Examination of Witnesses (Question Numbers
1-19)
MR TONY
BAPTISTE, MR
JOHN HIGGINS
CBE, MR DAVID
LIVINGSTONE MBE DSC, MR
HUGO ROSEMONT
AND MR
DOUG UMBERS
17 JUNE 2008
Q1 Chairman: Good morning. This is the
first of our evidence sessions into UK national security and resilience.
I would like to begin by welcoming our witnesses to the Defence
Select Committee and also by saying thank you very much indeed
for your various memoranda of evidence which have proved to be
fascinating and very helpful. The reason we are starting this
inquiry with evidence from industry is that you have been the
most productive and the most helpful so far in providing us with
the necessary things to think about. Let us start by asking you
each, please, to introduce yourselves.
Mr Higgins: Good morning. I am
John Higgins; I am the Director-General of the trade association
Intellect which represents the IT telecoms and electronics industry
here in the UK. I am also currently the Vice Chairman of something
I will talk about later called RISC which is the Security and
Resilience Industry Suppliers Council which is a pan-trade association
and think tank organisation comprising ourselves, SBAC, DMA, the
British Security Industry Association, RUSI and Chatham House.
Mr Baptiste: I am Tony Baptiste;
I am Manager of the Business Development and Strategy for Fujitsu
Defence and Security which is part of the Fujitsu Group, the third
largest IT group in the world. We particularly focus on national
security and resilience and logistics in a comprehensive approach.
We focus particularly on national security and resilience in terms
of trying to understand the market and think through some of the
issues involved.
Mr Rosemont: Good morning. I am
Hugo Rosemont; I am the Policy Adviser for security and resilience
at the Society for British Aerospace Companies. SBAC is the UK's
trade association for civil air transport, defence, security and
space markets. I am also the Secretary for the RISC International
Sub-Group working with John on the RISC community.
Mr Livingstone: I am David Livingstone;
I am the Managing Partner of Morgan Aquila LLP which is an independent
consultancy based on business transformation in the anti-terrorism
era. My background is 30 years in the services, including four
years in strategic management of counter-terrorism and security
operations in the United Kingdom; eight years in industry primarily
based in the security sector. I am also an Associate Fellow at
Chatham House where I work on the international security programme
on national security matters.
Mr Umbers: Good morning. I am
Doug Umbers; I am the Managing Director of VT Communications.
I am on the Executive Board of the VT Group. VT has a broad range
of interests in national security and resilience covering defence,
security services as well as bluelight and nuclear activities.
We estimate today that we have about £200 million worth of
revenues loosely in this sphere and therefore have a vested interest
in what is going on.
Q2 Chairman: I would like to ask
you to begin by outlining what your organisations do in relation
to national security and resilience. It has to be an overview
and an outline. Shall we start with the SBAC?
Mr Rosemont: If I may I will talk
a little bit about SBAC's own internal security and resilience
programme and then move on to our commitment through RISC working
with the other trade associations. In terms of the SBAC's security
and resilience programme, we initiated that towards the back end
of last year and on that security and resilience network there
are approximately 70 individuals from about 30 individual companies
with a direct interest in providing security resilience technology
systems and products to the UK Government and overseas. Within
that programme, which has just been signed off by the SBAC's council
a couple of weeks ago, key areas of support for that are in the
areas of border securities, civil contingencies, support and other
areas. In terms of RISC, one of the SBAC's core strategic imperatives
within its security programme is leading support and commitment
through to the UK Security and Resilience Industry Suppliers Council
(RISC) and in that role we provide secretariat support to RISC
to ensure that that single channel of communication to the broader
security and resilience industry for OSCT and other bodies is
effective and is a credible single voice for government departments
and agencies.
Mr Baptiste: In Fujitsu Defence,
in its IT infrastructure and solutions and services, particularly
into the Ministry of Defence, we are co-leader with the DII project
which you might have heard of.
Q3 Chairman: Is that the Defence
Information Infrastructure?
