One of the new PM’s first acts was to appoint Peter Ricketts as national security adviser. As this expert Whitehall operator prepares to leave for Paris, he tells Matt Ross how the UK’s security operations have been transformed.

On the desk of Sir Peter Ricketts, in his office next door to the cabinet secretary’s at 70 Whitehall, lies a small white paperweight bearing a single sentence: ‘Diplomacy – the art of letting someone have it your way’. There aren’t enough papers on the tidy little desk to make a paperweight necessary, but the thought clearly appeals to the national security adviser – a man who’s spent 37 years working in Whitehall on foreign affairs.

Ricketts’ CV includes London-based Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) jobs, stints in embassies around the world, and intelligence and defence work: he was posted to NATO back in 1978, and a decade ago chaired the Joint Intelligence Committee. When David Cameron decided to form a National Security Council (NSC) managed by a permanent secretary-level adviser, the former FCO chief was an obvious choice.

For some years, ministers and senior officials had understood the need for better teamwork between Britain’s defence, foreign affairs, intelligence and international development professionals – both strategically and at the frontline. Following accusations that poor collaboration permitted 2005’s 7/7 bombings, weakened UK operations in Iraq and left departments operating at cross-purposes in Afghanistan, the Labour government established a national security cabinet committee, a pooled conflict-prevention budget, and a set of interdepartmental units to work on issues such as Afghanistan’s drug trade. But there were still big questions to answer: the Chilcot Inquiry revealed that Tony Blair had made crucial decisions over the Iraq war without fully involving key departments and ministers. Prior to the 2010 election, Cameron had promised to establish an NSC – and with the formation of a coalition government, the need for more formalised, inclusive security policy-making grew still more acute.

At the heart of the NSC is Sir Peter Ricketts – a man who, like all diplomats, knows that most tensions are best resolved backstage; and, like all intelligence professionals, prizes absolute discretion. In his job, these characteristics are essential: the national security adviser must not only coordinate UK operations in overseas regions of great diplomatic tension, but also referee the relationships between our own defence, intelligence, foreign affairs and overseas development agencies – a task just as likely to call on his skills in diplomacy and conflict resolution. “He always had a reputation as the diplomat’s diplomat, and now there’s a big dose of spook thrown in,” says one former colleague.

Into the limelight
Nonetheless, Ricketts is happy to talk about how the changes introduced under Cameron have altered the UK’s security operations – both in terms of interdepartmental working, and of wider ministerial consultation. The NSC, which held its inaugural meeting on the coalition’s very first day, involves the PM, DPM, chancellor and all the secretaries of state with security-related briefs, and is often attended by top military brass and intelligence chiefs.

Ricketts’ main job, he says, is secretary to the NSC: this involves “deciding, in cooperation with the departments and the prime minister, what issues to discuss”, then chairing an NSC officials’ group – the permanent secretaries of the member departments, plus the intelligence chiefs and the chief of defence staff – to prepare for each meeting. He’s on hand to give advice at the NSC, and ensures that decisions are followed up: “Keeping the agenda flowing, managing the Whitehall process to produce useful, relevant discussions for the NSC is the centrepiece of the role.”

Ricketts is also the line manager for the three heads of the intelligence agencies and the accounting officer for their budgets, and oversees the Cabinet Office’s Civil Contingencies Secretariat. Finally, he’s the PM’s foreign policy adviser, and his “crisis manager” during overseas security incidents such as the recent occupation of Britain’s embassy in Tehran.

All these jobs were carried out before the creation of the NSC, says Ricketts, but “by different parts of the system.” Nowadays, decision-making is more coherent and the NSC’s work ensures that all relevant issues are considered: “Instead of having different groups dealing with different parts of the problem, they’re all handled in a systematic weekly process”.

What’s more, because the NSC meets every week, both ministers and officials “work pretty intensively on this range of issues and therefore become quite expert, even on issues that are not in their departmental area – so when a crisis or a difficult problem arises you’ve got a group who are well-versed in issues across the board.” This broadening of expertise is, says Ricketts, accompanied by a strengthening of interpersonal contacts across departmental boundaries. The NSC offshoot that ran the Libya operation, he recalls, met 62 times at ministerial level and 82 at official level: “Over six months people got to know each other extremely well, and we could pursue individual issues between ministers or officials afterwards. It’s a structure that encourages a Whitehall community on security issues.”

