31
Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy
Oral evidence: National security strategy
Monday 26 January 2026
4.30 pm
Members present: Matt Western (The Chair); Sarah Champion; Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi; Baroness Fall; Lord Hutton of Furness; Baroness Kidron; Mike Martin; Edward Morello; Lord Sedwill; Emily Thornberry; Lord Tunnicliffe; Baroness Tyler of Enfield; Lord Watts.
Evidence Session No. 7 Heard in Public Questions 112 - 132
Witnesses
I: Rt Hon Darren Jones MP, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister, Cabinet Office; Dan Jarvis MP, Minister of State for Security, Home Office; Matthew Collins CBE, Deputy National Security Adviser, Cabinet Office.
Darren Jones, Dan Jarvis and Matthew Collins.
Q112 The Chair: Order, order. Welcome to this meeting of the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy. Please could our witnesses introduce themselves, from my left.
Dan Jarvis: Good afternoon, Chair; good afternoon, committee. I am Dan Jarvis and I am the Security Minister.
Darren Jones: I am Darren Jones, Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.
Matthew Collins: Matt Collins, deputy national security adviser.
The Chair: You are very welcome. Thank you for being with us. The national security strategy features all sorts of quotable comments, but one is its recognition that we are facing “dramatic changes” in the world order and “radical uncertainty”. Given that the Government have made clear claim that their first priority is the protection of their citizens, in the six months since the strategy was first published what single action have the Government taken that that has improved the security of the UK most, or has made the largest operational difference? CDL?
Darren Jones: Thank you, Chair, for that question. The national security strategy, when it was published, accurately predicted the world in which we are living today, hence why it is such an important strategy at the centre of government. I do not think I would want to quantify individual interventions from the Government, but you can point to a few—the work that the Government have been doing to support efforts in Ukraine, and the relationship between our Prime Minister and President Trump on action within NATO and on other issues around the world. Britain has been showing not just that it is able to contribute individually around the world as an important partner in NATO, but is continuing to show that British diplomacy has real value, both for our own interests and in partnership with our allies. I would point to lots of issues over the last six months where the Government can rightly be proud of the contribution that they have made to protect British interests and have a positive impact on the world.
The Chair: It is interesting. We will come back to the point about how our NSS sits, because of course it was published prior to the United States NSS, and I am sure there will be some questions about the divergence between the two. What top-level governance of the delivery of the national security strategy has been put in place? We had hoped to see DSIT here today, and I am interested to know what your thoughts are on the role of DSIT in the delivery of the NSS.
Darren Jones: On the first part of your question, Chair, ultimate responsibility is with the Cabinet. Then, strategically, that is obviously discussed at the National Security Council as the relevant Cabinet sub-committee, with the official-level grouping doing the implementation work and facilitating our conversation as political leaders and members of the Cabinet. As you and the committee know, DSIT is an important part of the work that we do, whether it is on telecoms, online regulation, the role of advanced technologies from the AI Safety Institute, or other important policy areas that the department leads on. As is often the case with Cabinet sub-committees on particular agenda items, different parts of government will come together to discuss the work that the departments are doing and whether it is up to delivering against the national security strategy.
The Chair: When it comes to the economy, it is quite clear; when it comes to business, it is quite clear; on education, it is quite clear—the definition of the department is absolute and is obvious. But when it comes to security, it really does work across all departments, and the concern is that we have not yet got a grip of it. I go back to my question: how central do you think DSIT is going to be in the delivery of the NSS?
Darren Jones: The department is important and will continue to be important, but you are right that security and resilience questions run across lots of departments across government. To take resilience as an example, the committee will know that we co-ordinate through the National Security Council on resilience across government but departments, as delivery vehicles, front the work that they are doing, bid for the funding for that from the spending review, and then come back together around the National Security Council table to make sure that collectively we are delivering against our joint strategy. It does feel and look a bit different to, for example, the electives waiting list in DHSC, because by design it involves lots of departments contributing to the wider effort.
The Chair: When we have heard from witnesses, there was a sense that there were some interesting ideas and concepts in the strategy, but actually getting to grips with delivering the NSS is not clear at all. Who is actually going to be holding the different departments to account? It is not the NSA, is it? Is it yourself?
Darren Jones: It is the National Security Council, which is chaired by the Prime Minister. Then, for example, I chair the National Security Council on resilience on behalf of the Prime Minister. It is ultimately the leadership of those Cabinet sub-committees that is accountable for making sure that we are delivering against the strategy.
The Chair: So those departments report back to the National Security Council?
Darren Jones: Yes.
The Chair: How often does that sit?
Darren Jones: We sit on average—Matt?
Matthew Collins: Probably once a month.
The Chair: And the minutes of those council meetings?
Darren Jones: They are routinely kept private because of the nature of the conversations that we are having.
The Chair: But they could be shared with us.
Darren Jones: I think the arrangement is to share some of the agenda headlines of what the committee is working on so you can see the topics that are being discussed, but not to share the minutes themselves.
The Chair: My understanding is that that has not yet happened.
Darren Jones: Oh, okay. We should take that away. My understanding is that it is not to be published but the committee is allowed to see the agenda items. That was certainly the case when I was a member of this committee in the past. As far as I am aware, that has not changed. If there has been a problem with that, we can make sure that it is sorted.
Q113 The Chair: Thank you; that is very welcome. CDL, you have a significant number of responsibilities. You are the right-hand person to the Prime Minister, as well as heading up the Cabinet Office, and essentially you are responsible for national security. How much time are you actually able to commit to something as important as this, given that we are at such an important inflection point in our national security?
Darren Jones: The first thing to say, in terms of my time, is that I work on national security issues pretty much every day in government, either directly with the Prime Minister in meetings in No. 10 or in my capacity as CDL in the Cabinet Office, including, for example, on the National Security and Investment Act processes that we are responsible for being the decision-maker on. But you are right to point to the fact that, given the portfolio I have been given, I wanted to make sure that we had additional ministerial capacity in the department to help. That was the reason I asked for Dan Jarvis to be made a joint Minister between the Home Office and the Cabinet Office to ensure that it was not just me, but alongside was the Security Minister, and that we are working together to make sure that we are putting all of the time that we need to into that work.
The Chair: Give us a flavour. In a typical month, how often would you meet with the NSA?
Darren Jones: The NSA I would meet probably weekly at least, either informally and/or in official meetings. I also meet with the deputy NSAs frequently too, but probably on average once a week as well. That is in addition to me being in the room for certain discussions and certain meetings, having oversight of certain intelligence functions and then being the decision-maker for the National Security and Investment Act.
Q114 Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi: I now want to delve into how the national security strategy itself will be funded. We all know that there is pressure on public finances. We need to get the public on board. We need to get the Treasury on board, more importantly, it seems. Despite this unstable environment and a more unpredictable world, we still have not been able to chart a way to reaching 3% of GDP spending on defence, for example. With respect to the national security strategy, Chief Secretary, how do you plan to influence His Majesty’s Treasury about funding long-term national security and resilience priorities?
Darren Jones: In my previous role as Chief Secretary to the Treasury, we changed the way in which the national security strategy bid into the spending review process. I was very conscious when I was at the Treasury that you had, as a result of the design of departments being responsible for delivering, line items about national security in each department’s bids but not one unified bid coming into the Treasury. One of the changes I made to the spending review last year was to ask the National Security Secretariat—Matt in particular played an important role in this—to co-ordinate across government a joint bid for national security into the spending review. As is the case across all forms of spending review submissions, you cannot afford to do everything, but it meant that there was an agreed view and an NSC-level discussion about the timing and sequencing of those spending commitments. So that has already happened and was in the settlement in SR25. Of course, the next spending review is due next calendar year, in 2027. Once the Treasury confirms the timelines for that, I suspect that departments will start to do that work again for the years from 2029-30 for day-to-day spending and 2030-31 for capital spending.
Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi: Chief Secretary, I take on board what you said there. I also note that the Prime Minister has said on umpteen occasions that they are taking defence and security issues very seriously. However, some of us feel that we are just not meeting the moment as a nation, given what is going on with Donald Trump and what he is saying about Europe not being a focus for him any more, and given the continued aggression from Russia. Are people in government taking this as seriously as yourself and the Prime Minister? When are we going to chart out a way to 3% spending on GDP for defence?