Mr Baptiste: Yes, and particularly
into the security agencies as well. On the defence side that is
where we are providing, along with our fellow competitors in industry,
a number of IT infrastructure and solution services. We also provide
a lot of the base services and infrastructure into civilian government,
particularly the Home Office, HM Customs and Revenue, Cabinet
Office and across the wide range of government. We are involved
in all the government departments in the civil space as well as
the military space. We are particularly focussed on how we can
leverage that capability to help Government maybe work in a more
cooperative way and a more joined up way in terms of addressing
the national security and resilience market.
Mr Higgins: Can I start the other
way round and talk first about RISC and then how Intellect's programme
fits into that? Hugo explained a little bit about RISC and I think
it is worth drawing the Committee's attention to the specific
work that RISC is doing at the moment. We are working with the
Office of Security and Counter Terrorism to help formulate requirements,
exploit research and access innovation in four particular areas.
These are four areas that the Home Office and OSCT but other colleagues
in Government too have identified as problems they want industry
to help with. These four areas are: CBRNE, the protection of the
critical national infrastructure, the standoff detection of suicide
bombers and, lastly, the role of ICT generally in dealing with
counter terrorism. The stage we are at at the moment is putting
together industry advisory groups in each of these areas and we
are currently scoping the problem and what a successful outcome
might look like. The way that we are playing industry into this
is through the RISC community because the community in RISC are
the members of all of the trade associations and think tanks who
participate in it. Once we have scoped the problem and decided
what the appropriate outcome is that we might achieve, then we
are bringing the right industry players to the table to work on
those problems. Fitting below that then you have the industry
associations and I will talk particularly about Intellect. What
Intellect brings to the table are many hundreds of technology
focussed companies some 80% plus are SMEs and we enable them to
bring their expertise at this pre-competitive phase to help in
this problem definition, understanding how to access innovation
and so on. That is really the area that we are working in to bring
the industrial capability into the challenges of security and
counter terrorism.
Mr Umbers: In relation to the
MoD's involvement in this, we supply for example three offshore
patrol vessels to the MoD that work around protecting our coastal
waters around the UK. In relation to secure communications we
are responsible for the Defence High Frequency Communication Service
which is a highly resilient long haul radio network which is of
use for the civil contingencies in disaster. In terms of secure
communications also we work with the General Lighthouse Authority
with a technology called Enhanced Loran which has a potential
back-up use should the GPS get jammed in any particular location.
We are involved in the nuclear industry now and have operations
under project Cyclamen for detection and monitoring of radioactive
materials of one sort or another. We are responsible for keeping
the police cars of the Metropolitan Police on the roads here in
London. Also we are involved in intelligence services for a whole
series of communications and IT related activities. Finally, we
also have quite a big training operation both military and civil,
with the fire and rescue services for example, which we would
also seek to bring to bear in this environment.
Mr Livingstone: Morgan Aquila
in terms of business transformation in this new anti-terrorism
era, what we essentially do is help enterprises whether they are
commercial or otherwise navigate through the plethora of stakeholders
and issues associated with the new anti-terrorism construct, ie
the 25 or so government level stakeholders from the police, the
security services to the Home Office or whatever. We look inside
enterprises, find out what might actually fit in terms of capability
development for a particular stakeholder or in fact stakeholders
if you combine some together (potentially border agencies and
some others) to try to leverage some efficiencies out of common
work processes inside those programmes for homeland security stakeholders.
That is essentially what we do. We have an increasing number of
people who are in fact coming to our company to help in that navigation
process which leads us to the conclusion that there is some confusion
amongst some of the supplier community about how to approach the
market.
Q4 Mr Crausby: There have been criticisms
that the National Security Strategy does not take full advantage
of industry's potential. How good or bad has the UK Government
been from an industry perspective at identifying potential threats
and responding to them?
