

The initial £20bn cost of replacing the nuclear weapons system, which is normally met by the Treasury, must come from the MOD’s budget, and the ministry will also be responsible for paying for the running costs, estimated at another £80bn.

This is a blow for Tory defence minister Liam Fox who told the BBC earlier this month that the capital costs should be met by the Treasury, as they have been in the past.

Dr Fox also told the Daily Telegraph last week that the armed forces were not able to meet all its obligations to defend the country.

The new coalition government has come in for much criticism for what many see as undue haste in making very deep cuts to public expenditure.

Normally governments of the right, however much they want to cut public spending, do not like to cut defence budgets.

They see defence and national security as their natural territory and an area where high spending is helpful electorally.

(It was George Bush who described Ronald Reagan’s plans to cut taxes, increase defence spending and balance the budget as ‘voodoo economics.’)

It will be interesting to see whether this decision rebounds on the Conservative/Lib Dem coalition.

Cuts in other public services might be seen as having more of an impact on Labour voters, not only the public employees but the people who depend on their services.

Cuts in MOD spending will not only affect military personal but more crucially the UK’s defence industry, often based in the Tories’ southeastern heartlands.

Or Nick Clegg or Danny Alexander can convince their Tory counterparts to rethink the plan to automatically replace Trident.

All of which might allow Labour to attack the government, not only on spending cuts, but on being soft on defence and national security.

MI5 chief: Iraq war increased terror threat to the UK

Eliza Manningham-Buller, director general of the Security Service (MI5) at the time of the Iraq war has told the Chilcot inquiry that Britain’s support for military action increased the terrorist threat at home.

She told the inquiry into the war that the threat to Britain from Saddam Hussein before 2003 was low.

And she said he was not thought to have been linked to terrorists planning to attack the west: “"It certainly wasn't of concern in either the short term or the medium term to me or my colleagues."

Instead, according to Ms Manningham-Buller, Britain’s involvement to the war increased the threat to the UK by radicalizing young British Muslims, who saw the war as part of an attack on Islam.

She said: “"Arguably, we gave Osama bin Laden his Iraqi jihad,”

She also said that the focus on Iraq meant that the UK and US lost focus on operations in Afghanistan.

See the Guardian’s live blog of Ms Manningham-Buller’s evidence today.

To my mind this last point is one of the main arguments against the whole Iraq adventure.

Even before the war began, and certainly before it emerged that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction, it was obvious that invading Iraq was going to damage attempts Islamist terrorism.

For a short while after 9/11 there was and international consensus on taking action against Al Qaeda.

The French press was saying “We are all Americans now,” the Russians and Chinese were willing to co-operate, even Iran was making conciliatory noises to the west about helping out.

And that opportunity was totally lost; first with the ‘axis of evil’ speech, then with the angry denunciations of ‘old Europe’, and accusations of being collaborators.

So now we have troops in Iraq, which is hardly a stable democracy, UK troops are being killed seemingly every week in Afghanistan, UK muslims have been radicalized and Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups are free to organize in Yemen, Pakistan or Sudan.

It is bad enough that hundreds of western troops, and uncounted thousands of Iraqis died in an ill-conceived war; but perhaps the real tragedy is that more will die in terrorist attacks when there was, perhaps, an opportunity for international action that was totally lost.

Liam Fox: Afghanistan ops help national security

Defence Secretary Liam Fox has defended the presence of British troops in Afghanistan, and said operations there have prevented Al Qaeda and other terrorists form using the country as a bases.

Interviewed on BBC Radio’s Today programme,Dr Fox said that UK forces were “not desperate” to leave Afghanistan and were there to secure the UK’s national security.

He said it was a testament to the success of the UK’s operations there that Al Qaeda was not organizing in the country.

Dr Fox was interviewed the day after three members of the Gurkha Rifles were killed by a member of the Afghan army being trained by British troops.

He told Today "We went to prevent al-Qaeda from having an open space in which to operate. We need to follow that up with a stable Afghan state so that it doesn't return to the state it was before.

"We're in Afghanistan as a matter of national security. Success in that national security context is a stable enough Afghanistan, able to manage its own internal and external security without reference to foreign forces."

But as I have argued here, while fighting a local insurgency by the Taliban, UK and US forces in country may be being distracted from Al Qaeda and other international terrorists who can use other failed or failing states as a base.

Attacks today in Yemen suggest that terror groups with an international outlook, unlike the Taliban, are still very much alive and operational.

Hear the interview with Dr Fox here.

Mind the Language

A report by the civil service into GCHQ in Cheltenham says its failure to attract ethnic minority staff is hampering its efforts to fight terrorism.