Darren Jones: On the first part of the question, Government absolutely take this seriously. I have not seen any suggestion otherwise. I go to my first answer to the Chair: there is lots that the Government can be proud of in the value they have brought to the table on these issues, both domestically and with our European partners, within NATO, internationally in Ukraine, in the Middle East, in support of Denmark more recently, and others. That shows how seriously the Government take these issues, but also how much work the Government are doing around the world. On your question of defence spending, the trajectory to 2.6% by 2027 was, of course, allocated at previous fiscal events. That is mapped and will be spent. The commitment to get to 3% of GDP in the next spending review will be set out in the allocations in the 2027 spending review. Of course, we have the commitment to go further in later years, to 5%, when you include some home resilience funding.
Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi: So in the next spending review you will be setting out how you are going to get to 3%.
Darren Jones: Yes. The next spending review will set out the annual RDEL and CDEL allocations for the department in the normal way. I chair the defence oversight board on behalf of the Prime Minister. The defence investment plan will chart a longer-term view about the increased trajectory in spending. There will be a commitment to the increased spending before the departmental allocations are made in pounds and pence at the next spending review.
Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi: Right. Also, Chief Secretary, how are you going to make resilience spending more palatable to the public? We all know that if you do not get our constituents on board, it is very difficult to achieve any priorities. Can you set out how exactly that will be done, and are there any recent successes that you can learn from?
Darren Jones: On the broader question, we have to bring the public with us if we are going to increase the proportion of public spending on defence and security issues. There is no question about that. The public are understandably looking at the world and are anxious about what they are seeing and reading about. As the Prime Minister made clear, I think in a press conference two Mondays ago, we see a very clear connection between our role internationally and what that means domestically, whether it is in relation to security of energy supplies or the cost of food in the supermarkets. We will continue to make the case as to why this is important and make sure that when we are increasing spending on, for example, defence manufacturing, we are doing so in a way which creates the best growth opportunities, jobs and pay opportunities for companies in the United Kingdom.
Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi: They will then be okay with cuts to other public services? That is where you might get some friction.
Darren Jones: The overall size of public spending is increasing, but the proportion going to defence as part of that increase is higher than it would have been in the past, especially on capital spending.
Q115 Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi: Right. On to the Security Minister, if I may: can you just outline for us what new investments and projects you envisage within the 1.5% spend on security and resilience beyond the day-to-day, business-as-usual spending?
Dan Jarvis: We are looking very closely at that, but let me just re-emphasise the point about the importance of bringing the public with us. It is very interesting to look at examples from other countries, whether that is Finland, Sweden, France, Germany, Estonia or others. The difficult job that we have to do is make sure that we have appropriate levels of resource to meet the moment that you rightly talk about. That may well involve making some difficult changes and some difficult prioritisation downstream. But we have to ensure that the capabilities that we put in place and resource are matching the nature of the threat that we face—and that is a rapidly evolving threat. It is a threat, of course, that we have to deal with alongside our allies. We are looking very closely at the 3%, the 3.5% and the 1.5% to make sure that we are matching the capabilities that we need alongside the nature of the threat, while at the same time aligning that activity with our allies.
Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi: I think we will all agree with that, but I just want to go back to the original question, which is: what new investments and projects will the Government be undertaking?
Dan Jarvis: You might be referring to wider investments around resilience, to ensure that our infrastructure and our society is more resilient to face the range of threats that we face. That is something that I now have responsibility for in the Cabinet Office. There are a range of different threats that we are seeking to defend against, but we will look very closely at the resource that we have available and make sure that it is matched in the most appropriate way to counter the threats that we face.
Q116 Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi: Okay, so there are not any investments or projects that you can actually inform the committee of today. That would have been good. Perhaps there might be a written note on that in due course, Chair, so that we can then interrogate that.
Chief Secretary, can I come back to your good self? You told us in the letter that you recently wrote to us that you planned to achieve the 1.5% target by 2027. How much do you plan to be achieving by the end of this year—by the end of 2026?
Darren Jones: I would not want to guess the accurate number; we should try and get that from the Treasury for you. The important point in the letter that you referred to was that, based on the Treasury numbers that we have, with the combined definition of core defence plus national resilience we are estimating to get to 4.1% of GDP in 2027. That shows how much money we are spending more broadly on national resilience, whether it is on technology, information security, undersea cables, or natural resilience from issues like flooding.
Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi: I am actually quoting. You have written, “As the Prime Minister has previously set out, we expect we will reach the 1.5% target by 2027”. So you are confident of reaching that target?
Darren Jones: Yes, we are confident of reaching the target. What I do not know the answer to is what percentage we think we will get to by the end of calendar year 2026. If you would like to know that, we can get that for you.
The Chair: Perhaps we could follow that up. Lord Hutton?
Q117 Lord Hutton of Furness: I have just a couple of very quick ones. On national resilience, does the 1.5% spend that the Government have committed on just cover civil preparedness, or is that going to also deal with military capabilities?
Darren Jones: My understanding is it is broadly civil preparedness.
Matthew Collins: Yes.
Darren Jones: Military is in the core defence spending definition.
Lord Hutton of Furness: And you are going to follow the NATO definition for what resilience is?
Darren Jones: Yes.
Lord Hutton of Furness: Will you be able to give us a breakdown for, for example, how much might be spent on, let us say, preparing for natural disasters as opposed to hybrid threats or armed attacks? Resilience is a very broad category. If we are going to give this any kind of meaning and a sense that we are dealing with the threats we are facing, the public is entitled, is it not, to a little bit more information than just a notional 1.5%, which really could cover all sorts of things without really hitting the nail on the head, if you get my meaning?
Darren Jones: I am sure we can give you some more depth around that. The only observation I would make is that the commitment to get to 5%—3.5% core, 1.5% additional—is not until the 2030s. We will not be able to give you the detailed spending decisions for those years because those have not happened yet, but we could give you a sense of what we are currently spending in the run-up.
Lord Hutton of Furness: Darren, but in broad-brush terms, do we not need to distinguish between what we are spending dealing with natural disasters and what we are spending to try to deal with hybrid threats or other more aggressive acts? To have a breakdown between those categories would be incredibly helpful, would it not?
Darren Jones: We look at the national risk register in the round when these decisions are taken, so that is why we talk about climate risk as well as biosecurity risk or hybrid risk and some of the other things that you have mentioned.
Lord Hutton of Furness: Well, it would be helpful to get that. Very quickly—finally—the national security strategy talks about “whole-of-society preparedness” to deal with the scale of the security challenges we are facing. If we are being honest with each other, it does not really feel at the moment that we are in the middle of some national mobilisation effort, does it? How are you going to get from the rhetoric about a whole-of-society response to actually delivering it, because we seem to be quite a long way off that?
Darren Jones: That is probably right. I think the public are alive to what is happening in the world. They probably, I assume, think that a lot of the things we talk about are quite far away but, actually, we have been clear—whether it is through public statements to Parliament or the recent speeches from intelligence agency heads—that we have lots of threats near at home as well, on hybrid, on cyber, in the North Sea, and so on and so forth. Our increase in defence spending and the commitment we have made has illustrated that for the public. But I do think you are right; we probably need to go further on preparedness at home, whether it is for climate risk or other risks.
We are a bit behind now our European partners on how we provide information to the public. We set out lots of information on GOV.UK/prepare that supports people to think about, if the power goes out at home, what you might want to do in advance to be able to go about your lives while you are waiting for it to be switched back on. But am I convinced that everyone goes on GOV.UK/prepare to prepare? No, so we probably need to go a bit further than we currently do.
Q118 Lord Sedwill: Chief Secretary, just on this 1.5%, building on Lord Hutton’s question, what new or additional capabilities are we going to have as a result of it? It does feel as though it is a basket that contains quite a lot of stuff that we already do, so what new or additional capabilities would you highlight?
