Before last week, the ministers attending were the PM as chairman, Deputy Prime Minister, Dominic Raab, Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, Foreign Secretary, James Cleverly, Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, Defence Secretary, Ben Wallace, Mr Dowden and minister for security, Tom Tugendhat.
Mr Shapps and Ms Donelan will now join that line-up. In a report in 2021, the parliamentary national security strategy committee called for the NSC to be reformed to reflect modern challenges. The MPs and peers criticised the NSC over both its response to the pandemic and the withdrawal from Afghanistan, saying: “Both issues demonstrate why the UK needs a strong and purposeful NSC in a fast-changing landscape of complex risks, shifting global power and rapid technological innovation. Yet they also exemplify, in different ways, our inquiry’s most negative findings about the ability of the NSC to make and implement strategy and to plan for crises with rigour.
Darren Jones, who sits on the national security strategy committee as well as chairs the Business and Energy Select Committee, told: “The National Security Council was set up to provide a space for ministers to think strategically, plan for the long term and ensure that mitigations against national risks are implemented.
“In practice, it has become a space for operational issues. Whilst I welcome the changes, the test is whether ministers use these meetings effectively.”