Mr Rosemont: The first thing to
say about the National Security Strategy from the SBAC perspective
is that when it was published we did support it. We did welcome
the publication of the strategy because we saw it as a good foundation
to bring all the threats and challenges that the Government has
identified across the various departments into one place; it was
a useful bedrock. In terms of how we interface with that, there
were limited references to industry within the document, although
where they were they were encouraging. To give an example, it
talks about the Government wanting to build on the already existing
relationships that it has with industry and from the SBAC's point
of view, as I mentioned earlier, we see that single route through
RISC as the UK's Security and Resilience Industry Supplier's Council.
RISC was not specifically mentioned within the document, nor was
any other specific industry body within it. That is not a criticism;
that is just an observation of where we are at. At the highest
level that is how we see it really. I think we see it as a foundation.
There are many areas with which through RISC, through the Office
of Security Counter-Terrorism, through the industry advisory groups
as John just mentioned I think there is a lot of detailed work
to be going forward. In the area of counter-terrorism there are
the four specific themes that we have heard about and I think
that is an evolving process. As and when that broadens and any
model for industry to broaden out into some of the other areas
is tackled by the National Security Strategy then again I think
SBAC would say that RISC is the most appropriate vehicle for doing
that as the channels of the broad industrial base in security
affairs. We are building internal mechanisms for the SBAC to be
able to support that framework the RISC framework delivering national
security and resilience.
Mr Livingstone: I think there
is a case to say that that National Security Strategy was an opportunity
to put in some hooks on which to hang a strategic security industrial
strategy and it did not quite achieve that. I think industry was
actually mentioned only twice in the paper itself and private
enterprise was mentioned a couple of times. When industry is looking
at a new strategy, it is part of the certainty process certainly
for the bigger hitting industries the larger industries such as
BAE Systems or the Lockheed Martins or the Thale's to actually
see a change in the overall national strategy in terms of expenditure
of monies and devotion of resource to actually start triggering
a change in the industry in order to start changing its strategic
business process, to start potentially entering a different market.
I think for the bigger industries where a lot of intellectual
capital resides and where a lot of the financial power also resides,
I do not think there is enough there to actually say, "Here
is something that could be engaged as a strategic business area
for the longer term". I think we have to look at the long
term purely because I think the globalised terrorism threat is
with us for a multi-generational term. We have some figures in
there which say that in 2001 we expended £1 billion; we are
now spending £2.5 billion and £3.5 billion in this area
by the end of 2011. Unfortunately there is no real illustration
side to the paper about what actually that addresses. Is that
a re-brigading of some parts of the governmental machinery in
terms of revenue and customs and the information services brigading
to become border agencies and therefore coming into the so-called
single security budget? There are a lot of things in there which
perhaps could be taken on in the next step because it is a time
perishable document in itself because it refers to the timeline
until now, ie 2008, so in 2009 it should come under some sort
of review. Maybe the next review can start to put in those hooks
which bigger industry will need to actually trigger a bigger look
at how they define their business process and which markets they
are going to go for.
Mr Umbers: I think as VT we found
it a helpful document but it was very high level in terms of strategic
direction. If you compare that, for example, with the Defence
Industrial Strategy, I think there was a very clear message in
there around which industry could build on, building on what David
has said. There was tangible strategic direction around which
ultimately funding lines and then procurement could then be executed
against that. Industry has been able to align itself to a large
extent against that and a real example is VT's joint venture with
BAE Systems in relation to the naval ship building in the UK.
Ultimately, if industry is looking for the strategy and then be
prepared to invest, what we must all want is that industry is
able to support what strategic direction the Government wants
to go in. That means we need to invest and therefore we need to
know what we are expected to invest in.
Mr Baptiste: I echo some of that.
Industry does find it difficult to engage with the NSR market,
if you like, or the Government within the NSR space. That is partly
because there is so much more in terms of the organisational fracturing.
