Government is dodging scrutiny on national security

The Cabinet Office have refused a request from the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy to take evidence from National Security Adviser Jonathan Powell

Scrutiny of national security

Parliament’s Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy receives less public attention than it deserves. It was set up under House of Commons Standing Order No. 152I and by an order of the House of Lords at the very end of previous Labour government, in January 2010, to consider the National Security Strategy; the first iteration of this, The National Security Strategy of the United Kingdom: Security in an interdependent world, had been published by the Cabinet Office in March 2008, with an update, Security for the Next Generation, issued in June 2009.

I had a supporting role in the preparatory work setting up the JCNSS. It is a large group—12 MPs and 10 peers—and the membership includes by convention the Chairs of the relevant House of Commons departmental select committees, namely Business and Trade, Defence, Energy Security and Net Zero, Foreign Affairs, Home Affairs, International Development and Justice. It also usually includes the Chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee, which is a statutory body rather than a parliamentary committee. The purpose of the JCNSS was not to duplicate the work of other committees, hence the presence of their chairs as members, but to draw on the work they were doing and look at the National Security Strategy is a systematic, institutional and cross-departmental way. It states that it “scrutinises the structures for Government decision-making on National Security, particularly the role of the National Security Council (NSC) and the UK’s National Security Adviser (NSA)”.

In all honesty, when it was first established, there was a feeling, at least among officials in Parliament, that it was right to have such a committee and that the broad approach of the Brown government to national security should be mirrored by a broad approach to scrutiny, but that it was an unwieldy instrument, would be a further demand on the time of already-busy backbenchers and that it was unlikely to be very active or contribute a huge amount to the process of holding the government to account. In other words, we had to have it, but it was at least partly for show, not least because we knew that the government would not willingly surrender much information about national scrutiny to a committee sitting in public and reporting its findings.

The Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy gets underway

I’m happy to say that I think we were mistaken and we underestimated the committee. The former Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett, appointed a dame in 2013 and now Baroness Beckett, became the first Chair of the JCNSS and held the position until retiring from the Commons last year. She had stepped down from the cabinet when Sir Tony Blair retired in June 2007, was appointed Chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee in January 2008, then returned briefly and somewhat unexpectedly in the junior position of Minister of State for Housing and Planning from October 2008 to June 2009. When Michael Martin resigned as Speaker of the House of Commons in June 2009, she was a candidate to succeed him and came third in the first two ballots before withdrawing.

Beckett did not have the same obvious depth of experience in national security as some other members like Sir Malcolm Rifkind, Rory Stewart or Colonel Bob Stewart, let alone peers like Baroness Manningham-Buller, Baroness Ramsay of Cartvale or Baroness Neville-Jones: she had only served as Foreign Secretary for 13 months, her other ministerial and shadow posts being largely domestic ones. But by the time of her appointment as Chair of the JCNSS, she had been a Member of Parliament for over 30 years, a Privy Counsellor for 17 years and a cabinet minister for 10 years; she had been Leader of the House of Commons from 1998 to 2001 so was intimately familiar with procedure and the role of select committees; and with 40 years in Labour politics behind her, she was largely unflappable.

Over her 14 years as Chair of the JCNSS, despite the challenges which come with joint committees, with being an opposition chair and with managing half a dozen members who are themselves select committee chairs, Beckett steered a course of steady, unobtrusive but conscientious scrutiny. She grasped that it was important not to attempt to do too much, and to choose subjects for inquiries carefully. Apart from the main task of “considering the National Security Strategy”, the JCNSS inquired into the government’s Conflict, Stability and Security Fund, cyber security and critical national infrastructure, biosecurity, the national security machinery of government, the effects of climate change and ransomware. These were all significant issues of public policy, many of which went beyond national security, and were subjects which departmental select committees could easily have missed, regarded as outwith their remit or seen as too challenging. I think it is fair to say that the JCNSS has performed not only a useful role in holding the government to account but also a role which might very well otherwise not have been carried out at all.

The JCNSS’s tempo in terms of public evidence sessions and the publication of reports is stately, compared to the often-frenetic pace of higher-profile departmental select committees (when I worked on the Defence Committee, we regularly met twice a week and could easily have two or three inquiries running concurrently). The current 25th edition of Erskine May’s treatise on the law, privileges, proceedings and usage of Parliament, habitually referred to as “the Bible of parliamentary procedure”, touches on the JCNSS’s methods of working.