Darren Jones: I just stress the point I made previously: the commitment to 1.5%, as part of the broader commitment to hit 5% of GDP in the 2030s, is subject to future spending reviews, so I cannot tell you today precisely what line-item decisions the Government have taken to hit the commitment that we have made to reach in the 2030s. In terms of what we are spending today on resilience, there is a whole host of spending across government—whether it is on biosecurity research capabilities or supporting damage to undersea cables. We have talked about climate resilience issues, which have been allocated in this spending review. But the headline commitment to 1.5% as part of the 5%, as I say, is something for the future that we have not made detailed decisions on just yet.
Lord Sedwill: Sorry, it is not, is it, because you have said that you will be at 1.5% by 2027? I want to understand what by 2027 we will have that is new or additional capability to improve the resilience of this country. I worked for NATO; I was National Security Adviser; I am very familiar with all the accounting games that can be played to shovel things in to meet the NATO definitions. I will tell you what I want to understand here. By 2027, you should know what new or additional capabilities are going to be delivered as part of that—or is it simply drawing a line around a whole load of existing capabilities and calling them resilience?
Darren Jones: The current spending review gets us to that target by 2027. What that spending is on is what is in the spending review right now. Anything that is new or additional outside of the current spending review is subject to future spending reviews. Those decisions have already been taken as part of SR25. The answer I gave to the Chair of the Defence Select Committee was that, on the existing definitions that NATO has for us, based on current spending in the current spending review, we do think we will get to that target earlier than the requirement to hit 1.5% as part of the broader 5% in the 2030s.
Lord Sedwill: So there is not anything you would like to highlight from SR25 as additional resilient capabilities that this Government has delivered? It is, “Go find this spending review and have a look”.
Darren Jones: There are lots of items in the spending review that we are currently spending money on but I would not describe them—to be true to your question, Lord Sedwill—as new or additional in what we are doing right now, as opposed to something on top of what we have already agreed to do.
Q119 Lord Tunnicliffe: You may have just answered this question, but can we make it very simple? When you come to present the 1.5% at some point and say, “We have done it”, to what extent within that 1.5% is there likely to be things that we have already done and are doing?
Darren Jones: The 1.5% equivalent spending by 2027 will be things that we are now currently doing, because it is in the current spending settlement. We are currently doing it, and we are currently spending money on it out of current budgets. The question after the review in 2029, when you are trying to then stack up the 5% commitment, may look different because it will be subject to future spending reviews. The next one, as I said, will happen in 2027.
Lord Tunnicliffe: I am sorry, I am not listening very well, obviously. Did you say that the 1.5% will be covered by things we are already doing?
Darren Jones: We will hit the equivalent of 1.5% of additional spending under current NATO definitions, based on what we are currently doing in the current budget settlements by 2027, yes. But we have made a commitment to get to 5% in the 2030s to NATO. All I am saying is that that might look different at that point because of future spending reviews which have not yet happened.
Lord Tunnicliffe: I think you are saying that what we are doing now will take us to the answer we are required to give, and it is all just a matter of packaging it.
Darren Jones: It is using existing NATO definitions against the current spending settlements.
Lord Tunnicliffe: You may have some trouble convincing the general public that that is additional capability.
Darren Jones: I am not suggesting it is additional capability right now. What I am saying is that additional capability will come in future years when there is increased spending through future spending reviews.
The Chair: Lord Ricketts was saying to us that the public should have some accounting of how the billions are spent, so maybe there is a lot in that. If we are going to take the public with us, then we need to give them some visibility of what we are actually delivering as a country. Lord Watts?
Q120 Lord Watts: This is one for you, Mr Jarvis. The Intelligence and Security Committee described China as aggressively targeting the UK’s national security. What would China have to do to be placed in the enhanced tier of the foreign influence registration scheme?
Dan Jarvis: I have lost count of how many Statements and responses to Urgent Questions I have given on this particular subject. FIRS is a relatively new capability. We introduced it on 1 July, although it officially went live on 1 October. I think it will be quite a useful capability, but it is still relatively early days. As the committee will be aware, we have already agreed to put both Russia and Iran on the enhanced tier, and we are looking very closely at the detail of how that is working at the moment.
The Government’s line with regard to China is clear. There has been an active debate—put it in that way—around the planning application that was made by China, and a decision was taken by the Secretary of State last week. But I can give you an assurance, specifically with regard to the embassy, that based on the advice that we have received—you will have seen the letter from the directors-general of MI5 and GCHQ, and you will have noted the point about the consolidation of the existing diplomatic estate in London—we think that that is the right way to proceed. I can give you an absolute assurance that national security is the top priority for this Government, and we will guard against the threats that we face wherever they come from.
Lord Watts: Let us just delve a bit into the relationship between ourselves and China. I was amazed at the trade committee to find out that the trade negotiators were not considering the issues of security or even human rights. They were purely trying to do a trade deal. Has that changed for now, with the threats that we face? When we are looking to do trade deals, does it mean that we take a wider view about the benefits and the problems that will come from that trade route? It might seem to some of our constituents that we are boosting trade in China, who then spend more money on their military capability, and then we have to spend more to actually catch up with them. It seems to be very naive to start to develop trade policies with people who you cannot rely on.
Dan Jarvis: I can assure you it is the opposite of naive. We have a very clear-eyed approach when it comes to China. Where there are areas where it is in our national interest to co-operate and work closely with them, then we will do so. But when it is in our national security interests to safeguard against the threats that we oppose, we will absolutely do that. The public will understand that we do need to make the most of economic opportunities and areas like economic co-operation and climate change, but also on other important areas as well—whether that is narcotics trafficking, whether that is organised immigration crime, whether that is serious organised crime—it is entirely reasonable to engage in a way that is in our national interest. By the way, that is what our allies do; that is what the French, Germans and a range of other nations do as well. But safeguarding our national security is always going to be a priority, and we will always make sure that we have got the right tools and the right resources in place to guard against that particular threat.
Lord Watts: I understand the point you are making but, for example, if you take the trade deals that we have with China, China has managed to actually do very well out of that and is boosting its defences. Over the last few years, we have not been doing the same because we have not had the capability. We have developed trade with China—and not just China; many other countries—without looking at the implications of how that boosts their own economy and how that would impact on our defence and our security.
Dan Jarvis: You are right: we absolutely have to look at these things in the round. But the context to our relationship as it is at the moment is that the previous Government went from a very close relationship essentially to a very distant relationship. It is much more sensible and pragmatic to have a consistent approach, to deal with China in the areas where it is in our mutual interest to do so but underscored by an absolute desire to protect our national security. That is the basis on which we proceed.
Lord Watts: What more can be done in higher education to beat off the threats from China that we have seen in recent past? What action are the Government taking? What advice is given to universities and higher education establishments about how to be wary about some of the players that they are dealing with?
Dan Jarvis: That is an entirely fair challenge. Next week the Minister of State at the Department for Education and myself will be meeting with all of the vice-chancellors of our universities to discuss that particular point. We recognise both the opportunities and the threats that international co-operation faces within the education sector, and we are working closely across government to make sure that we are best placed to make the most of the opportunities, while at the same time safeguarding against the threats that we face.
Q121 Lord Watts: Okay. Finally, you have mentioned the Chinese embassy. What measures have you taken to assure the public that that facility is not going to be used to actually make the security situation worse than it is at the moment?
Dan Jarvis: I know that you will understand, and the committee will understand, that we are not going to get into the technical mitigations and the things that we are specifically going to do to ensure that we are able to safeguard our security. But the letter that was sent by the directors-general of MI5 and GCHQ made clear that there were security advantages from the consolidation of the existing estate. I have been very clear to the House previously that there are national security advantages from a drawdown of a diplomatic estate in London that currently consists of seven sites down to one. While I recognise that there are strong views about this, albeit not always informed by the facts of the case, I can give you and the committee an absolute assurance that we have looked very carefully at the nature and the detail of the national security challenges that we will face as a consequence of this proposal, and we are satisfied that we have got appropriate mitigations in order to counter them.
Lord Watts: Does that take into account the massive cellar in the Chinese embassy, which I think people were concerned about?
