Stuart Weir & Andrew Blick (Cambridge & London, Democratic Audit): We now have a UK National Security Strategy that swallows a huge range of global and domestic policies and issues and seeks to make the government's strategy and objectives transparent and more accountable than its predecessors. Just as one swallow doesn't make a summer, this huge governmental swallow won't make the government's counter terrorism policies fully accountable, but even so the document, available on the Cabinet Office website (opens pdf), is of great importance and could prove to be a worthwhile exercise in accountable government, if Parliament proves capable of exercising its oversight function.
The strategy, which Gordon Brown introduced in a Commons statement on Wednesday 18 March, describes itself as based on a "set of core values," including "human rights, the rule of law, legitimate and accountable government, justice, freedom, tolerance, and opportunity for all." Wow! The strategy is big on foreign and aid policy, promising to deploy both "hard" and "soft" power, not least because "the power of ideas, of shared values and hopes" can win over hearts and minds and create new partnerships. Not just British values then, but universal values.
But let's get down to cases. Brown pledges for the first time to publish a national register of risks, releasing previously confidential information, so that the public can see at first hand "the challenges that we face and the level of threat that we [i.e., the government] have assessed." The Joint Committee on Human Rights has asked time and time again for the release of a full appraisal of the risks the country faces from terrorism, so that it can better judge the proportionality of the counter terrorism measures it proposes to adopt. The JCHR ought therefore to become a significant partner in the dialogue over the strategy, especially as human rights are specifically at its core.
But Parliament as a whole will have to develop its accountability mechanisms if the strategy, the full extent of government activity contemplated therein and the work of the new Cabinet Committee on National Security and others involved - from DFID and the security agencies to local authorities - is going to be measured against Brown's stated values and to achieve the goal of "legitimate and accountable government." Select committees, including those on Defence, Foreign Affairs, International Development, Home Affairs, Constitutional Affairs, and the JCHR, will have to coordinate their inquiries and pool their expertise in a joint security sub-committee, akin to the export controls committee, to take evidence, report on the strategy and make recommendations. If they are to perform their new oversight function properly, extra support staff and advisers will be needed.
The Strategy itself suggests support for some parliamentary changes along these lines. Brown envisages giving the existing Intelligence and Security Committee, which currently meets privately and reports directly to the Prime Minister, "an enhanced scrutiny and public role" through a joint resolution of both Houses. Let's see what parliamentarians make of that. In our view, the ISC needs to be brought within the legislature and report to Parliament, not its masters.
Moreover, much of the terrain that Gordon Brown sweeps through is in the province of foreign, aid and external policy, where of course the Royal Prerogative currently makes the government's writ independent of parliamentary scrutiny. Reforms of the Royal Prerogative, trailed in the Governance of Britain green paper last July, become all the more important, but the imminent draft constitutional reform bill is likely at best to confine itself to war and treaty-making, and will probably propose only modest reform.
It is hard to divine whether or not "soft" as well as "hard" power is to be deployed at home. There has been a mass of well-argued evidence for devoting more attention to positive measures to win hearts and minds in the minority communities most vulnerable to extremism, and especially among the younger generations (see for example the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust report, The Rules of the Game: Terrorism, Community and Human Rights). But in Brown's statement little was said about winning hearts and minds, though there is reference to it in the Strategy. There is to be a significant increase in anti-terrorism police capability, new regional intelligence units, disruption of violent extremist activity, unified border controls, compulsory ID cards for foreign nationals, stronger action against those who stir up tensions and - yes - an extension of preventative detention to 42 days.
