Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for the Cabinet Office, what recent assessment he has made of the effectiveness of the recently established National Security Strategy Implementation Groups in improving cross-departmental working.

The 2018 National Security Capability Review (NSCR) introduced Fusion, a new approach designed to improve our collective approach to national security and ability to use all of the UK’s capabilities and policy levers to tackle complex national security questions. Senior Responsible Owners (SRO) are assigned to each of the National Security Council’s (NSC) priorities, each supported by an NSSIG to develop robust advice to the NSC on both strategy and implementation.

The NSCR also set out the intention to conduct an Annual Posture Review (APR), the first of which took place earlier this year and is the most substantive recent review of Fusion as a whole. A summary of the key findings from the APR can be found at paragraphs 5.11-5.12 of the Third Annual Report on the National Security Strategy and Strategic Defence and Security Review 2015.