Dan Jarvis: I again refer you, Lord Watts, to the point about the consolidation of the estate. We currently have seven diplomatic sites in London, and we will move from seven down to one. There are clear national security advantages as a consequence of doing so.
Lord Watts: Does the size of the cellar not add new threats to the UK?
Dan Jarvis: I made the point in Parliament the other day that the Government, despite some of the reporting to the contrary, had been privy to the precise plans, and the detail of the planning application was considered by the Secretary of State. Countries are entitled to have embassies, and I reiterate the point about this particular country having reached an agreement with the British Government to draw down its diplomatic footprint from seven to one. There are clear national security advantages of them doing so.
The Chair: Minister, just on FIRS, Jonathan Hall KC, who is the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, feels that “There is quite a strong case” that China should be placed in the enhanced tier. Is he wrong?
Dan Jarvis: I have huge respect for Mr Hall, as I am sure that the committee does, and I always listen very carefully to the recommendations he makes, not least the recommendations that he has made with regard to state proscription tools; the Government have offered commitments in that particular regard. FIRS is an important tool. It is a new tool, and we are looking very closely at how it is going to work with regard to Iran and Russia. I would just make the point, though, that we have a range of capabilities, and FIRS is just one of those, so any announcements that we have to make with regard to future designations we will bring forward to Parliament in the normal way.
Q122 Emily Thornberry: Let us go back to resilience and security at home. There is going to be a UK Resilience Academy set up, whose job is going to be to scrutinise the preparedness of public sector bodies. I wondered, though: are you not concerned about its limited powers and the fact that it is not on a statutory footing? Do you think that it is going to be strong enough to be able to drive real change? Do you not think you should look again at the Covid inquiry’s recommendation that it is put on a statutory footing?
Darren Jones: I am not currently concerned about it being on a statutory footing or otherwise. No one has made the direct case to me that it needs to be to deliver the services that it is being set up to deliver.
The Chair: Would it not be better if it is independent?
Darren Jones: Independent of government, you mean, Chair?
The Chair: Yes.
Darren Jones: I do not, unless the committee advises otherwise. It is an organisation that is seeking to up-skill, train and bring collaboration between different parts and functions of government, which is important, because you do not just want some people in the National Security Secretariat to be “the resilience people”. You want people across government in all of its different forms to be able to think about these types of issues. It is a good endeavour. Obviously we will keep it under review, but I am not entirely convinced at this stage that independence or statutory footings would add any additional value compared to the mandate it has already been given. I do not rule it out in the future if it is something that we need to reconsider.
Emily Thornberry: I want to also ask you about foreign interference and disinformation, because it is something that the Foreign Affairs Committee has been studying, and it is quite clear from countries around the world that this does not just happen when elections are happening; there is a build-up in advance. I know that there has been legislation passed, and I know that there are various cells and task forces and so on. But what I want to do really is look at it this way. It has been established that there were 1,300 Iranian bots pretending to be Scottish nationalists. When the internet went down recently, they all went, and in the summer, when Iran was being bombed, they all went down. Has anything been done about them? If something has not, what mechanism is there for taking them down? What offence have they committed? How is it proved? Who does the reporting and how do they how get taken down?
Darren Jones: The first part of my answer is to ask for forgiveness, for not knowing too much of the internal workings of DSIT.
Emily Thornberry: It is a shame they are not here, really.
Darren Jones: Point taken—not least because I am trying to answer the question. That is the department that operationalises a lot of these issues. The point of principle that you are making, though, is: is this a problem and is it getting worse?
Emily Thornberry: Let us assume that it is a problem and it is getting worse.
Darren Jones: Okay. We agree.
Emily Thornberry: What are we doing about it? That is actually the question.
Darren Jones: The election interference review that Philip Rycroft is doing for the Government is currently looking across departments and at the intelligence available to answer this question: should we be doing more? I do not want to prejudge his findings, but my sense is that the answer is yes and, as we face the future, this is going to become a bigger problem that we need to be very clear-eyed about. Are our current capabilities good enough? Could they be scaled to meet that challenge? Do we need to do something differently? I am waiting for the Rycroft review to give us some suggestions on that, and then we will be able to look at taking them forward—
Emily Thornberry: Sorry to interrupt you, but the Rycroft review is about elections, right? Let us take another example: the 2024 Southport attacks after the little girls were murdered. There were race riots across Britain and they were amplified by foreign interference. If that was to happen tomorrow, what would we do about it? How could we stop it?
Darren Jones: In respect of Southport and also events that followed, the Government did use the laws they have available to—
Emily Thornberry: What laws are those?
Darren Jones: The Online Safety Act, but also traditional criminal law about stirring racial hatred and all those types of issues. The Government, the Crown Prosecution Service and the police made, I think, record numbers of arrests and judgments in court for breaking those laws online in a way that had not been the case before. There was some criticism of the Government for that, but they were applying the rule that, if it is illegal in the real world, it is illegal online too. The Online Safety Act of course took a very long time, but it is broadly new. The regulator is just stepping up into that at the moment.
To go to the nub of your question, do I think that it is sufficient? I am not currently persuaded that it is entirely sufficient. Yes, we will need to do more in the future.
Emily Thornberry: For example, on the Southport attacks, we were able to prosecute people who were in Britain who were inciting violence, but I am asking about types of foreign interference in the UK that—I am reading from the national security strategy—“threaten societal cohesion and seek to erode public trust through the spread of disinformation”. It is a top-line threat in the national security strategy, but I fail to see a response, if I am being completely honest, which meets the level of that threat. You talk about the Online Safety Act. I do not quite understand how it works, but people say that there is power in it to take down content. I do not know how that works. Perhaps the better way to ask is: has it ever been used?
Darren Jones: Some of the powers have started to be used.
Emily Thornberry: Has it been used for foreign interference?
Darren Jones: On foreign interference, I do not know the answer.
Emily Thornberry: Could you find out and tell us?
Darren Jones: I will do my best to do so. But the powers are there. The cells that you referred to earlier that DSIT operates, certainly around election periods, essentially highlight these issues with the relevant companies to have them taken down.
Emily Thornberry: There is no obligation on the companies to do that, is there? As I understand it, their duty is “to operate the service with systems designed to take down priority illegal material where alerted to its existence”. I do not even know what that means.
Darren Jones: I think in practice what it means is that, if the Government raise something with a platform that they say and show is illegal, the companies are then required to take it down. The difficult debate is when it is not illegal or could be alleged to not be illegal but is evidently harmful. This is something that Parliament spent many years trying to articulate and was unable to do so in the Online Safety Act because it is a difficult concept in law to be able to legislate for. But these are the types of issues that the Government are very alive to.
Emily Thornberry: You appreciate that there is a response gap. As RUSI, in fact, has talked about, one department has focuses on the platform regulation, another on public messaging, another on tracking agencies. It is very difficult to know who is responsible for this, which is why at least RUSI—I know others have too—has called for a national disinformation agency whose job would be to be track, regulate and keep close to social media, to ensure that our democracies are not being undermined.
Darren Jones: In fact Dan Jarvis co-ordinates for us across government through the Defending Democracy Taskforce, which was something that the previous Government established. I am sure Dan would happily answer any questions on the task force.
Emily Thornberry: Is the Defending Democracy Taskforce taking down any content that is being pushed by other countries to try to undermine our democracy right now?
Dan Jarvis: CSPM is right. The fulcrum point for this activity across government is the Defending Democracy Taskforce, which brings different government departments together with law enforcement. It would be a DSIT lead in terms of the response to the OSA. I would also just point out that before Christmas I spoke about the work of the counter political interference and espionage action plan, which is specifically in place to disrupt and deter this kind of activity. So we do work very closely across government. We welcome the work that your committee is doing. I know that Minister Doughty has been in correspondence with you, and I am about to write to you as well. But the DDTF is the fulcrum point that will co-ordinate that activity across government.
