The defence secretary came under renewed pressure when three former security chiefs said that a decision to move defence out of a Whitehall-wide review was a “backward step”.
Lord Ricketts, a former national security adviser, said in a veiled swipe at Gavin Williamson that he thought the move was driven by politics.
Supported by military chiefs and a cross-party selection of MPs, Mr Williamson had convinced Theresa May to break his department out of the national security capability review to stave off cuts to the military and make the case for more funding.
Lord Ricketts said it was contrary to efforts over the past 10 to 15 years to make all departments that dealt with defence and security issues more joined up. “I can imagine the politics behind it but I think it’s a backward step to separate out defence and deal with it separately from other national security issues,” he told a group of MPs and peers. He was speaking alongside Sir John Sawers, former head of MI6, and Robert Hannigan, former director of GCHQ.
Dame Margaret Beckett, chairwoman of the joint committee on the national security strategy, asked if politics was the only reason for the separation. Lord Ricketts said: “As far as I can see, that must be the reason because it had been part of the package until the late stage in the process.”
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Mr Hannigan said that he agreed with Lord Ricketts. “Pulling it apart now doesn’t seem very coherent,” he said. “Cyber is a perfect example of why it doesn’t work to do it separately. It cuts right across public safety, security, intelligence through to defence and it is quite hard to see how you break it up.” Sir John also agreed with Lord Ricketts but accepted that the hole in the MoD budget “was a problem”.
Mr Williamson, 41, has been under pressure since he revealed having a brief office romance while married. He also faced accusations, later dismissed by the MoD, of misusing or leaking to The Daily Telegraph confidential information about Russian threats.