The committee typically takes oral evidence from the Minister responsible for the implementation of the Strategic Defence and Security Review once a year, along with the National Security Adviser and other senior members of the National Security Secretariat.

As we shall see, this is an area which has become problematic.

National security: machinery of government and ministerial responsibility

This can be a difficult area. Ministerial responsibility for national security has not always been unified or straightforward, involving as it does in the first instance the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, the Ministry of Defence, the Home Office and the Cabinet Office as well as the Prime Minister’s Office in 10 Downing Street. One of the objectives of the first National Security Strategy in 2008 was to examine the United Kingdom’s security holistically, recognising that alongside the traditional areas like diplomacy, military activity, espionage and counter-terrorism sat other policy areas like international trade, climate change, overseas development and energy supply.

The establishment of the National Security Council by David Cameron in 2010 was a positive step which improved the coherence of decision-making, even if it drew on developments which had begun under the previous Labour administration. I detailed the evolution of the national security apparatus in November 2022 but overall it is fair to say that the tripartite structure of the National Security Council as a decision-making body of ministers, civil servants and military chiefs, the National Security Adviser as the Prime Minister’s principal coordinating official and the National Security Secretariat in the Cabinet Office gave the JCNSS some obvious interlocutors.

Ministerial responsibility remains a challenging and elusive issue. In a sense, of course, the Prime Minister as head of the government has ultimate responsibility for the UK’s national security, and in January 2014 David Cameron gave oral evidence to the JCNSS accompanied by then-National Security Adviser Sir Kim Darroch. This was very much an exception, however, to the practice that prime ministers do not appear in front of select committees apart from their regular evidence sessions with the Liaison Committee which began with Sir Tony Blair in 2002.

In some way, however, the Prime Minister has ministerial responsibility for every aspect of government policy as the King’s chief minister: there is no aspect of policy of which he can wash his hands or disclaim any involvement. Almost everything must be devolved on a routine basis (although the Prime Minister does have some specific responsibilities as Minister for the Civil Service).

In the current government, Pat McFadden, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and “the most senior minister in the Cabinet Office” is responsible for “national security, resilience, and civil contingencies”, a remit which includes state threats and cyber security. Some aspects like the Integrated Security Fund and the Government Security Group, including UK Security Vetting, have been placed under the Parliamentary Secretary to the Cabinet Office, Abena Oppong-Asare. Because the Cabinet Office is the home of the National Security Secretariat, the minister in charge will usually have some degree of ministerial responsibility; for example, from 2015 to 2016, Sir Oliver Letwin, then Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster with oversight of the Cabinet Office, was minister for national resilience and chaired a sub-committee of the National Security Council which managed departmental contributions to the National Security Strategy and Strategic Defence and Security Review 2015: A Secure and Prosperous United Kingdom. He appeared before the JCNSS in this capacity in May 2016, and had previously given evidence as a Cabinet Office minister in October 2011.

At the same time, the Home Office retains responsibility for counter-terrorism, border security, public order and civil contingencies and oversight of the Security Service (MI5), and the Minister for Security, Dan Jarvis, is a junior Home Office minister. The Ministry of Defence is of course responsible for the armed forces, operational deployments, defence diplomacy and military aid to the civilian authorities, and the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office is in charge of foreign policy and diplomacy, intelligence, conflict stabilisation, overseas development assistance and ministerial oversight of the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS, or MI6) and the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ).

The National Security Adviser

If ministerial responsibility is diffuse, civil service responsibility is not—or was not. Since 2010, the National Security Adviser has been the Prime Minister’s chief official for national security matters, secretary of the National Security Council and head of the National Security Secretariat. Until the end of last year, there had been six National Security Advisers, of whom five had been drawn from the Diplomatic Service and one, Sir Stephen Lovegrove, had moved across from being Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Defence.

The position was not formally the preserve of Foreign Office personnel, and last April, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak chose a different direction, announcing that the next National Security Adviser would be General Gwyn Jenkins, a Royal Marines officer then serving as Vice-Chief of the Defence Staff. The idea of a soldier taking on the role caused considerable surprise and some controversy—much of it, I think, rather self-serving—amid suggestions that Jenkins was somehow not suitably qualified for such a complex and multi-faceted job (despite the fact that he had been Deputy National Security Adviser for Conflict, Stability and Defence 2015-17 and had an impressive record of staff and operational appointments).