We have to try to talk to 43 police forces, 50-odd fire brigades
and several major government departments. It is difficult enough
engaging with the MoD and they have spent ten years or so getting
themselves into a state where there is a single point of contact,
although within that obviously there are several areas of stakeholders
that you need to talk to. The NSR market is immature in the sense
that it represents across Government and there is no pan-Government
mechanism, which is one of the reasons why people like RISC get
invented because that is a way of addressing it on an organisation
basis. However, at the end of the day, industry has to be able
to establish a procurement and a valuation and identification
of risk versus capability matrix with the people in Government
who actually need solutions to the problems they have. Trying
to establish that is quite difficult at the moment. There are
undoubtedly capabilities out there that could be used but we are
finding it difficult to engage with the appropriate part of Government
that would be able to identify and evaluate them.
Q5 Mr Borrow: The National Security
Strategy talks about "shifting the overall balance of defence
procurement towards support of current operations" whilst
at the same time "continuing to invest in a broad range of
capabilities for the long term". Are those two objectives
possible?
Mr Higgins: I think they are essential
and I am sure they are possible. Where RISC is focussed at the
moment is on future capabilities, innovation, access to the science
base, but clearly there will need to be a continuing spend on
operational support.
Mr Livingstone: The integrated
strategy, the contest strategy, which includes the pursuit strand
which is how to address, how to interdict the terrorist and particularly
overseas that is of course our operations in Afghanistan and Iraq
has to be totally integrated with what we are trying to achieve
all the way back to our own suburbs here in the United Kingdom.
We have to be able to address the changes in tactics which are
being uncovered in both Afghanistan and Iraq and spending has
to be made in order to protect our troops and to give them the
correct capability. The implications are that there have to be
judgments made on the longer term programmes and also with regard
to this £17 billion worth of savings that are supposed to
be made over the next ten years which I think is the latest figure.
However, we cannot hazard the overall contest strategy because
we cannot generate the kit for our troops who are part of the
overall anti-terrorism strategy.
Mr Umbers: I think it is important
to ensure that when we are procuring that it is coordinated. There
are significant examples across Government where quite a lot of
capability is being procured that actually has applicability elsewhere.
There are examples, for example in our business we have one contract
with a national security agency that has just been extended into
another national security agency which has been, if you like a
force multiplier; it has gone in very, very quickly at negligible
incremental cost, if I can put it like that. That kind of joined
up approach is something that we would very much welcome in relation
to NSR.
Q6 Chairman: Mr Livingstone, you
said in your memorandum, "The long term nature of the current
militant Islamic threat requires adequate capability now but better
capability later later".
Mr Livingstone: Yes.
Q7 Chairman: Is that what we have?
Mr Livingstone: I think probably
we are building towards it in terms of what has actually happened
since the sudden emergence through 9/11 of the Islamist threat.
A lot of pull-through from military into civilian areas such as
gas masks for the police and de-contamination, mobile command
and control and things like that have actually worked to an extent
to increase capability but very quickly and maybe not an awful
lot of the kit has worked as it was designed to do because it
was designed for a battlefield rather than an urban environment
at home, for example. I think that what we are probably seeing
is an emergence of a more coherent strategy as the new larger
programmes such as e-boarders and the national identification
system are actually emerging and there is coherence between them.
That is certainly for the UK domain. That increase in terms of
the coherence between the programmes actually has to be maintained
with each programme being designed and delivered with other programmes
in mind. Whether by design or accident, a terrorist organisation
will always find gaps in the coherence between IT systems and
intelligence management processes. Certainly out of the terrorist
world but back in the law enforcement world the Soham murders
were probably a statistical predictable outcome of incoherence
in the intelligence systems in law enforcement services in the
United Kingdom.
Q8 Mr Jones: We are talking about
kit and we are talking about technology, do you actually think
that law enforcement in this country has really got an understanding
of Islamist threat and how it is using, for example, the internet
and computer technology? Does it really understand the psychological
way it is actually using it?
Mr Livingstone: That is a very
interesting point. The answer is that I think we are still grappling
with the internet based radicalisation and the way that the radical
groups are using the internet certainly to coordinate and communicate
and certainly to push out their message. They are using it very
well and their marketing techniques have become more and more
sophisticated as time goes on. The jihadist websites are very
professionally put together and are multiplying over and over
again. Whether we have actually got a strategy to cope with this
I am not certain. It is very difficult to censor the internet
because the internet was designed to be a resilient structure
that always got its message through to the intended end user.