Emily Thornberry: Can I ask one final question? I do not have the numbers right in front of me, but on Reddit a few years ago the words “London”, “unsafe” and “violent” were used about 400 times in a year, and then last year it was 400,000 times. There is a campaign to try to undermine the standing of our capital city and to frighten its residents, and those words are being used by Reform. The new mayoral candidate used those. There is something going on. All I am saying to those responsible for the Defending Democracy Taskforce is: can you do something about this, please? How are you going to do it? How are you going to tackle Reddit and make sure that this does not happen, because they are spreading lies and it gets under people’s skin. Even the President of the United States thinks that it is not safe to walk the streets of London. Yet we have the best—if there is such a word; I know it is not the best, but the number of murders happening now in London has never been lower than it is now, not since records began.
Dan Jarvis: I think you are right.
Emily Thornberry: I know I am right.
Dan Jarvis: It is a very challenging situation that we are dealing with. That is precisely why, along with MHCLG, we commissioned the Rycroft review, and that provides a very good opportunity to shine a light on these particular issues. It is also worth me just making a point about where this interference impacts on the electoral process. I know you were talking about the wider, more general nature of the threat, but on where it specifically impacts on the electoral process—you mentioned another political party—we have got JESP, the Joint Election Security Preparedness Unit, which sits in the Cabinet Office and works very closely both with MHCLG and with the Electoral Commission. It is my intention to provide a further update in due course about the work of the Defending Democracy Taskforce, because you raise a very important issue. We are looking at what more we can do. There is a very important conversation that has to be had with the tech companies as well. The Rycroft review provides a very good format for looking at the activity and making sure that our response is proportionate.
Emily Thornberry: I appreciate that the Rycroft review’s remit is presumably much longer than just a few months. What we learnt in Romania and Moldova was that the manipulation takes place at least a year before an election.
Dan Jarvis: Absolutely and, recognising the urgency of this particular work, the Rycroft review will report by the end of March in order to inform future legislation.
Q123 Edward Morello: I am not entirely sure that the President of the United States is not correct in thinking it is not safe for him to walk around the streets of London.
Just to follow on from what the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee was saying, a lot of the evidence that that committee has taken is about the fact that attempts to undermine the democratic process in countries start a lot longer than the electoral period. The powers of the Electoral Commission itself only kick in at the point of the short campaign being kicked off. A lot of the responses that both of you have given in response to this are time-linked to our own electoral cycle. Outside of those periods, and if the reviews and the powers—especially the Electoral Commission—are all centred around that, we are fundamentally losing the fight before it is already begun. So I guess my question is: do the current regulations, especially around the powers of the Electoral Commission, need expanding beyond just the remit of the short campaign to cover a longer period of time?
Dan Jarvis: I accept the basic premise of your question that we need to be looking at activity well in advance of electoral moments, and that is precisely why I have been looking at this since 6 July 2024 and why, to give you one example, we are doing work now ahead of the Northern Ireland elections that will be taking place in 2027. You are right; there is a very long time lag with these kind of activities. In truth, we did not see the levels of mis- and disinformation and interference in the previous general election that perhaps we might have expected. There are reasons why that was the case but I can give you an assurance that the Defending Democracy Taskforce has a standing item where we review the mechanisms and the procedures that are in place to ensure that the next set of elections taking place—clearly we have got important elections taking place in Scotland, Wales and England in May of this year—are being properly safeguarded against. I draw you back again to the work of the Rycroft review. It is because of our concern about this activity that we think it is right to have an independent view, and that is why we think that Philip Rycroft is the right person to look carefully at this and to make recommendations into government. Clearly, we will look very carefully at what he says.
The Chair: We must move on. Baroness Kidron?
Q124 Baroness Kidron: On this point, the Government have just announced a review that looks at some parts of the OSA—the Online Safety Act—and I am wondering whether it might have another look at mis- and disinformation in that context, as well as in the security context. Everybody is saying that it is a Venn diagram of problems. There is foreign state interference and there are bot farms, but there are also a lot of social issues and problems. I wonder whether you might take that back to your friends at DSIT who are not here.
Could I just turn to the cyber action plan, which is focused on improving public sector cyber resilience by March 2027? There has been a bit of a pushback, shall we say, from the National Audit Office, which is doubting long-term government failures in this space. I just really wanted to ask the question: what is going to be different this time?
Dan Jarvis: Let me start with a positive point. CSPM was talking about the machinery of government change that was enacted back in September last year, and cyber is an important area that lends itself to having that kind of cross-departmental co-ordination. That is one of the reasons why I now sit in the Cabinet Office and the Home Office. As I think CSPM will testify, this is something that between us we consider to be incredibly important. I do just want to start with a positive point about it, because it is worth making the point that the UK’s cyber security sector is absolutely vital for economic growth, has contributed £13.2 billion in revenue over the financial year 2023-24 and employs 67,300 people. I am quite keen to shift this assertion that cyber activity will always have a negative impact on our economy. There is a more positive story to tell.
In terms of the nature of the threat that we are facing, people will be familiar with the attack that we saw on Jaguar Land Rover, on Marks & Spencer and on the Co-op. There is a lot of activity that is taking place across government to make sure that we are properly co-ordinating the response.
The national cyber action plan is based on three key pillars: countering the threat, strengthening resilience, and securing economic growth. We have made a commitment to publish a refreshed national cyber action plan in the spring, building on what was there previously. We had a strategy and we are converting that into an action plan. It would be impossible to overstate the importance which we attach to this activity. That is why I work very closely with ministerial colleagues across government, with our operational partners, and with law enforcement to make sure that the nature of the response that we face is proportionate to the nature of the threat. We also collaborate very closely with our international allies, in terms of Five Eyes, G7 and European partners as well. It is a key priority for me in government, and we are making sure that we are doing everything that we can to respond in a robust and proportionate way.
Baroness Kidron: Thank you for that, and I am glad you started with something positive. I would like to ask about the funding for this, from two perspectives. One is: is there going to be adequate funding to actually make the public sector safe? Is that going to be a priority? The other thing is really on your point: we do have a very strong cyber-security sector here in the UK, but are we going to look at procurement as a way of strengthening that sector? Or are we going to see yet more government procurement going to the big tech, which in itself creates a certain level of insecurity, I might say?
Dan Jarvis: Let me say a couple of things. First, I am sure you will be aware of the work that is being done, led by DSIT, on the cyber security and resilience Bill. This is a really important piece of government legislation, which we are working very closely with that department on.
Your point around procurement is a point well made, and we are working closely with colleagues across government, including with the DBT. I met with Minister Bryant recently to ensure that we are as joined up as we think we need to be.
Let me just say a word about ransomware. As I am sure you will know, the Government have consulted extensively on ransomware proposals. I am determined to ensure that, alongside our allies, we are doing everything we can to disrupt and deter the ransomware attacks that we are seeing on a daily basis, which undermine not only our national security but our economic security as well. I am keen to ensure that we have an appropriate legislative response to the ransomware attacks we face, because that will be good for our national security and economy. The best way to do that is in concert with our allies. That is why, at the recent G7 meeting, we took this specifically as an agenda item, and we are looking at what more we can do with Five Eyes partners and G7 allies.
Baroness Kidron: When we looked at the cyber security and resilience Bill, we were surprised by how narrow it was. We had a lot of evidence that came in, which said that it includes critical sectors such as data centres but leaves out whole other sectors. Given that we have this current Bill before Parliament, I wonder whether we are missing an opportunity to think more fully about how security stacks up in the technological food chain.
Dan Jarvis: That is a fair challenge. Clearly, it is for DSIT to account for the contents of its Bill.
Baroness Kidron: We are missing DSIT today.
Dan Jarvis: I was not seeking to emphasise that point; apologies to ministerial colleagues in DSIT. Our response has to be considered in the round, and legislation is an important part of that, but there are other tools and measures we can use to ensure that we have a full-spectrum response. That is a priority for us.
We are working very closely with our colleagues in the Foreign Office, Ministry of Defence, DSIT, other government departments and operational partners to ensure that we are best prepared to guard against the nature of the threat we face, not least given the terrible attacks we have seen in recent times.
The Chair: Are you surprised that the EU in its NIS legislation is far more comprehensive than what we are proposing?