I wrote about the qualities and experience which might be necessary and desirable in an ideal candidate for National Security Adviser. I thought, and still think, that in principle it was no bad thing to disrupt the Diplomatic Service’s near-monopoly on the post, but also that in individual terms there were many reasons to think Jenkins might be a suitable and successful occupant of the role. But the idea was not to be tested: in August last year, the Prime Minister cancelled Jenkins’s appointment and that of the incumbent National Security Adviser, Sir Tim Barrow, for reasons which, in the case of Jenkins, at any rate, have still not wholly been explained; I speculated on some possibilities for The Spectator.

The decision was remarkable enough but the time made it even more difficult for Jenkins himself. Although Starmer initially claimed that the competition for the post was being rerun and that Jenkins was free to apply again, no-one seriously thought he would be end up being appointed, because the cancellation of his appointment was so obviously an ad hominem decision: Starmer did not want Jenkins in the job. By August, however, Jenkins’s successor as Vice-Chief of the Defence Staff had already been selected, and the chosen candidate, General Dame Sharon Nesmith, had taken up her duties in June. Jenkins was left with only his secondary role as Commandant General Royal Marines, which he had double-hatted with that of Vice-Chief of the Defence Staff since November 2022. The government website now records that Jenkins, who was knighted at the New Year, has been “Strategic Advisor to the Secretary of State for Defence” since August 2024, but that was not at all clear publicly until much later in the year.

Although the Prime Minister had explicitly said that the competition for National Security Adviser would be rerun, I have seen nothing to suggest that this actually happened. Weeks passed until, in early November 2024, and to the surprise of many, Starmer announced that Jonathan Powell, Sir Tony Blair’s long-time Downing Street Chief of Staff (1997-2007), would become National Security Adviser. He took up the position on 2 December.

Powell’s appointment represented perhaps an even more dramatic departure from precedent than Jenkins’s. Although he had been a member of the Diplomatic Service from 1979 to 1995, leaving to become Blair’s chief of staff as Leader of the Opposition, he had been relatively junior compared to predecessors like Sir Peter (now Lord) Ricketts, the first National Security Adviser (2010-12), who had spent the previous four years as Permanent Secretary to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and Head of the Diplomatic Service, or Sir Kim Darroch (now Lord Darroch of Kew), formerly EU Advisor to the Prime Minister and Head of the Cabinet Office European Secretariat, then UK Permanent Representative to the European Union. The meat of Powell’s relevant experience came from his 10 years as Downing Street Chief of Staff, a special adviser post, in which he had played a central role in the Northern Ireland peace process and been, as The Guardian put it, “at the heart of all his (Blair’s) key foreign policy initiatives”.

Powell therefore had considerable experience in foreign policy and national security, and was intimately familiar with Downing Street and the way in which the centre of government operated. While for some he was irredeemably tainted by his part in the invasion of Iraq in 2003, those who had worked with him in Downing Street rated him extremely highly as a capable, calm and effective operator, sitting in a no-man’s-land between politicians and civil servants (as all special advisers do to a greater or lesser degree). I assessed his qualities shortly after his appointment was announced, and concluded that “he had a wealth of experience, [and] a reputation for extremely deft management of policy and personnel”.

There was one very significant element of Powell’s appointment, however, which was initially overlooked but is now emerging as a casus belli between Westminster and Whitehall. It may be connected to the fact that there was no sign of the competition for National Security Adviser being reopened, and perhaps indicates that Starmer had decided he wanted Powell to fill the role, but the latter was appointed, exceptionally, as a special adviser rather than as a civil servant, recreating the status he had occupied as Downing Street Chief of Staff.

This has had many implications. Special advisers are often described as “temporary civil servants”, which is true in many ways, but they are appointed on a personal basis (though all must be signed off by Downing Street), and, although they must observe the “integrity and honesty” required by the Civil Service Code, they governed by their own separate code of conduct, and are not required to act, as civil servants are, with “objectivity and impartiality”. They may offer straightforward political advice to ministers and engage with the media on their ministers’ behalf. Whether this is a beneficial or retrograde development for the National Security Adviser is a matter of taste.

