Charlie Edwards
Senior Researcher
Charlie Edwards writes, lectures and consults on national security, resilience, defence and intelligence. He works with international institutions, government departments, companies, and NGOs. He is a regular commentator in the national and international media.
Today's Times online leads with a slightly misleading headline. It seems that John Reid and his two advisers have become so impatient with reorganising government in the face of the current threat from terrorism that he has decided to oust John Scarlett (current Chief of MI6) and install himself in the Vauxhall offices. However, on closer inspection the article suggests that Reid is in fact poised to be given the role of terrorism and security supremo after apparently winning his battle to split his department in two.
Apparently the decision to split the department has been agreed to in principle. According to The Times the Home Secretary believes that the shake-up is needed to improve Britain’s overall capacity to counter terrorism and has warned his colleagues that delay will give advantage to al-Qaeda and other Islamist extremists.
The delay will give advantage to al-Qaeda?
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I'm all in favour of greater coordination between the relevant parts of government in the struggle against terrorism and in the face of other security threats (who isn't?). In my experience, the problems of coordination lay not so much amongst the intelligence agencies, but in the relationship between the agencies and the police. Any improvement in this relationship - and there has been some - has been driven largely by ground level cooperation rather than top down strategic initiatives. It's time to cement and encourage this cooperation and I think Reid's plan, depite its detractors, will assist. My concern is that this plan may not be sufficiently wide ranging. How about GCHQ? How about overseas military deployments in support of counter terrorist objectives? Will these come under Reid's aegis too, and, if not, why not? In the face of a 'seamless threat' our approach should be seamless too. And there is of course the question of other threats to security. Will Reid control the efforts to gather intelligence overseas to support non proliferation policy?
But there is a wider point here. The government's approach to 're-wiring the org chart' is intellectually incoherent. On the one hand, in order to improve cooperation, Reid wants to split the the Home Office. On the other hand, in order to improve cooperation, Reid wants to combine previously separate agencies. So which is to be? Does greater cooperation flow from separation or combination? I know what I think, but I wonder if the Government has a consistent view.
I don't want to get too bogged down in process (even though I find it incredibly interesting) as I can't help thinking that this is becoming more a politically motivated issue.
Whatever the reason, I would hate for the reorganisation of government for national security policy get kicked around in a political football match between rival factions – I realise that we should never underestimate the power of individuals but given the norm in the UK is to take a consensus-based approach to national security - it would be a massive disappointment if the current plans were built on little more than short term political game.