Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the adequacy of their vetting procedures when awarding contracts for Government support services.

Her Majesty’s Government requires that National Security Vetting is conducted to the same standard for all employees in sensitive roles, including those working for government support services. Vetting is conducted centrally by United Kingdom Security Vetting (UKSV). Vetting policy, which sits with the Cabinet Office, applies equally to government personnel and private-sector employees on government contracts.

Cabinet Office encourages all government departments to uphold a set of minimum personnel security standards and these may be applicable for certain industry roles. ‘Support services’ is a broad category and could include everything from cleaning and catering to IT provision, security and administration. In that context different roles will have very different requirements and approaches are flexed depending on the risk. It is the responsibility of individual government departments to determine their security needs for each contract that they enter into. The requirement for vetting will be decided based on a given role’s access to sensitive assets, facilities or materials.

The procedures by which a private-sector company or contractor can gain a vetting clearance are currently designed to prioritise security as opposed to ubiquity; individuals must be able to demonstrate they will be working on an active government contract before being granted a clearance. This ensures tighter control of who is cleared, for what purpose and for how long.

A comprehensive, cross-government review of National Security Vetting is underway. This will examine potential reforms in vetting for the private-sector – including how we can improve the timeliness of security clearance and reduce the administrative burden of it for small and medium enterprises.