(The report was broken in the Sunday Times, now behind a paywall, so here’s a link to a piece on the matter in The Guardian.)

It also makes, perhaps, unwittingly, on of the main points about intelligence analysis that keeps on getting forgotten.

The modern signals intelligence (Sigint) business relies on computer power. Unimaginable computing power. GCHQ is the biggest computer centre in Europe.

The machines are used to intercept traffic, process it, recognize it, route it, decrypt it and turn it into something recognizable for an analyst to look at.

Except if it’s in a foreign language, at which point a human being is needed to look at it.

It is often the dream of managers of Sigint organizations to develop machine translation. Machines don’t go sick, want weekends off, extra pay or promotion.

Neither do they work. Machines can be good for highly formatted, printed text. They can be great. But for hand-writing? Or voice communications. Not a hope.

And terrorists don’t send formatted site reps. They chat. They talk elliptically.

And if they’re doing so in a language which no-one knows in a given agency, then for all intents and purposes, they are using highly encrypted comms, for free.

Better than crypt in fact, because one you’ve broken a cipher, you can break it every time at all times.

Train a linguist to the required standard to translate voice traffic in a given language, which takes up to two years, 18 months if you really push it, then you’ve got him or her for 40 hours a week. For 45 weeks a year.

One of the things intelligence agencies seem really bad at is future planning. Not for technologies, or new techniques. But identifying which areas of the world will need their attention; which languages they’ll need.

It’s tricky because you need to do it three to five years in advance, but its absolutely critical, otherwise all the technology is useless because of a lack of the right pairs of ears.

The Human Touch

The revelations about Russian illegal agents operating in the US and the thrillingly Cold War swap of western ‘spies’ and the Russian agents has put old-style espionage firmly back on the front pages.

(And incidentally, haven’t the papers just loved it all. One of the things about the press, and intelligence, is that it’s a secret world whose details are not well known. So as soon as anything is revealed, the press just goes wild for any snippet at all. And if one of the agents is an attractive redhead pictured in a corset….)

But why are intelligence agencies still using and recruiting human agents? Isn’t all a bit 20th Century?

After all, it’s really embarrassing, when they’re caught and sent home. Bad enough when they are diplomatic staff who are declared persona non grata, but at least everyone expects that, but when they are ‘civilians’ and there is a juicy court case, then it’s worse.

And since the end of the Cold War, such revelations have an even greater possible impact on international relations and trade.

Surely sigint, and fancy internet technologies and satellite imagery means that there’s not need for agents.

There are problems with human intelligence, (humint). If you’re paying for people to give you intelligence, they may quite well give you what you want to hear, whether true or not; see Graham Greene’s Our Man in Havana, or the claim about Iraq’s WMD programme and missiles ready in 45 minutes, for a more serious real-world example.

But the beauty of it is that everyone knows it happens, and it can’t be stopped.

Sigint can be undone by building a better cipher, or just by using more secure communications.

Underground buildings will foil any imagery satellites.

As long as people are greedy, or stupid and reckless, or continue to be disaffected at work, or hate their boss or are vain and contemptuous, (and none of these seem to be stopping soon), agencies will always be able to recruit agents.

And counter-espionage agencies like M15 or the FBI know that and they can catch them. And that’s disruptive to the espionage agencies.

But there is no technique, including security vetting, which can produce people who are not stupid, greedy, reckless and vain, and staff in any target organization, be it a government or a commercial company, will continue to provide rich pickings for intelligence agencies.

News - Cameron: Troops out of Afghanistan by 2015

Prime minister David Cameron has said he wants UK forces to be withdrawn from Afghanistan within five years.

Speaking in Canada before a G8 and G20 summit conference, Mr Cameron told Sky TV that he hoped to have British troops back before the next election.

He said: “"We can't be there for another five years, having been there for nine years already.

"But one thing we should be clear about - Britain should have a long-term relationship with Afghanistan, including helping to train their troops and their civil society, long after the vast bulk of troops have gone home."

But the PM said he did not want to set a more fixed date for the finishing of military operations in the country, saying he did not want to “deal in too strict timetables.”

Four UK troops who dies in a road accident in Afghanistan on Wednesday were named by the MOD as Pte Alex Isaac, Pte Douglas Halliday, Colour Sgt Martyn Horton and L/Cpl David Ramsden.

Watch the interview with Sky News here.

Comment: Why are we fighting in Afghanistan?

Yet more British service personnel have died in Afghanistan this week, with that grim total reaching 300 a few days ago.