Clear structures and complex problems
It is also a structure, Ricketts believes, that improves the UK’s ability to respond to increasingly complex security challenges; issues such as cybersecurity threats and the tensions between counter-terrorism work and human rights are, he says, “cutting across traditional boundaries between departments, and are best treated with a mechanism like the NSC.” Before the NSC’s creation, he adds, Britain’s security and intelligence work wasn’t undertaken “in such a joined-up and coordinated way. And there was nobody with my job, who’s there to think about this all the time and to ensure that meetings happen and are followed up.”

That follow-up is crucial in making sure that national strategies gain traction within individual departments – and Ricketts argues that, for example, the FCO and Department for International Development (DfID) are now “working closer together now than they ever have.” He doesn’t need to add that in the past, the FCO and DfID sometimes acted in ways that undermined the other’s objectives – for example, by adopting quite different approaches in Afghanistan. “The NSC helps to ensure that all the departments are working into the national security strategy in a coordinated way, and the FCO and DfID’s ‘building stability overseas’ project shows the different departments bringing their two sets of skills together on that whole range of issues to do with building capacity, creating stability, improving security overseas,” comments Ricketts. “DfID now, I think, fully accepts that you can’t have development without security.”

Asked whether the approach taken by the NSC reflects the coalition’s preference for more formalised decision-making processes, Ricketts agrees: “The coalition government has chosen to operate in a very well-prepared and properly organised way, so we have proper meetings with proper agendas and papers prepared for them and minutes taken and circulated.”

While Ricketts would never point this out himself, the picture he paints is very different from the one that emerged in the Chilcot Inquiry hearings. Under Tony Blair, as Chilcot heard, key decisions were taken by a handful of individuals in un-minuted meetings, and cabinet members debating whether to go to war had not been shown the attorney general’s full advice on the legality of invading Iraq. At the NSC, on the other hand, decision-making is deliberately inclusive and formalised. “The prime minister likes to have an official present an issue and then be able to challenge, question, probe that, and ask for other expert opinion from the officials around the table, and then have a political discussion among ministers and take a decision,” says Ricketts. “So it’s a very open, collegial but quite challenging environment where official advice is listened to carefully, tested, and then decisions are made. And that, I think, improves decision-making.”

Collaboration against the colonel
If decision-making has improved, then it must previously have been suboptimal – but Ricketts won’t be drawn on whether a lack of collaboration caused problems in places such as Basra and Helmand. He does, however, talk about the Libyan campaign, which involved the armed forces in the air campaign; the FCO in evacuating British citizens and opening new offices in Benghazi and Tripoli; the Treasury in sanctions and freezing Gaddafi’s assets; and the intelligence agencies in ways that he leaves unspecified (the special forces do not, sadly, get a mention).

“Modern conflict is a very, very complex thing, and ensuring that all those inputs are integrated to achieve your political effect does need a mechanism like the NSC,” says Ricketts. “And the fact that the PM chose to chair so many NSC meetings shows not only the priority that he gave to it, but also his recognition that the political leader has got to be close to all those different lines of action to make sure you get the end result. So I think it did vindicate the NSC”.

The NSC, then, greatly strengthens the high-level connections between strategists and policymakers in government departments and agencies; but Ricketts says that doesn’t eliminate the need for stronger connections at the sharp end. Interdepartmental units can play a useful role here: the Stabilisation Unit’s “expertise and accumulated knowledge”, he says, meant that “we were able to deploy [staff from the] FCO, Ministry of Defence, and DfID quickly and effectively to Benghazi and Tripoli in very difficult circumstances. So we do now have a Whitehall centre of excellence on how to do this, which is going to be very helpful. I’m sure that we shall need it again in future.”

Faced with specific challenges, Ricketts adds, it can be helpful to create temporary interdepartmental units – such as the “oil cell” established to help block Gaddafi’s fuel supplies and keep oil flowing to the rebels. “The NSC can provide overall guidance and coordination, but you still need groups of civil servants working together to deliver the result,” he points out.

The benefits of exchange
More generally, Ricketts argues in favour of more secondments and staff movements between the main security departments. As FCO permanent secretary, he says, “I was keen to facilitate secondments in and out, so that FCO people got more experience outside and we got the benefit of best practice being developed elsewhere.” The fact that the Cabinet Office is “a melting pot of talent from all the different government departments, and beyond that the armed forces, the international agencies and people from outside government” means, he says, that it’s “an exciting place to work; we have people from all kinds of backgrounds.”