Dan Jarvis: We have made commitments to legislate in other areas. On the points I made about ransomware, we have gone through an exhaustive process of consultation and made commitments to legislate on that when parliamentary time allows. The Government have made other commitments outwith the cyber security and resilience Bill. But, of course, we need to work very closely with our allies and look at what colleagues in the European Union are doing.
Baroness Kidron: One of the other commitments you have made is to the Sovereign AI Unit. I think it is £500 million. Can I ask the CDL what level of that commitment will be for national security? What is your definition of sovereignty, given that there is some concern that the unit is dominated by US interests?
Darren Jones: I do not think we have a written-down definition of sovereignty but the way I articulate it is that we want to ensure we have the skills, capabilities and control over key infrastructure assets in the United Kingdom. This is an important part of the national security strategy, not least in current technologies but also for future technologies where we have a comparative advantage—for example, on quantum computing and its potential implications for these technologies.
If you look at the overall spending on digital and IT over the spending review period, we increased it by billions of pounds compared to previous trends. That was partly to reflect the fact that the cyber risk needed to be dealt with—there have been a number of security breaches over previous years, not least due to legacy IT systems in certain departments that were in desperate need of being upgraded—but also to ensure that, where you have back-office IT systems in government departments, you are upgrading the whole of Whitehall as part of what is called the shared services programme.
Again, that is a programme that was started under the last Government, but we, the current Government, have put more money into it to accelerate its rollout. Many departments might have their HR systems, finance systems or other types of corporate function systems within their own departments and they are, in some cases, many decades old, which make them an easier target for cyber criminals and others who want to try to hack into government systems.
Our shared services programme is currently bringing departments together so that we have more modern, more secure shared back-office systems to challenge some of those issues. That means a lot of the spending is loaded into dealing with old computers, basically, because the state was so much further behind the private sector, as a comparator, than it ought to have been. We are trying to speed up the transition from legacy IT while also putting money into frontier technologies where we can. But we definitely have some catching up to do in government compared to the private sector in the UK.
Baroness Kidron: Finally, I am very aware that Europe has started to work out that it perhaps needs its own AI stack and to work out where the choke points are, and that it needs to create at least enough sovereignty to have something to put on the table to have a deal. I am concerned about whether we, in our desire to catch up, are making the strategic decisions to make sure we totally own the choke points rather than just piling money into frontier systems that may or may not help the UK.
Darren Jones: It is coming up to a year since the Prime Minister launched the AI opportunities action plan. I have seen a progress report on that, which is very good. I think that we will say more about that in public very soon. But, in essence, it goes to the heart of this question.
I do not think that as a country we would be able to do end to end, from chip fabrication and design all the way through to consumer products. But there are definitely parts of the value chain where we have great capabilities in the UK—for ourselves but also for our allies—and in frontier technologies, where we definitely punch above our weight in innovation and start-up companies. So, to go back to my point about comparative advantage as well as sovereign capability, we factor all those considerations into spending decisions and areas of priority work.
Q125 Edward Morello: It is clear from the US’s national security strategy and defence strategy that there is now a serious misalignment between the American strategy and the UK’s national security strategy. Under the current Administration, do you believe the US continues to be a reliable partner to the UK? Should the UK still be making national security and defence decisions based on the past behaviour of the US and previous Administrations?
Darren Jones: The United States is a reliable partner and we have every confidence that it will continue to be, as one of the Five Eyes countries as well as in military co-operation. We still collaborate very closely every day of the week to protect British interests and the interests of our allies around the world. I recognise that there is a lot of geopolitical noise happening right now. But, as I said on television the other day, I am keen to reassure people that day-to-day operations where we act to protect our country and interests continue to happen in the normal way.
Edward Morello: But on day-to-day operations, we have supposedly—reportedly—limited intelligence sharing with the US in relation to strikes on drug smugglers. The US national security strategy talks about pivoting away from European security. We have also seen the President of the United States threatening the sovereign territorial integrity of a NATO ally. So, obviously there have been serious implications in the day-to-day relationship with the US. Are the Government thinking about the need to diversify their security relations and pivot away from a reliance on the US, especially in terms of their supply chains for defence and nuclear capabilities? Is there at least some kind of conversation going on internally within government about whether or not business can continue as usual and what the risks associated with making that decision are?
Darren Jones: On the first point of your question, our relationship with the United States and, quite frankly, the relationship between the Prime Minister and the President of the United States, means that we can and do have frank conversations if we disagree with each other as friends and allies, which was evidently the case in respect of Greenland and Denmark. I am pleased that President Trump has confirmed that he does not intend to take forward any form of military action or tariff reaction with regard to his views on Greenland. We were able to have that robust conversation with each other while continuing to collaborate.
As you can see from our strategic defence review and the national security strategy, we want to ensure not just that we have domestic capabilities for war readiness but that we are a leader in NATO, which obviously includes the United States. That means that we, as an important partner in NATO, and with other NATO members, are deepening our collaboration. We agree that Europe collectively needs to increase its defence capabilities. We agree that in the High North we also need to increase our military presence, given the melting ice caps and militarisation of the Russian border. There is a lot of agreement on those points.
Often, that turns into benefits for the UK. I point to a perhaps obvious example. The frigates deal with the Norwegians, to ensure that we have additional capability to keep an eye out for submarines and protect critical national infrastructure, is important for security but also guarantees 10 years of work for shipyards in Scotland, for people to build the frigates that are being ordered.
There is collaboration across Europe. There is agreement that we need to do more with our European partners as part of a set of arrangements within NATO. We continue to try to broker those deals in the interests of the UK economy as well as our security requirements.
Edward Morello: From the outside, one might look and see that, when you have this issue where we all wake up on any given Monday wondering what will appear on Truth Social, and we have ad hoc threats of 10% tariffs being imposed, although the Government are trying to balance their desire to sign a US trade deal and at the same time might be making procurement decisions based on continuing integration with US defence supplies, we create additional vulnerabilities when the President of the United States decides he will try to leverage any of those relationships to exert influence on us when it comes to the foreign policy or national security decisions we are making in the UK.
Darren Jones: We will always take foreign policy and military decisions in the interests of Britian, our values, and the commitments we have made to allies. We have been very clear about that in public, whether that message is for friends or foes. We will not deviate from that. The Prime Minister was very clear on that in Prime Minister’s Questions last week when he said he will not yield from that position, which the public expect us to take and we will continue to take.
But to the broader point you are making, do we want to build partnerships with others around the world? Yes, absolutely. We are doing a lot of work, as I said, with European countries, including France and Germany as the E3, which is now an important group with regard to how we navigate through these geopolitical challenges. Looking at our relationship with the Australians, we have committed to the AUKUS programme that we inherited from the previous Government because we think it is important. We also have an important growing relationship with Japan and others. That shows that we are building bilateral and multilateral agreements around the world in the interests of the UK and as part of our contribution to NATO. So far, we are balancing those interests and, in the context of lots of challenges in the world, we are doing a reasonably good job.
Q126 Lord Sedwill: Minister, can I just test you on the two national security strategies? Ours was published last summer. The United States’s was published in December, and it has just published its defence response to it. You said at the beginning of this session that you felt the UK national security strategy had stood the test of time, at least so far. But the truth is that the strategies take divergent views of some of the crucial threats. Ours is absolutely centred on the acute threat from Russia; theirs downplays it. Of course, we have a robust dialogue on all those things; we always have—I was there throughout the first Trump Administration and it was true then too—but fundamentally we take a different view of some of the most acute threats. Indeed, we heard from the Vice-President when he spoke at the Munich Security Conference a year ago that the greatest threat he was worried about in Europe was within European societies, not the external threat from Russia. How do you reconcile that?
Darren Jones: I disagree with that view. We are very clear in our strategies, in public and in the decisions we take, that Russia is our primary threat in Europe—along with others, which we articulate in the document—and that we will act on that basis. The challenge with any national security document, as you will know better than I, is that you will never get a 100% perfect document that does not have to then reflect or be nimble around what happens in the world often weeks or months after it is published. You want to create a strategy that, by design, pulls together all the different parts of government into a coherent strategic view for the purposes of the National Security Council and to aid our decision-making, while recognising the fact that you of course need to be able to manoeuvre on what really happens in the world as you go from week to week and month to month.