And the commander of NATO forces in country, General Stanley McChrystal, has been sacked by Barack Obama and replaced by General David Petraeus, who was responsible for the troop surge in Iraq.

And in his visit to Afghanistan a few weeks back, prime minister David Cameron told troops they were fighting a war of obligation.

He did not go as far as Gordon Brown in saying that British troops in Helmand were keeping the streets of London safer, but he was fully in line with their presence there and the job they’re doing.

Bur following the recent spate of deaths, with the horrifying prospect of more to come as the summer fighting season continues, there will be increased calls to bring troops home, and increased counter-calls to stay the course.

But how did the UK, the US and their allies find themselves on this course?

UK and US forces landed in Afghanistan in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington.

They were there to catch and/or kill Al Qaeda operatives based in the country, particularly Osama Bin Laden.

Nearly eight years on, Bin Lade has not been captured, Al Qaeda seems to be dispersed and NATO forces are fighting a largely indigenous insurgency of the Taleban which has no real pretensions to international operations.

Meanwhile Islamic terrorism has not diminished; from 9/11 to Madrid, to London to Mumbai to Pune, the spectaculars continue, with countless smaller incidents, arrests and alerts.

How did this happen?

Briefly, after a swift but not stable military victory over the Taleban, UK and US forces didn’t find Bin Laden, but did find they had a totally failed state on their hands.

The political fear is that walking away from Afghanistan would not only allow the Taleban to take power again, but it would again become a haven for Al Qaeda or other Islamist terrorist groups.

And also the Iraq adventure proved to take attention from operations in Afghanistan and against Al Qaeda internationally.

In the five years that Iraq dominated military and intelligence thinking the Taleban were able to regroup and start operations against ISAF. They also learned some lessons about guerilla fighting and roadside bombs.

Which means that we now have troops fighting a home-grown insurgency in Afghanistan while trying to reconstruct the country.

Al Qaeda hasn’t returned. But it doesn’t have to. There are plenty of failing states where it can regroup and re-organise, while fellow travelers like the Taleban can keep the UK and US military and intelligence services tied up in Afghanistan, looking the wrong way.

With Petraeus now in charge of ISAF, changes are expected. And maybe Afghanistan will be brought to the uneasy peace that seems to prevail in Iraq right now.

But it’s hard not to feel that young men and women have been fighting and dying, doing a good job, in an honourable cause, but one which is a fatal distraction to what our armed and intelligence services really need to be doing.

News: British and US intelligence agreement revealed.

The agreement between the British and US governments to share intelligence has been described as the cornerstone of the “special relationship”, and today details of the “UK/USA” agreement have been revealed.

The National Archives has released The original 10-page document signed in 1946 in which both countries agreed to continue to share intelligence material, a practice which had begun during the Second World War.

The documents are available, free for a month, here.

The two governments agreed to share signals intelligence (sigint) produced by Bletchley Park in the UK and

The agreement says: “The parties agree to complete the exchange of the products of the following operations relating to foreign communications: (a) collection of traffic (b) acquisition of communication documents and equipment (c) traffic analysis (d) cryptanalysis (i.e. code and cipher recoveries) (e) decryption and translation (f) acquisition of information regarding communication organizations, practices procedures and equipment.

It also says: “It will be contrary to this agreement to reveal its existence to any third party whatever.”

And it is this agreement which has formed the basis for more than 60 years’ intensely close co-operation between GCHQ, as Bletchley Park became, and the giant US National Security Agency.

Later the Australian, New Zealand and Canadian sigint organizations joined the intelligence-sharing pact.

Given the huge disparity in size and budgets between GCHQ and NSA, it may appear that the benefit all flows towards the UK, but the inclusion of the Commonwealth counties and British territories all round the world meant that the UK was able to offer the US something unique.

The UK listening station in Hong Kong is reported to have been particularly of use to NSA during the Vietnam war.

A GCHQ spokesman told the Guardian: "The 1946 UKUSA agreement formed the basis for co-operation between the two countries throughout the cold war and continues to be essential in keeping the UK safe from today's threats."

Other documents released today by the National Archives include sigint reports on Soviet and Warsaw Pact military targets during the cold war, and insights into life in the Soviet Union under Stalin, and how the country was repressed.

Bloody Sunday deaths ‘unjustifiable’

The Saville Inquiry into the deaths of 14 people shot during a march in Londonderry in 1972 has said British troops were wrong to fire upon protestors.

The prime minister David Cameron has issued an official apology for the deaths.

There has been criticism of the length and cost of the inquiry which was set up in 1998 and has cost millions of pounds.