There are also administrative implications of the nature of Powell’s employment. Special advisers cannot give instructions to civil servants; as Downing Street Chief of Staff, he, along with Press Secretary Alistair Campbell, was exceptionally given the power to do this under the Civil Service (Amendment) Order in Council 1997, it was regarded relatively speaking as a technicality and, I have been told by people who worked with Powell, in fact he never needed to use its provisions. (The Order in Council was revoked by the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010.) If the authority to instruct civil servants had been regarded as a technicality for the Downing Street Chief of Staff, it is a very different matter for the National Security Adviser.

As a special adviser, there are several elements of the role of National Security Adviser that Powell simply cannot carry out. He cannot manage civil servants, so he has given up the responsibility of line-managing the heads of “the agencies”, that is, the Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service, the Director General of the Security Service and the Director of GCHQ. He does not manage the National Security Secretariat, around 200 personnel, or the Deputy National Security Advisers Matthew Collins, Jonathan Black and Nick Catsaras; they, like the heads of the agencies, now report to the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Chris Wormald. He is also not able formally to be secretary to the National Security Council, instead attending as a member and overseeing its administrative aspects, nor can he act as Principal Accounting Officer for the Single Intelligence Account which funds SIS, MI5 and GCHQ.

By appointing Powell as a special adviser, the Prime Minister has fundamentally altered the position in terms of authority, management and responsibilities. It may prove significant that the announcement of Powell’s appointment described him as “based in No 10 Downing Street”, rather than the Cabinet Office. The sense one gets at this early stage is that Starmer (as he has every right to do) has come to the conclusion that he wants someone who is more of a close counsellor, a consigliere, providing candid and discreet advice with a sharper political edge than a civil servant would be able to. He is turning away from a very senior apolitical official controlling extensive quasi-departmental structures in terms of analysis, expenditure and policy. It is far too early to say if this decision will be wise or helpful.

Arguments over scrutiny

Margaret Beckett stepped down from the House of Commons at the general election in July 2024. The chairs of most select committees were elected or appointed by the House in September, but the JCNSS, as a joint committee, elects its own chair from the membership of the committee. It was not until just before Christmas that Matt Western, Labour MP for Warwick and Leamington, was voted to be chair by his colleagues. He had been Shadow Further Education and Universities Minister in opposition but was one of the frontbenchers who lost our when Starmer formed his government. He is 62 and spent 24 years working for Peugeot in finance, procurement and marketing, and has campaigned on social housing, cycling and solar farms, none of which make him an obvious candidate to chair JCNSS. But politics is politics.

As the JCNSS has only had a Chair for a little under three months, it has yet to make much headway. It has begun an inquiry into undersea cables, and will also be examining the work of the National Security Adviser. On this latter issue a serious argument with the government has arisen.

The committee asked that Jonathan Powell appear in front of members to discuss his work and role, in the same way that all of his predecessors have done. Astonishingly, Pat McFadden, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and the minister who oversees the work of the Cabinet Office, informed the Chair that Powell would not attend, on the grounds that he is a specialist adviser. McFadden explained:

Longstanding practice is that Special Advisers currently in post do not give evidence to Select Committees and this is done instead by Ministers or Officials. Therefore, this request has not been judged appropriate in this circumstance. Instead I have directed that the Deputy National Security Advisers (DNSAs) attend this type of public session in place of the NSA. The Cabinet Secretary may also attend alongside them, where appropriate. However, I know that the NSA is also keen to meet you privately, and his office will be in touch to arrange this in due course. I hope this is an acceptable arrangements—the DNSAs are experts in their field, and an integral part of the Government’s national security architecture. They support the Prime Minister on key national security issues and—as is the case here—deputise for the NSA when required.

Western did not, as McFadden hoped, regard these as “acceptable arrangements”. He countered:

The Committee does not agree with the Government’s assertion that our repeated invitation for the National Security Adviser (NSA) to appear before the Committee is not an appropriate request… since the role’s creation it is the case that every NSA has appeared before the Committee to give evidence on ‘The work of the National Security Adviser’. It would be about more than simply the role and to better understand how the position operates, how it interfaces and its priorities for example.

He went on to challenge McFadden’s assertion that it is “longstanding practice is that Special Advisers currently in post do not give evidence to Select Committees”. The appearance of officials at select committees is governed by guidance known as the “Osmotherly Rules”, first drafted in 1980 by Edward Osmotherly, a civil servant in the Machinery of Government Division of the Cabinet Office. Western rightly quoted one of the guiding principles in the rules.

