The head of the government’s counter-terrorism strategy has described the “difficult dialogue” with the departments whose cooperation he needs.

The Office of Security and Counter-Terrorism (OSCT), led by director general Charles Farr, coordinates all the central government departments, agencies, local authorities, and other groups involved in counter-terrorism work.

In an interview with Whitehall & Westminster World, Farr said: “Different departments will have different perspectives on this problem and, to some degree, will prioritise it in different ways.”

The Department for International Development (DfID), which he gave as an example, is spending £450m on poverty reduction over the next three years in Pakistan – a country of considerable interest to counter-terrorism specialists in the UK. Only last month, prime minister Gordon Brown described the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan as the “crucible of terrorism”.

The OSCT and Farr are interested in where that money is being spent and whether that money, “without detracting from [DfID’s] original purpose of relieving poverty, may be able to support some of the objectives we have”, said Farr.

This has been “quite a difficult dialogue, but one that we have been able to develop quite significantly over the last two years and you can see that reflected in the Pakistan country strategy that DfID have developed,” he added. “We have understood each other’s perspective and have found a way of coordinating.”

The government’s strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, announced last week by the prime minister after his visit to the countries and backed with £1bn over four years, sets out this coordination in further detail, Farr added.

While counter-terrorism has been well-funded – spending doubled after the September 2001 attacks and is set to rise from £2.5bn a year in 2007-08 to £3.5bn in 2010-11 – Farr does not believe it will be impervious to the financial pressures that all departments are now under.

“I’m quite sure that we will be asked to look at whether we can get efficiencies out of the system and that is only right and proper, because counter terrorism has grown enormously over the past three or four years,” he said.

It was natural that OSCT’s stakeholders would need to show they were spending appropriately and providing value for money, he added.