However, I would like to make a point here that the National Security
Strategy does actually pick out straight away the Islamist threat.
My view which I think is reflected by others is that the Islamist
threat may only be the first of a number, based on their ability
to communicate, to join up and to gather critical mass in the
virtual world rather than in the old days in the physical world
which is actually a little bit more difficult to achieve.
Q9 Mr Jones: I agree about censoring
the internet but I understand some of the most successful individuals
at closing certain sites down are actually religious fundamentalists
in the United States, for example.
Mr Livingstone: Yes.
Q10 Mr Jones: Is there any work being
done on actually recognising that you need to close down some
of this traffic?
Mr Livingstone: I think there
is work being done but I would very much like to understand how
classified that work is before I say anything in this Committee.
I can send in a separate note.
Mr Jones: Thank you.
Q11 Mr Borrow: You identified that
the threats will become greater rather than lesser. If someone
were to say that the movement of procurement funds towards current
operations in Iraq and Afghanistan was preventing adequate response
towards a long term threat in terms of security resilience capability
for these long term threats, would that be a fair assessment to
make or would you feel that the UK Government is putting adequate
resources into these long term issues as well as providing resources
for current operations?
Mr Baptiste: I think the one thing
that the NSS does make clear is that there is no division now
between overseas and domestic threat and response to it; it is
all one integrated threat. In some ways you can look on the NSR
situation as the UK front line and Afghanistan and Iraq and places
are just the overseas front line. I think it is very much a question
of balancing between the two but actually one place has the equivalent
effect in the long term on the other place. I do not think industry
would want to see funding being taken away from current operations
overseas or, indeed, we can talk about current operations in the
UK as well to try to fix the problem in the long term because
they have to be mutually reinforcing. You could not skip on one
and try to fix the other. I think that would be our view.
Mr Livingstone: I hope my point
was not being misinterpreted that we would take money away from
the anti-terrorism measures. I thought the point you had asked
about was at the expense of other defence programmes such as Typhoon
or future submarines or anything like that, and what that balancing
act was going to be. I think that we probably learned that if
you are going to conduct a counter-insurgency campaign as we set
out to do in 2001 in Afghanistan if you take the pressure off
the insurgent organisation even for a shortish time to go and
conduct operations elsewhere that can have a very deleterious
effect on what you are trying to achieve and let the insurgents
re-gain a foothold in the populations which they are trying to
master.
Q12 Mr Jones: Mr Umbers, in your
memorandum you actually say that industry needs to realign to
meet the Government's homeland security requirements. How confident
are you that you actually understand what they are and how good
has the Government been at actually communicating to industry
what its requirements are?
Mr Umbers: When I was talking
about the National Security Strategy I think that is trying to
set out what the Government's strategy view is of the threat that
it sees. From industry's perspective I think there needs to be
more clarity and certainty about how we are going to deliver on
addressing those threats.
Q13 Mr Jones: Is that industry asking
for clarification from Government?
Mr Umbers: I guess my answer is
ultimately that it is both in the sense that industry has an important
role to play. This is the front end of the thinking as to what
these threats are, the potential resolution and how do we address
some of those threats and, in producing the appropriate delivery
mechanisms and value for money mechanisms that can actually make
it affordable and deliverable for Government ultimately.
Mr Rosemont: In terms of articulating
the requirements what the National Security Strategy is trying
to do at the broadest level is to talk about cross-departmental
coordination and cooperation. I think that is really important.
Any question of capabilities and zero sum gains across those,
if there is dialogue between the different agencies then that
is going to help that particular argument and that is a governmental
matter and probably industry would play a supporting role through
RISC and other mechanisms. Specifically on articulating requirements,
what the RISC industry advisory groups try to do in this area
is exactly that, so in the area of CBRNE for instance what has
been asked of industry is to form an advisory group specifically
on that matter, pulling together the various Government agencies
involved in this, including MoD, and I think at that level this
is still work in progress, as I tried to explain earlier it is
encouraging that we have that direct dialogue with the multiple
agencies at that level so that we can then drive through the requirements
and build that trust between the various parties on the side.
