The Public Value of Security
Joining Forces
A review of the UK's security architecture.
- Splitting headache Terrorism is the main reason given for the split. Mr Reid says the new Home Office will be “faster, brighter and more agile” at catching bombers. It will handle policing, ID cards and immigration, and a new security and counter-terrorism outfit will take over from the Cabinet Office, which used to co-ordinate security. Giving anti-terrorism to the Home Office may sharpen accountability, says Charlie Edwards of Demos, a think-tank, but handing control to the law-and-order brigade may mean fewer attempts to win hearts and minds. 11th May 2007 | The Economist
- Coordination is the key Whitehall may believe that its joined up approach to policy is the envy of the world but more often than not it is a reputation built on sand. 10th May 2007 | Comment is free
- Links in the chain The Collaborative State Collection In this light, the debate over Home Office reform highlights a much broader set of questions about the future of the civil service. The government wants to raise the performance of its departments to increase their ability to deliver ministerial agendas. Its instinct is usually to split up functions and create tighter avenues of accountability to drive up standards. But the government also needs to increase the capacity of civil servants to work together across organisational barriers to tackle joined-up policy problems like security. It is not impossible to combine the two, but it requires a very different way of thinking about the way the centre does business. 5th April 2007 | WW-World Newspaper 76
- Reid's double-talk will hit security No wonder the Reid plan has been roundly lambasted from all sides. The heads of the civil service and the Home Office have serious reservations. The Lord Chief Justice is concerned about judicial independence and funding. The Home Affairs Committee's expert witness fears the breakdown of communications. Demos, a Blairite think-tank, calls the fragmentation "ironic when the Government needs to take a more collaborative approach". 2nd April 2007
- Anti-terrorism will change but not in a bizarre split, Mr Reid John Reid’s proposal over the weekend to split the Home Office in two is not going to happen, nor should it. Mr Reid has raised a serious question but he has addressed it in a bizarre way and come up with the wrong answer. 24th January 2007
- Demos | Projects | An Underwhelming Truth | Overview Demos | Projects | An Underwhelming Truth | Overview 13th November 2006