Some government and military sources have also expressed concern that members of the Parachute Regiment might face prosecution for their actions over 38 years ago.

The report by chairman Lord Saville said that British paratroopers deployed to police a civil rights march in Derry on 30 January 1972 were the first to open fire.

It also said that they had no reason to do so. The report said that Martin McGuinness, then the second in command in Derry Provisional IRA was probably armed with a submachine gun during the march but that he did not fire on the paratroopers. Mr McGuinness is now the deputy first minister of Northern Ireland.

The report is also critical of British troops, some of whom it said gave false evidence to the inquiry, but it dis not find evidence of pre-meditation or a cobver-up of intent to kill.

Twenty-seven men were shot during the events of Bloody Sunday, 13, including seven teenagers. dying that day and the last dying of his injuries four months later.

Before the report was delivered today 10,000 people marched through Londonderry’s Bogside following the route of the march in 1972.

The 60 page summary of the Bloody Sunday Inquiry report is available here.

Catching Up

This has been a big week for news items so here’s a quick catch up for Friday afternoon and then we can all watch football for the next two and a half days. Or not.

Cameron in Afghanistan

The new British PM is in Afghanistan. He told soldiers stationed in Helmand today that they are not an occupying force.

He said: “This is not a war of choice. This is not a war of occupation, it is a war of obligation.”

He said that British troops had been operating in the country since shortly after the 9/11 attacks and that they were there to stop Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups from organizing and training in Afghanistan.

He promised that as soon as Afghan forces and authority could maintain order and prevent terrorists from using the country as a base then British troops would be withdrawn.

Yesterday Mr Cameron’s helicopter flight was diverted from its destination at Shahzad patrol base in Helmand because of intelligence which suggested the Taliban were planning to attack an unnamed VIP.

He had flown originally to Kabul to speak to Afghan president Hamid Karzai, and to demonstrate that the country was a top foreign policy priority for the new government.

Another soldier killed in Afghanistan

Lance Bombardier Mark Chandler, 32, of 3^rd Regiment Royal Horse Artillery was killed this week in a gun battle with insurgents in Helmand Province. He is the 294^th British serviceman or woman to die in the country since 2001.

Police misuse terrorist stop and search powers

Police forces have admitted to misusing stop and search powers given to them under the Terrorism Act 2000.

Under section 44 police can stop people without suspecting them of a crime, but that power needs to be renewed each month by a minister.

But errors in procedures have rendered hundreds of searches illegal.

After the then Home Secretary David Blunkett signed the monthly permission nearly four hours too late in April 2004, the Met Police carried out 840 searches between noon on April 5 and 7.20am on April 29, all have which have been declared illegitimate.

Other errors have involved police forces from North Yorkshire, Hampshire, Bedfordshire, Essex, Manchester, Fife, South Wales and Thames Valley.

Security Minister Baroness Neville-Jones said she has orders a review of the use of the law: "To maintain public confidence in our counter terrorism powers, it is absolutely crucial all those responsible for exercising them do so properly.

"I take these matters extremely seriously and have instructed the Department to conduct an urgent review of current procedures to ensure that errors can be prevented in future."

Can Britain afford it?

The UK is in bad financial straits.

That’s not disputed by any political parties, however, they are arguing over how best solve it.

The new coalition government has set out on immediate cuts in public spending, with £6 billion in savings being announced immediately.

Public servants across the board are nervously expecting budget cuts and redundancies, but will the axe fall on areas such as defence and intelligence?

Before the election both Labour and the Conservatives were pledged to spend billions on a like for like replacement to the Trident nuclear missile system which will become obsolete in the 2020s.

(A note here: Nuclear missile systems, and military systems in general, are difficult to buy off the shelf. Planning for replacement tends to start a long way in advance.)

The Liberal Democrats said the costs of a like-for-like replacement was as much as £100bn and said they would review the case for replacement.

Now the Conservatives are in government with the Liberal Democrats; there are many, many areas where it will be interesting to say the least, how the parties will try to cross ideological divides, but Trident will perhaps be more interesting than most.

And defence and security spending in general is already coming under scrutiny, especially in times of economic hardship and spending cuts.

Earlier this week, MPS from Plaid Cymru, the SNP and Caroline Lucas, Britain’s only Green MP tabled an amendment to the Queen’s Speech calling for a review on the government’s thinking on replacing Trident.

It was easily defeated in a vote in the House of Commons, but it is noticeable that other are looking at spending on national security.

Simon Jenkins is a columnist for the Guardian, but generally writes from a perspective on the right. In this article he argues for huge cuts in the defence budget.