From here, we move onto topics where Ricketts is less comfortable. He’s reluctant to say much, for example, on whether the extension of austerity announced in the chancellor’s Autumn Statement will force departments to rethink their future spending plans. “The departments responsible for security have clear responsibilities and obligations and priorities, and we’ve set priorities through the NSC,” he comments. “If they can’t meet their priorities then they’ll need to come back and we’ll need to revisit it in the NSC – but I don’t have any suggestion of that at the moment.”

Sir Peter also expertly dodges a question about how the existing NSC structures and processes could be improved; but behind the scenes, he is something of a reformer – at least on parliamentary scrutiny. The government is in the process of handing the Intelligence and Security Committee greater powers; and an individual close to the committee tells CSW that Ricketts has been both an important supporter of reform, and a key player in improving what was under the last government a very rocky relationship between the committee and the Cabinet Office.

“I think it’s in the interests of government and the intelligence agencies to have a strong parliamentary committee taking an interest in intelligence,” comments Ricketts. “It’s good for any department to feel that it has a committee in Parliament that is following the issues, that questions and challenges and probes and, when they think it’s right, supports what the government is doing.” In Sir Malcolm Rifkind, the government does have a sympathetic chairman; Ricketts praises him as keen to “understand the world of the intelligence agencies, and to be supportive when appropriate.” But Ricketts believes parliamentary scrutiny would be helpful even with a less on-side chair: “It means that you have senior parliamentarians who are well versed in the issues facing the intelligence agencies, and that’s good,” he comments.

A dry stonewall
Are there any risks involved in extending the committee’s powers? “The government looked at the proposals, and judged they were worth supporting,” says Ricketts. It’s the kind of question, he evidently feels, that only a minister should answer. Does he believe that there should be a minister for national security? “It’s up to the prime minister, but I think it works well to have a civil servant who is the coordinator and facilitator and ensures that all the ministers can meet around the NSC table and come up with a collective view,” he replies. “If you had a minister, inevitably that would create boundary issues with the foreign and defence and development secretaries, so my own feeling is that it makes sense to have a civil servant in this role”.

Having established the NSC and shifted the way that government handles security and intelligence issues, Ricketts is leaving at Christmas for a job as ambassador to France. Is it significant that this posting is going to our national security adviser, given Britain’s growing military cooperation with the French? “You’re right that our defence and security links with France are as strong as they’ve ever been. We’ve committed ourselves to 50 years of cooperation on nuclear facilities, which is a pretty strong commitment in a very sensitive area, and the Libya campaign has brought the whole military world closer with their French counterparts,” he replies – but he also points to the strong business links and the vast numbers of Britons who visit France each year. “There’s a whole range of things to do, amongst which, certainly, is continuing the momentum behind this security relationship.”

As Ricketts leaves for France, he’s confident that the NSC and its attendant reforms have bedded in. “It’s a considerable change in the way that Whitehall does security issues, and if I had to bet, I’d say it’s here to stay,” he comments. His replacement, Sir Kim Darroch, is “a very experienced operator”, he adds, and “will bring his own ideas, I’m sure, but the NSC is now well set up and running.”

Ricketts will miss the security adviser’s job. “It’s been very exciting to be close to this new set of ministers, and to be working with them to set up something new,” he says. “You don’t often get that chance in government.” But despite Sir Peter’s legendary ability to keep a secret, his desire to end his career with the Paris posting will surprise very few on Whitehall. “I’ve been a diplomat for 37 years, but I’ve never had a chance to be an ambassador before and it will be great to finish my career doing something that I’ve been training to do for decades,” he concludes. “Now I get the chance to put it into practice.”

He’s exaggerating, of course. Peter Ricketts has been putting his training into practice for decades now. He’s done so overseas, at the UN, at NATO, in Washington – even once before in Paris, back in the mid-‘90s. He’s done so on Whitehall, championing variously the interests of the FCO, the intelligence services, and ultimately those of the prime minister in improving interdepartmental collaboration on security. And now he’ll do so as Her Majesty’s representative to the government of France. Working with Paris will always, of course, be something of a challenge – but Ricketts is clearly very much looking forward to letting the French have it our way. ?

CV Highlights

1974  After a grammar school education and an Oxford English Literature degree, joins the FCO. Sent to the UN, then Singapore
1981  Becomes first secretary at the UK’s NATO delegation
1983  Made assistant private secretary to foreign secretary Geoffrey Howe
1989  Joins the FCO’s Security Policy department as deputy head
2000  Appointed chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee
2001  Rejoins FCO as political director
2006  Made permanent secretary at the FCO
2010  Chosen as the UK’s first national security adviser, Cabinet Office
2012  Begins his new job as ambassador to France

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Written by Matt Ross, CSW