Lord Sedwill: Can we pursue this point? I am actually in Norway with the United Kingdom Commando Force, which is the reason why I am dressed informally; I decided not to be in uniform when I attended this committee meeting virtually because it would be a bit distracting. I am here to see, for real, exactly what you were just talking about—operations and exercises with the Norwegians, absolutely shoulder to shoulder, to rehearse what we would do if we ended up in a pre-Article 5 situation and, indeed, hopefully, to deter the Russians from behaving recklessly in the High North. You are very familiar with those issues. I am glad you mentioned Norway.
If we just take a step back, the United States has set out its priorities. If we remove the language of the Trump Administration, its priorities are homeland security, the western hemisphere, China and the Pacific, the Middle East, and the Euro-Atlantic. That order of priorities could easily have been those of a more conventional US Administration. They reflect the world as the United States now sees it.
Because the United States has a sort of isolationist President—I do not think he is, by the way, but it might have one in the future—and because there is a crisis in the Pacific with China which means that the US can no longer spread itself to be able to deal with two at once, given the scale of the challenge it faces, as you have sort of acknowledged, Europe needs to act more in our own defence, because the Americans might be unwilling because of isolationism, or unable because of China, to provide the same level of support it provided hitherto. My question to you is about timing. You have set out a trajectory. We have commitments to 3%, 2.5% et cetera, as do the other Europeans. The problem is that those are not moving at the pace of events. Do you agree?
Darren Jones: Do I think that the risk picture we face warrants us having to think more short-to-medium term than we have in the past? The answer is yes, I do. One of the reasons why the defence investment plan is important is not just to think about how we allocate additional spending in the future but also to challenge ourselves to make sure current spending is fit for purpose in meeting the threat we face. When we publish the defence investment plan, which I am conscious is late but which we are working on at the moment, I hope that you will see in the decisions there that we are thinking about the near-medium term as well as the longer term, especially in how we are allocating money to particular projects. We cannot just allocate most of our capital budgets to projects that will become available in the 2040s or 2050s. Unfortunately, we need to make sure that we are, as the SDR says, on a war-readiness footing much sooner than that.
Lord Sedwill: That, in a sense, illustrates the dilemma. The defence investment plan is late. We hear reports—which you will not want to comment on—that the usual knife fight is going on within defence over the short-term components of that, because the situation is, as we know, challenging. But there is investment in defence, there is integration of defence industrial capability across Europe, and there is interoperability between European NATO. We know that we have five times as many systems in Europe as the Americans do, which means we get much less bang for every buck we spend—and we spend less anyway. We could be moving out on a lot of that with our European allies and demonstrating serious intent. Yet it still seems that neither we nor our European allies—obviously, I recognise the complexities of this—are really leaning into this. You see this in the share prices of defence companies going up and down every time there is an incident. There is not yet a genuine belief out there that European NATO, including the UK, is accelerating into this at the pace of events.
Darren Jones: One of the reasons why the defence investment plan is taking longer is because, as I said, it is not just a decision on how to allocate additional spending. It is looking, for the reasons I have set out, at the whole defence investment plan. I do not think that happens very often. One of the challenges, as the NAO and others have pointed out, is that a lot of defence spending in the past has perhaps not been spent as effectively as it ought to have been, given the risk picture. We are taking this opportunity to dive right into the detail and get through everything line by line for a reason—because we think it is important. That is why it is taking a little bit longer.
On European partners, we are seeing a significant increase on spending commitments. Poland is a prime example but also Germany, France and others. The question of collaboration in Europe is different, as I do not need to tell the committee, because of—
Emily Thornberry: The court.
Darren Jones: Yes, and the constitutional set-up of the role of the European institutions and member states in maintaining the defence questions that they have.
Emily Thornberry: They will not let us into SAFE.
Darren Jones: Of course it was disappointing that we were not able to take part in SAFE. We wanted to do so and we are happy to have that conversation with Europe again if they would like us to do so, because we think there is more room for collaboration. We have shown a lot of progress with our partners in the Joint Expeditionary Force—JEF—where we continue to show how collaboration can happen without the European institutions playing a direct role. Do I think we should be doing more? The answer is yes. But obviously there are lots of political challenges here that we need to try to manoeuvre while also delivering on our own commitments here at home.
Q127 Lord Sedwill: I know we are short of time and that this is perhaps something to take up in a different session, but I want to move on to talk about Russia itself. Our report on the undersea cables issue highlighted an important point about deterrence; that there needs to be an offensive element to deterrence as well as simply a defensive element. Otherwise, we would end up, in a sense, falling into what one might describe as the Maginot trap—we are static, they are mobile, et cetera. We were concerned that, although we can make ourselves more resilient, we do not really have an approach within the hybrid space to impose significant costs on Russia for its aggressive behaviour and, therefore, we are not really deterring it but are simply absorbing its attacks. That is an illustration of a broader point as we deal with the hybrid warfare that we know we are facing. How confident are you that our doctrine is keeping up with this new, more complex, way of dealing with a threat?
Darren Jones: I think it is reflected adequately in the strategic defence review, which makes it very clear that, whether it is an indirect or direct confrontation, we need to be alive to the fact that we expect this to become relevant more often in the future than it has in the past. As a consequence of that view, which, as I said, the Government have published, what are the decisions we therefore need to take to respond to indirect or direct confrontation? Obviously I should not go into any personal views about how to respond to the particular things you mentioned but, strategically, it is on the page in the document we published. We will make decisions on that basis.
Lord Sedwill: We talk about attribution but we do not really talk about imposing real penalties that would matter to the Kremlin, for example, thinking about undersea cables. That is just a tactical example. Here is a slightly different way of thinking about it. If we are on the ground in Ukraine as part of the coalition of the willing—the Prime Minister has commendably taken a very strong lead on that—do we have an assessment of whether that puts us more in the crosshairs for more of this Russian activity?
Darren Jones: The Ministry of Defence has been working with partners and Ukraine on plans, in advance of the political agreement that was signed recently by the Prime Minister, which are now to a degree that if we need to deploy troops as part of that agreement we are prepared and able to do so. That work has considered risks in the round and what it might take from the Ministry of Defence and other parts to be able to honour the commitments the Prime Minister has made.
Lord Sedwill: Just a final point, Chair: echoing the point you made earlier about taking the public with us, the public are conscious that the world is becoming more dangerous. Obviously, the Trump Administration’s approach to Greenland over the past week or so has put that on the front pages and the top of bulletins, but I do not think that they are conscious of this kind of balanced judgment. There is a question here about how you take the public with you and say to them, “We are doing this. It is the right thing to do. It probably means this country is at more risk from Russian aggression. Therefore, we are going to have to do some other things as well, and that’s going to involve some hard choices”. I do not hear that argument being made.
Darren Jones: There is a very high level of support from the public for our support for Ukraine. In another part of my job, I see frequent polling and focus group feedback, and also what people are reading and talking about online and in the mainstream media. Broadly, all the interventions around our support for Ukraine are seen very positively by the public. Importantly, as the Prime Minister has pointed to, if we get to a position where the war ends and the commitments of the coalition of the willing can be put into action, it will be subject to a vote in Parliament. I suspect that some of these issues might be debated around that time and, given its significance, will be seen and engaged with by the public.
Lord Sedwill: Okay. It is an interesting topic that I would like to pursue further but we are out of time. Thank you.
Q128 Mike Martin: Chief Secretary, given these differences of opinion—this divergence—with the US, would you say the UK is currently derisking its relationship with the United States in terms of goals and aims?
Darren Jones: We continue to collaborate with the United States as we always have—
Mike Martin: Would you say that we are derisking our relationship with the United States?
Darren Jones: As I say, we continue the relationship we have had in the way that we have had it, because it is beneficial and positive. There is nothing wrong with the United States having a view about its own interests. Every country is entitled to do that. But, if you look at our collaboration and co-operation in NATO and elsewhere, it has been and continues to be to the benefit of our country and allies. So there is no derisking of that, because NATO has been hugely successful in its operations and continues to be.
