Examination of Witness (Questions 338-339)
DAME PAULINE
NEVILLE JONES
18 JUNE 2003
Q338 Chairman: Dame Pauline, may
I welcome you, again, on behalf of the Committee. I apologise
for the delay. You probably heard that the Committee were meeting
President Musharraf in another part of the building. We are delighted
you are with us, particularly because of your own experience in
the diplomatic service and again as having chaired the Joint Intelligence
Committee from 1993 to 1994 and being political director and Deputy
Under Secretary of State at the FCO from 1994 to 1996 you can
help us particularly on process and areas of that sort. In their
Annual Report for the year 2002-03 our colleagues in the Intelligence
and Security Committee stated: "Ministers confirmed that
they were given the JIC papers which their private offices believed
they needed to see, and that officials in the departments drew
papers to their Ministers' attention and reflected their Ministers'
views at JIC meetings. The Ministers also said that they themselves
sometime requested sight of specific papers". It went on
to say: "The JIC Chairman, in his review of performance 2001-02,
noted need to produce starker papers, which could then aid Ministerial
decision-making". From your experience of the Joint Intelligence
Committee is it reactive or proactive? Who effectively decides
the work programme of the Committee?
Dame Pauline Neville Jones: The
work programme of the Committee is a rolling work programme. It
is something which is, I would say, largely in the hands of the
professionals. I say "largely" because at the end of
the day all civil servants work for ministers. This is not done
in a vacuum. Clearly two things are taken into account, one is
what are the strategic priorities of the Government: there both
the policies and objectives of the Ministry of Defence and the
Foreign Office are absolutely key to the priorities which the
JIC ought to reflect. Secondly, obviously it takes into account
in its own tasking the shared intelligence relationship with our
other main partner, the United States, and there is no point in
duplication. What you have then is strategic priorities to reflect
in the work you do, then decisions that are taken on how the work
is then tasked within the British machine to supply information
to and assessment of intelligence which is important to the attainment
of those priorities. That is a process in which a lot of people
are involved. This is a process that involves the intelligence
service themselves, in my day the intelligence co-ordinator. The
exact pattern and who holds this job has varied slightly from
time to time, but whoever it is it is a key figure.
Q339 Chairman: From your experience
would ministers have a direct input into those priorities?
Dame Pauline Neville Jones: I
would have said that the relationship between the Chairman of
the Joint Intelligence Committee and the Prime Minister was central.
I was also at the same time the Deputy Under-Secretary in charge
of Defence and Overseas Secretariat so I saw a good deal of my
Prime Minister wearing both those hats. You would know, and I
do not think you would need to ask, what the preoccupations were
and where the emphasis on the work needed to be put. There would
be a formal process in which the work programme would be approved.
In my day the Cabinet Secretary was the most senior official who
would ultimately take responsibility for what those underneath
his charge were doing. Certainly my Cabinet secretary certainly
did take an interest in the tasking—that was Robin Butler.
|
