DEMOS

Yesterday Gordon Brown gave a statement on national security in the House of Commons. It was a veritable shopping list of activities, initiative and policies. Most of them had been announced last week but it was wheeled out again yesterday for one reason.

Today the Conservative Party will publish their national and international security policy paper. Brown’s sharp piece of political maneuvering will leave Cameron and his national security adviser Pauline Neville Jones only a few recommendations to choose from. In his statement Brown was able to announce the creation of a unified border police (the centre piece of the Conservative's proposal), propose a £70 million pound fund for local communities to resist violent extremism and announce 2 further things the government should have done 3 years ago

Take for example the issue of the Intelligence Security Council – last week Brown said ‘we will consult on whether and how the Intelligence and Security Committee can be appointed by, and report to, Parliament…’ This week he said ‘the Government is consulting on how in future the ISC should be appointed and should report to Parliament.’

Last week Brown said we have created a new National Security Committee (he actually said Council and this was, according to a senior Cabinet Office official, so as not to confuse us as there were lots of references to committees in his statement). This week he said we have created a new National Security Committee.

Last week he said the Government will regularly publish, for Parliamentary debate and public scrutiny, our national security strategy. This week he said let me confirm to the House that in future we will publish a national security strategy; he also added it would be published in the autumn – a precious Whitehall document then…

Last week he said… you get the point…

Brown also mooted the idea of a single security budget. However to date no one seems to be able to tell me precisely what this will entail. Could it mean a single national security budget (i.e. the budgets of MoD, FCO, DFID, Intelligence agencies, etc) or (and I think more likely) a single budget for counter terrorism.

He also said that the Government would separate the position of Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee from policy adviser to the government as called for by Lord Butler in his inquiry into WMDs. It is I think important to note that Lord Butler’s inquiry was 3 years ago. It’s hardly new.  

Brown said the Government has created a new National Security Committee to oversee the new Office for Security and Counter Terrorism… but the new committee is an amalgamation of three former committees on the EU, DOP and Security and Terrorism (the last one being a result of John Reid’s counter terrorism review and created by Tony Blair a few weeks before he left). So surely the new committee will oversee much more? After all national security is not just about counter terrorism.

Finally Brown gave ID cards the green light and said that the identity scheme will help prevent people already in the country using multiple identities for terrorist, criminal or other purposes. The majority of experts still don’t agree with this.

Brown also said the UK’s watchlist would be linked to the Interpol database of lost and stolen documents – why the Government is only doing this now is beyond me.

And to round it all off he stated that overall 4000 foreign prisoners are likely to be deported this year. This is going to be tricky – given that last year Lin Homer, the director- general of the Immigration and Nationality Directorate, admitted to MPs that it could take “a number of years” to turn around the department and that 1,019 foreign national prisoners involved in the deportations scandal were likely to stay. Unless there has been a change in policy or the law.