Mike Martin: Of course it is absolutely right and proper that any country can choose its goals. The US has chosen slightly different goals to ours. So actually my question is: why are we not derisking our relationship with the US if our goals are diverging somewhat? I am not talking about a rupture. I am talking about derisking.
Darren Jones: I do not accept the premise of derisking. If you are asking me, “Do we therefore do more work with other partners in NATO with whom, for example, we have a local shared interest in European security?”, the answer is yes, and we are.
Mike Martin: That would be one way. Okay.
Q129 Baroness Tyler of Enfield: I will stay just very briefly on that point. In the light of recent events and comments by President Trump, I very much doubt that the majority of the British public regard the US as a reliable partner—but it would be interesting to see what the polling says on that.
Coming specifically to the point about diversifying international relationships, when the CDL talked about this, I did not hear him mention Canada, and I wondered why, particularly in light of the recent remarks by Mark Carney about the need for middle powers to be working together. Indeed, he acknowledged what he described as a “rupture” in international relations. Can the CDL comment on that, please?
Darren Jones: We have an important relationship with Canada, as you and the committee will know, as do many other European partners. Prime Minister Carney’s speech, which I think you are referring to, Baroness Tyler, was on his views that the existing infrastructure around, for example, the United Nations, the Security Council, the permanent five and the post-World War Two settlement needed to be superseded by other arrangements. I and the Government do not share that view. We are committed to the rules-based order. We are committed to the United Nations and our role in the Security Council, while at the same time recognising its limitations.
Where we agree is that it is probably both, as opposed to not doing the old stuff and doing the new stuff instead. We have referred to a lot of those examples today—the E3, the JEF, AUKUS, our relationship with Japan. There are lots of bilateral and multilateral relationships that Britain has and contributes to around the world, while also playing our full part in the existing institutions that, acknowledging some of their limitations, we still think are an important part of the way in which the world operates.
Q130 Baroness Kidron: I am sorry; I am returning to the question of sovereignty. We got fantastic evidence from Air Commodore Blythe Crawford when he came and also when he wrote, and it was on the back of what you said, which is, “We don’t have it written down”. He was very much suggesting that we should have it written down and that there should be different layers of sovereignty considered going forward: no sovereignty, partial, full, and different understandings of that. If you took that on board, I am just interested to know what capabilities need to be fully or partly sovereign. What do we need to hold on to in order to not have to have full sovereignty?
Darren Jones: I suppose my point is this. Do we have a dictionary definition in government of sovereignty? No, but we do have the pieces of the puzzle. If you look at the industrial strategy, the sectors that are deemed to be priorities are priorities for a reason. If you look at the AI action plan, we are interested in data centres and certain other types of capabilities for a reason. Either we think sovereign capability is important—for example, our intervention on steel production in the UK and its importance to the defence capabilities—or we think we have got comparative advantage, which is then strategically important to us as a sovereign offer to our allies and partners. We have not written a neat sentence, but are we taking decisions about what is important for sovereign capability? Yes, but it is pieced together in different places.
Baroness Kidron: There are certain parts of that pattern that have gone rather badly, like in the industrial strategy and creative industries; there are exceptions. Then there is some concern around access to NHS data and so on. Where is the sovereignty in all of that? I think it would be interesting if we had a shared understanding of what sovereignty meant.
Darren Jones: Noted.
Q131 Baroness Fall: I am mindful of time, so I will just return to this sovereignty issue. Obviously economic nationalism—protectionism—is the name of the game; it is certainly increasing rather than diminishing. So my question at the end of this session is: are we doing enough in this area? When we think about inward investment scrutiny with NSNI, intervention in small and medium-sized businesses and the support that we try to give them, and supply chain resilience, this is changing all the time. Are you satisfied in the Government that you are doing enough to support it?
Darren Jones: I am satisfied that there is a lot of activity on this issue which is meeting a lot of those challenges, whether it is work that is happening in the Department for Business and Trade, which does a lot of work on supply chains and those types of issues, or all the work that I and we do in the Cabinet Office on screening for decisions that come under the National Security and Investment Act. We also have discussions in other fora where there are interrelations between, for example, energy department questions, questions of infrastructure security and those types of issues. They are very live discussions that happen frequently, and we have tools and mechanisms to help us where we have to take decisions as Ministers that properly weight those concerns. On that basis, I am assured, yes.
Baroness Fall: Do you think that they are weighted too much to large infrastructure and not enough in thinking about, for example, our start-up culture and the way that our firms get sometimes picked off by American investors? Should we be doing more to nurture those businesses?
Darren Jones: I do not have a concern around the scale of the business or the type of business. I see issues every week on a whole range of things, including research and development or start-ups, all the way through to big infrastructure decisions. From my engagement with the systems that we have, I would not say to you that we have a particular focus on a type of asset class or a scale of business. You see it across the spectrum, which is probably right.
Baroness Fall: The investment scrutiny side of things is relatively new. How well do you think it is working compared to, for example, the CFIUS, the American version of that? Do you have a huge caseload? How do you triage it? Are you pleased with what you are doing so far?
Darren Jones: It seems to work well. I was involved on the Parliament side when the legislation was enacted, so I knew the Act pretty well coming into government. On the operational side, between Dan and I and our officials we engage on this issue every week, but the team know that a lot of the time there are commercial and investment considerations here, where we do not want to deter legitimate investment interest because of a system that is too opaque, takes too long or is too burdensome in regulation or outcome. We really want to focus in on where it matters the most. Certainly, the case files that I see every week give me reassurance that that is being done in the right way. The team have done and are doing some reviews about the functioning and the future of the system, and we will be able to say more on that shortly. But, based on the evidence, I think the balance between making sure the UK is a place that people want to invest in and do business in and the national security considerations seems to be working quite well, from my perspective.
Baroness Fall: One more question if I may: the Prime Minister is due to visit China this week. We did see that President Trump was not that pleased to hear that Mark Carney was planning to derisk and head off and do some more deals with China. Are you expecting to have pushback from the Americans on the trip?
Darren Jones: I know that President Trump is due to go not long after the Prime Minister, so we will have to wait and see.
Q132 The Chair: This has been a fascinating session. It is so complex. I go back to one of my first points, Chief Secretary, which is really about the workload that you face, the fact that this is across departments and is so multifaceted and so complex in terms of the challenges and the threats that we face. Do you have any sympathy for the view, which I think was put forward by the Defence Select Committee, that, as other nations have done, we need to look at the establishment of some sort of Secretary or Minister for Homeland Security?
Darren Jones: Well, we already have some of them. We have the Home Secretary; we have the Security Minister.
The Chair: But a single entity.
Darren Jones: You mean a department as opposed to a Minister?
The Chair: Yes.
Darren Jones: A lot of the issues we have talked about today you could not neatly put into one department because, if you are talking about technology or defence spending or election regulation or cyber risk in public services or resilience spending in Defra, it is a pervasive set of issues across government. I am always happy to hear ideas for how we might be able to improve, but I am not sure trying to pull all of that into one place—
The Chair: But if they had been here—if we had had such a unit or department—they would have been able to answer the questions about some of the cyber threats and challenges that we face. The fact that we have an absence of one department—DSIT—today illustrates the nature of the challenge and the problem that you have, does it not?
Darren Jones: The Cabinet Office is there to co-ordinate across government. That is what it was established to do, and this is an issue where we are collaborating across government. It is why we have the National Security Secretariat functions, the Joint Intelligence Committee and others in the centre, but working with our partners in defence and business and elsewhere. But I am grateful for your concern for my well-being. One of the reasons, as I say, that I was so pleased that the Prime Minister agreed that Dan could come and be a Minister in the Cabinet Office as well as the Home Office was because I recognise the challenge that you are painting, given the mandate I was given at the last reshuffle.
The Chair: We will pick it up with DSIT because it has been frustrating, evidently, in today’s session not to have had them participate, and it has been quite clear that it has been difficult for yourselves to answer some of those questions that we have had. But that concludes today’s session. I thank our witnesses for giving up their time. Order, order.