Parliament’s Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy is launching a call for evidence for its new inquiry on the UK’s National Security Strategy.
In June 2025 the UK Government published its National Security Strategy, which focuses on the UK’s security at home, strength abroad, and sovereign and asymmetric capabilities. In the document, the Government warned that it would no longer be enough for the UK to “manage risks or react to new circumstances” and emphasised that we need to “mobilise every element of society towards a collective national effort”. It further warned that, for the first time in many years, there was a risk of the UK homeland coming under direct threat. The MPs’s inquiry will examine whether the National Security Strategy sets out the right priorities, how tensions between different objectives will be reconciled, and how its core commitments will be funded and delivered.
The inquiry will also explore the details of policy choices – particularly around challenging areas such as China or national resilience – and how well the Strategy joins up different parts of Government.
Matt Western, Labour MP for Warwick and committee chair, said: “The Government’s new National Security Strategy is a huge moment for the UK’s approach towards resilience, defence and security. It’s right that Parliament takes a close look at exactly how its ambitions will be achieved.
“How will all of this fit together, are there any gaps, and how will competing priorities be reconciled? In an interconnected world, this strategy needs to bring together the vast machinery of Government and mobilise the private sector to deliver on national security objectives. Delivery will be key. Our inquiry will examine the choices and trade-offs, and how well the key objectives are being delivered across Government.”
Background
The National Security Strategy (NSS, sub-titled, ‘Security for the British People in a Dangerous World’) was released soon after the Strategic Defence Review (SDR). The defence and security think-tank RUSI notes the dark tone of the NSS, placing the UK in a world with more potential for ‘direct confrontation with adversaries’, and a commitment to spend 5 per cent of GDP on national security (including 3.5pcon defence).
Meanwhile the UK Public Survey of Risk Perception, Resilience and Preparedness, funded by the Cabinet Office, is a nationally representative survey of adults in the UK, carried out in order to understand what people think about different types of emergencies, and what steps – if any – they have taken to prepare for them. A majority (66pc) of survey respondents thought that the number of emergencies/disasters would increase in the next ten years, while 19pc said the number would increase a lot and 47pc saying the number would increase a little; compared with 7pc stating that the number of emergencies would decrease.
Also recently released by the Cabinet Office is the UK Government Resilience Action Plan.