When a Select Committee indicates that it wishes to take evidence from any particular named official, including special advisers, the presumption is that Ministers will seek to agree such a request.

The Chair also argued, again I think rightly, that Powell was exceptional among special advisers.

Special Advisers are backroom advisers to Ministers, and they have no executive function and no independent status. Mr Powell, as National Security Adviser, has both. He is at the forefront of discussions with international counterparts, as demonstrated in recent weeks, including his widely reported visit to Washington to meet with Mike Waltz earlier this month. He was also with the PM in the Oval Office last week. If Mr Powell does not have executive and independent authority, we would equally like to understand how the important functions of the NSA are being provided under the new arrangements.

Western concluded by arguing that someone in a position as influential as that of National Security Adviser “should be subject to direct Parliamentary scrutiny, regardless of the method by which its incumbent has been appointed. Mr Powell holds a position of accountable authority.” As a parting shot, he reminded McFadden that “the Committee has alternative formal recourse available to it, should a witness continue to refuse to give evidence”. Paragraph 13 of the Osmotherly Rules is explicit:

If a Committee nonetheless insists on a named official appearing before them, contrary to the Minister’s wishes, the formal position remains that it could issue an order for attendance, and request the House to enforce it. In such an event the official, as any other individual would have to appear before the Committee but, in all circumstances, would remain subject to Ministerial instruction and the Civil Service Code. This would be a very exceptional action.

This is a serious issue of accountability and the role of Parliament in scrutinising the executive, and the government is wrong in fact or spirit on virtually every point. It is true that special advisers do not generally give evidence to select committees, on the grounds that their minister and not they have the final authority and the final responsibility. But that is only a convention, the Osmotherly Rules are guidance rather than “rules” and committees, because of their “power to send for persons, papers and records”, may require attendance from whomever they choose (although they cannot compel MPs or peers to appear). Ultimately, they are entitled to ask for Powell to attend.

It is also worth remembering that it was this government and this Prime Minister who took the unprecedented step of appointing the National Security Adviser with the status and powers of a special adviser. It has never been done before, and, for whatever reason it was done in the case of Powell, it is absolutely unacceptable for ministers now to pray in aid their own decision as some force which is binding their hands. They should, to be blunt, have thought of that before appointing Powell in this way.

As for the Deputy National Security Advisers and, if necessary, the Cabinet Secretary appearing instead of Powell, that is wholly inadequate. Powell may not formally manage the DNSAs or indeed the National Security Secretariat as a whole, but he will clearly set the direction of their work and oversee it in general terms. If he did not, what role would he be playing? But it is easy to imagine how impossible a line of questioning could swiftly become if the DNSAs were examined on decisions the National Security Adviser had made; they would be within their rights to argue that they could not speak for him, and indeed to try to explain his decisions and views from below would be absurd. The Cabinet Secretary, even as line manager of the DNSAs and the heads of the agencies, would hardly be in a position to provide detailed answers on most matters.

This situation is exacerbated by the fact that the National Security Adviser works directly for and with the Prime Minister. In other cases the government could make a defensible case for specialist advisers not appearing if the minister who employed them and to whom they give their advice have evidence instead. But it is enormously unlikely that the government will compromise the principle that, excepting the Liaison Committee, the Prime Minister does not appear in front of select committees; if that concession was made to the JCNSS, every committee would find a compelling reason why the head of government should appear.

Conclusion

According to the Prime Minister, “national security is the first duty of the government”. We are told that “the world has been reshaped by global instability” and we must “meet this generational challenge with a generational response”. With a recent announced increase in defence spending, and tools like the Foreign Influence Registration Scheme, “as we enter this new era for national security, Britain will once again lead the way”. He may well be right, and certainly the global context feels more unstable in more places than it has done for many years. If all of that is true, it is especially outrageous and unacceptable that a committee of Parliament should be told that it is not “appropriate” for the Prime Minister’s principal source of advice on national security should be excused scrutiny by parliamentarians.

Even in matters of critical importance and great secrecy, the government must be held to account, not only because it is a fundamental tenet of democracy but also because policy is better if it is put to the test of scrutiny. The unprecedented terms of Jonathan Powell’s appointment were the choice of the Prime Minister. He therefore has the responsibility to ensure that scrutiny can be carried out as before. Matt Western is right to reject Pat McFadden’s thin and high-handed dismissal. The government will have to do better than this. Powell must appear.