That is quite important and I think we need to build on that.
Mr Higgins: That is my point precisely;
that is exactly what the industry advisory groups were set up
to do. However, it is also important to realise that it is not
just a one-way street. This is not just about Government saying,
"Here are the requirements" because industry brings
to the table the art of the possible, its experience in other
geographies and so, through dialogue, you get a better definition
of the requirements, a better understanding of the problem and
a better resolution of possible outcomes. That is precisely what
these industry advisory groups set out to do. They cannot tackle
all the problems simultaneously; these are the first four that
have been identified and I am sure others will arise as more discussions
take place.
Mr Baptiste: There will be direct
discussion between industry and the Government where there is
a known area where we can have a dialogue.
Q14 Mr Jones: How would you prioritise
that work stream?
Mr Higgins: All four will happen
simultaneously. Different people from industry will be brought
to the table on all four and they will run in parallel. Clearly
there is a capacity limit; we could not do 20 but we could probably
do six. I am not sure that there will be too much of a priority
issue from the industry side and I think it is for Government
to make sure that they bring the right people to the table on
each of those IAGs. We have not yet detected any capability or
capacity issues but it is early days.
Q15 Mr Jones: Mr Livingstone, you
said in your memorandum that the National Security Strategy needed
to develop the equivalent of the Defence Industrial Strategy.
Can you tell us how you think that would come together?
Mr Livingstone: As I said, what
it does not have is the hook which allows the equivalent of a
defence industrial strategy to be generated. I think what we would
have to look at in terms of a security industry strategy or whatever
we would call it are the core skills that we would actually need
to develop and then maintain to provide not only capability now
but capability later, things like systems design, if systems are
being introduced into the national security and resilience overall
construct, their overall design to allow open systems so they
are not closed and can only be developed at great cost and time
and so on. I think it is also about organisation. This is where
RISC is becoming increasingly important and I absolutely endorse
what my colleagues have said in terms of the engagement or the
lines of communication which do not really exist at the moment
or are only just beginning to exist right now in terms of passing
down coherent requirement sets into industry, so: this is what
we want to enable us to increase our resilience and security,
but also that other flow which is industry coming up with some
very bright ideas and saying, "How would it work if we did
this?" which is still, I think, an interesting area especially
when you look at things like intellectual property rights and
protection which I think is an issue of raising up somebody's
invention into wider industry to go through a funnel and how to
make sure that that intellectual property is not intercepted at
some stage along the way which will be a discouragement for people
to actually actively engage in the process. I think also the structure
of the communication is the key to it, the communication all the
way from the very top of the National Security Strategy all the
way down to a little software house who is coming up with some
good ideas and how that engagement actually works. Again I think
RISC is making huge strides in that respect but how it is actually
engaged in a National Security Strategy construct is still missing.
Q16 Mr Havard: There are a lot of
references in all of the various papers we have to everything
being "strategic", the necessity for a "strategic
view". You were asked earlier about the Islamist threat and
I get very worried that one population or one group of people
are demonised and that seems to be the immediate thing and you
are not looking forward in terms of all the other possibilities
and that is where it seems to be that each of the institutions
we currently have whether it is the police service, the military
or whatever are looking at it from their point of view. The suggestion,
to do what Kevan says, is to have a National Security Secretariat
of some fashion to do what you said, which is to actually put
forward what the requirements are across the piece rather than
each institution. What I am interested in in asking that question
is how do you think institutionally the state needs to reconfigure
itself to give you that single point of contact that you asked
for earlier on?
Mr Rosemont: The SBAC is not calling
for wholesale governance architecture reform through this. The
way we look at is that it is a Government matter in how it organises
itself and we will support the various strands of the National
Security Strategy, the respective strands of the Counter Terrorism
Strategy underlying that. If and when the agenda broadens out
outside of counter-terrorism matters it already does that, but
specifically through RISC then we will need to look at that in
terms of the resourcing of that particular body and how that works.