Indeed he argues that Britain has no need for its armed forces at all. Which is an interesting position for a journalist of the right.

Diane Abbott, a candidate for the Labour leadership, has signaled that she is against replacing Britain’s nuclear capability at all and made the point that New Labour’s staunch support for its replacement was a very expensive way of keeping a hostile press off its case on defence.

It will be very interesting to see how thinking changes as cuts start to bite in hospitals and schools if the government commits to spending billions on missiles, it hopes, by definition, never to use.

Government's big plans for national security

This blog will feature news and commentary on aspects of national security in the Uk and abroad, but mainly the UK.

To start us off, I have reproduced an article I wrote for politics.co.uk as the new government took over.

Government's big plans for national security

Friday, 14, May 2010 12:05

Cameras clicked in No 10 as David Cameron chaired the first meeting of the National Security Council. One of the Conservatives' earliest objectives in government could be ticked off.

By Aled Thomas

"We always planned to hold a highly visible meeting on day one" said a Conservative party source involved in the planning of the new strategy, "visible to make it clear that this is the new way of doing things".

The NSC is a Cabinet-level committee, chaired by the prime minister with Nick Clegg also attending.

William Hague, the foreign secretary, Theresa May, home secretary, and defence secretary Liam Fox will also have permanent seats, as will international development secretary Andrew Mitchell and Baroness Neville-Jones, the security minister.

The fact that such heavyweights will attend the meetings is a sign that national security is to be a central factor in the new government's thinking on a wide range of policies.

The broader issue, said the Conservative insider, is no longer to be restricted to either defence or homeland security.

Talking exclusively to politics.co.uk the party advisor said: "It's hard to meaningfully think about domestic and overseas policy as different when it comes to national security.

"This is not just about homeland defence, checks at airports and borders. Broader national security involves foreign and defence policy and counter terrorism, but also work in communities, ethnic integration, counter-radicalisation. Conflict prevention is also a central part of ensuring national security.

"International development is also important," the party insider added, "it's much better to prevent a failed state than to fight through the ruins of one."

The new structures, which include the appointment of former Foreign and Commonwealth Office mandarin Sir Peter Ricketts as a US-style national security advisor, are to secure for the government a closer hold on strategy across a broad front

The party advisor said: "The NSC is the largest of a number of reforms to the central machinery of the security apparatus, it's mainly a change in Cabinet Office.

"We are not talking about merging SIS with MI5 or anything like that, and the joint intelligence committee will still be in charge of intelligence. This is about strategy and coordination."

There was some criticism of the way security structures had grown up under the Labour government. "We have had the luxury of sitting and watching to an extent, Gordon Brown did change some things and John Reid as defence secretary held ministerial meetings before troops went into Helmand which helped.

"But a lot of it had grown up as a response to world-shaking events, 9/11, war in Afghanistan, 7/7, and the Conservative concern was that there were too many of them doing similar things. This approach should be simpler and slicker."

It was made clear that the NSC, a strategic body, will not conflict with Cobra, the government's high level committee which meets in response to crises and events.

The pre-election planning also extends thinking to national resilience. There will be reforms to the planning and coordinating structures which deal with other threats, with a Civil Contingencies Secretariat set up in Cabinet Office.

The Conservative advisor said: "This is about being prepared for emergencies, about threats to the critical national infrastructure."

Examples given were risks to the country's power supply, attacks on national IT infrastructure or the banking system and natural disasters: "Katrina was a big lesson. And the floods in Gloucestershire in 2007, we were two inches from having to evacuate the county and find shelter for 300,000 people.

"This is not, I emphasise, about checkpoints anywhere, it's being prepared for emergencies; think of things like swine flu. It's clear that if something does happen, it will be upon us before we know it."

The new initiative met with the broad approval of security experts at Chatham House, the international affairs specialist.

International security programme coordinator Claire Yorke said: "We have been doing quite a lot of work on widening the scope of national security. If you look at the UK risk register it includes a range of threats from flu epidemics to cyber attacks and natural disasters, as well as the more conventional threats.

"By adopting a broader approach to national security, beyond the MoD or the Home Office, you may find that other departments are better equipped to respond.

"This new initiative appears to be in this vein, taking a more comprehensive approach to security, involving different departments and enhancing cooperation so that security is not perceived in too narrow terms.

"Though I wouldn't under-estimate the structures already in place in Whitehall, there are already levels of coordination, to formalise it and also bring it into the public arena is, I think, a welcome move. It will be interesting to see what comes of it all."

The first post

Hello,

I've just set up this blog.

I'll be away for a short while, then check back here from June for more news on UK national security issues