UK Security Vetting Failure
 

A truly damning and terrifying report into the complete failure of the UK Security Vetting system has been issued.

Understaffed, under resourced and close to complete failure - this is a deeply worrying read on many levels.

https://committees.parliament.uk/com...urity-vetting/
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Surely not related to the 4 Prime ministers , 6 chancellors of the Exchequer, god knows how many Defence Ministers etc we've had since 2019?

Why should in itself make that any difference?

Do those roles get trained up to do a bit of vetting on the side? (Rhetorical!)

When everything is changing - budgets, people, political aims. it just stops everyone (especially a Civil Servant) in their tracks - who do you report to? Where is the guidance?? where is the budget?? who is in charge (no-one it seems!) , who takes the rap??

Most people doing the actual vetting are admin clerks. They will still report to the same people and still follow the same process regardless of who is PM, Defence Sec or Chancellor. Yes they are understaffed, but changing PMs etc hasn't changed anything that counts for day to day vetting of people.

Given that the Cabinet Office is run by a bunch of permanent secretaries, many of whom in office for several years, probably not. Particularly not Defence Ministers as vetting is not an MoD output.

https://www.data.gov.uk/dataset/ff76...roles-salaries

This is interesting. You'd think that a PermSec on £200k pa (more than the PM IIRC) and a couple of SCS3 on £150k pa (~10% less than the PM) might be able to sort that out?

Still - Brexit, Tories, Grrrr eh?

No - simply Corporate inertia - seen it in several companies when a takeover was announced - no-one does anything

Its not good, but it does happen.

The thrus seems to be that targets have been missed in terms of how long it takes to get a vetting completed. What it doesn't seem to consider is whether there are more people needing a clearance for instance. Failure to me would be that people who shouldn't get a clearance have been granted said clearance in order to meet a performance target.

Is this true? All of my PV and enhanced and various other bells and whistles appeared to be carried out by ex-officers or ex-police officers and seemed to me to be very thorough.

At the other end of the process, whenever one of my people was up for vetting, again the questions asked of me were searching.

Have things gone down the pan, and, if so, why?

No they haven't gone down the pan.

DV is just as thorough as always.

Good, very good. I like the idea of the younger generations having a hard time.

There is a figure quoted (I shall have to try and dig it up) that shows the number of people applying for clearances far exceeds the forecast. This is added to by failed IT projects and lack of staff following the transition from MOD to Cabinet Office.

There is work ongoing with industry to allow the NSV to better forecast demand, and it seems they are almost there with sorting out the basic elements of their IT, but currently the system is in an absolutely shambolic state and has almost ground to a complete halt in the last 6 months.

One question is why has the number of people who require clearance gone up suddenly?

My bet is that with the Chinese IT scare a whole herd of extra jobs have been deemed sensitive and so are requiring clearance. And of course no-one thought through the implications for vetting.

I've been through the process at 3 times in various jobs and, as with Downsizer, I though they were very thorough and very polite.

For the basic clearances such as BPSS which form the majority of them it's done by admin clerks, DV and other enhanced clearances still uses the tough questions approach that you are accustomed to.

As for the number of clearances Asturias mentions, it's been a combination of things. There were delays due to covid which lead to extensions and higher number of people going through renewal at the same time, the consequences of which we are still feeling. There have also been a higher number of people needing their clearances increased for various reasons, adding to the overall number.

One slightly unexpected reason is - believe it or not - the Census. The solution to GDPR and similar issues that might have allowed identification of individuals during processing of returns led to the ONS deciding to treat that data as one might treat data that is above O-S, which led to a requirement for SC clearance for a number of ONS staff. Barking decision IMO, but that's the CS for you......

A friend in a fairly sensitive post reckons he's almost unsackable as it took them 6 months to clear him and they're now far, far longer to add bodies in his area.

Yep, and with a certain organisation trying to staff up for a significant major long term expenditure project currently, and struggling as that part of civilian industry pretty much stopped training people in the UK a decade or more ago, for some roles that they need, as cheaper to import the skills from abroad, or in most case simply outsourcing the work to India etc., so while its fine to be very picky about skills sets on one hand, if the people are not there with those skills sets AND can't satisfy getting through required clearance they have a continued problem. They choose someone, start the process, but can't offer a contract, and when finally that person passes clearance to be able to offer a contract, so long has passed, they have found another role that they don't wish to leave, so they are back to square one again, and so quite often the resource is being used to clear someone that is now not needing the clearance, and that resource now has to be used all over again.....this creates extra demand on the system. Then there is the issue that people with the right skills sets, can't get through clearance, again, back to square one. Some people with the right skills sets, and ability to gain clearance are also oddly being rejected by said organisation much to the consternation of another organisation.....

What's the betting that vetting is handicapped by Data Protection laws?

"Sorry, we can't tell you that. Data Protection"...

I left the RAF last year and for the last 20 years of my time I was DV cleared. I obtained a job with a civilian company which had contracts with various Government agencies for which I needed my DV to be resurrected as well as some other checks which one of the agencies required. After 6 months of waiting for the clearances to come through I had to get a job elsewhere due to financial pressures, so my original job had to be knocked on the head. Had the clearances come through in a reasonable time then I wouldn't be in my current job. I have a lot of sympathy with the original civilian company as they couldn't get me started until the clearances and other checks came through, so they are back at stage one and have to recruit somebody else and again wait for the clearance process to give them the green light

Absurd. What are the chances of a person with continuous DV over a long period suddenly becoming a bad bet? Many of the old PV DV fail aspects have almost become societal norms. Sleeper baddies being resurrected is more or less the stuff of spy fiction. Why not treat cases such as above with some sense, and put the new recruit in a less sensitive post until the clearance wanders through?

The system is BLXd anyway: I was once asked to subscribe to the vetting of one of mine who, I reported, was devious, untrustworthy, selfish, indulged in prostitutes and exchanged hard core. Yet he/she/it got the job. I half expected to be vetted again as it was clear that I had suddenly become a liar.