We are saying, from the SBAC's point of view, that RISC is the
most appropriate dialogue for doing that at the moment with the
various agencies.
Q17 Mr Havard: I understand that
but the point I am trying to get to is that if you are going to
have the equivalent of a Defence Industrial Strategy who is going
to write it? That needs to be a living activity; it is not a one-shot
activity, it has to be something that is evolved and monitored.
What institution is going to do that and give you the answers
to your integrated teams or whatever it is for any particular
procurement? There is no structure that does that it seems to
me.
Mr Baptiste: It was the Ministry
of Defence because there was a single point of contact there.
By definition in the NSR space there is not a single point of
contact.
Q18 Mr Havard: What do you want?
We do a treaty about intellectual property and sovereignty and
all the rest of it, for example in the United States of America
on JSF. You have raised a lot of interesting questions about how
that would need to be protected, but what do you want as an architecture
in order to be able to respond to it?
Mr Higgins: I think Intellect
would echo Hugo's view on behalf of the SBAC. Clearly there is
frustration about fragmentation but we do not think the answer
is necessarily to create another structure; we think it is much
more about integration and coordination and people working to
a common agenda. Often these can be provided by just the right
culture and the right tools to support the sharing of information.
Going back to Mr Jones' point about Islamist use of modern networking
technologies, there is no reason why we cannot be using modern
social networking technology and shared spaces where we can be
sharing ideas around the common goal. I think a much quicker solution
would be better coordination and better integration behind a common
goal rather than making a wholesale change in the structure of
Government. I have some experience of dealing with the Government's
CIO council in central civil government and they have a model
there where the chief information officers from each of the departments
do come together behind common goals; they have some concepts
of champion assets which I think is a really nice idea. If somebody
holds up that this is a champion asset, the best way of doing
things, then you have to have a really good case for not using
that champion asset. I think there are structures that exist that
reflect the way society works in a modern world using network
mechanisms, using the tools that are available today. Certainly
with SBAC we are not calling for wholesale changes in Government
because I think everything will disappear for five years to get
it worked out. I think it is about using the tools and technologies
that we have today.
Mr Rosemont: In terms of the UK
Government's architecture for security, it is complex and diverse,
there are frustrations around some of the fragmentations. I think
we also recognise in industry that we are engaging with private
operators within the critical national infrastructure, so how
do government structures accommodate thinking across all of that?
I would like to reinforce what John has just said there in that
we need to pull all the relevant stakeholders through that. These
are on-going discussions within RISC about how best to do that,
how best to pull in some of the CNI operators and so on. It is
Government, industry and the private sector working together.
Mr Umbers: From VT's perspective
I would echo some of those views but I think that whatever we
do has to be joined up and connected and it has to have teeth
ultimately because this NSR cuts across virtually every government
department and therefore if we are going to affect how we do things
and what we do then it absolutely has to have teeth and that needs
to feed through into the procurement process that industry needs
to engage with.
Q19 Chairman: We will be coming in
a bit more detail to that coordination issue across departments
in a few moments. Before we do, we are doing a concurrent inquiry
into intelligent surveillance ISTAR and some of the witnesses
to that inquiry have suggested to us that there are technologies
which the Government could be using but which are not being properly
exploited. One example is UAVs, possibly rotary UAVs which could
fit on coastal vessels, for example. Mr Baptiste, I am afraid
I am not talking about communications because we are just about
to come onto communications after this question, but apart from
that are there technologies which are not being fully exploited
and which would benefit national security?
Mr Higgins: RISC has assembled
a list of technology capabilities where we have world-class expertise
and we provided that to the Government. It is a work in progress,
about three pages long, with 15 or 20 examples of technologies.
We would be very happy to provide that to the Committee for examination.
There is a paragraph on each.
Chairman: That would be extremely helpful.
We will move onto communications now.
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