Prime Minister leads tributes to national security chief
National security chief who drove Britain’s anti-terrorism strategy but made as many enemies as friends
THERESA MAY has paid tribute to Charles Farr, the chairman of the joint intelligence committee, who has died following a period of illness.
Mr Farr, 59, who died on Friday afternoon, was one of Whitehall’s most influential figures in national security, serving as director-general of the Office for Security and Counter-terrorism at the Home Office from 2007-2015.
As head of the JIC since Nov 2015, he was responsible for the co-ordination of interdepartmental security intelligence assessments and a close adviser to senior ministers including Mrs May.
The Prime Minister said: “Charles was an outstanding public servant who dedicated his life to national security.
“As home secretary and Prime Minister, I valued his commitment, expertise and advice enormously. He will be greatly missed by his family, friends and all of those who worked with him.”
Cabinet Secretary Sir Mark Sedwill, the head of the Civil Service and national security adviser, said: “Charles and I worked together over many years and his rigorous judgment, penetrating analysis and natural authority will truly be missed.
“He dedicated his entire career to keeping our citizens safe and the country secure, and the nation owes him a huge debt.”
Mr Farr is reported to have served as an MI6 agent in hotspots such as Afghanistan and led the service’s counter-terrorism department before moving to the Home Office.
In 2014 he was caught up in a row between Mrs May, then home secretary, and Michael Gove, then education secretary, over allegations of a hardline Muslim plot to influence Birmingham schools.
Mr Gove was forced to apologise to Mrs May and Mr Farr over press reports of an anonymous source criticising the Home Office for failing to “drain the swamp” of extremism.
Announcing Mr Farr’s death, the Cabinet Office revealed that the Queen had approved a knighthood for him before he died.
The Cabinet Office said a new JIC chairman would be announced “in due course”, with career diplomat Sir Simon Gass overseeing the position until a permanent appointment is made.
SIR CHARLES FARR, the head of the Joint Intelligence Committee, who has died of cancer aged 59, had a remarkably high public profile for a civil servant who spent most of his career in the shadowy world of espionage and counter-terrorism.
Farr became head of the JIC in 2015 following an eight-year tenure as director-general of the Home Office’s Office for Security and Counter Terrorism (OSCT). There he became close to Theresa May when she was Home Secretary, but he also became a bête noire of civil liberties campaigners.
Under the Labour government, Farr played a crucial role in pushing for the 90-day and then 42-day detention limits, along with what was then known as the “interception modernisation project”, which became the Communications Data Bill (otherwise known as the “Snooper’s Charter”), under the coalition government.
The bill, which would have required internet service providers and mobile phone companies to keep records of users’ activity and store it for 12 months, was withdrawn after details were leaked to the press and the Liberal Democrats withdrew their support.
Farr was also a key figure behind the operation of control orders to detain terror suspects, and their successors, Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures (Tpims). He drove the controversial “Prevent” strategy – the government’s attempts to curb the radicalisation of young Muslims – and was also in overall charge of security during the Olympics, when the military took responsibility for air traffic control over London and missile launchers were installed on East London rooftops.
Throughout his career he was simultaneously admired for his industry and effectiveness while being criticised for his treatment of those who failed to meet his exacting standards, or who simply disagreed with him. He inspired loyalty and loathing probably in equal measure. His chances – and probably his hopes – of becoming Chief of MI6 were destroyed by his reputation in personnel matters, while his relations with MI5 were sometimes uneasy.
Later, when head of OSCT, he was reluctant to acknowledge the role of non-violent extremism in creating a climate of justification for terrorism and obstructed measures intended to counter it.
Although Farr had a profile page on the Home Office website, it never featured his photograph and was sketchy about his career before he joined the department, merely stating that he had “served at British embassies” before taking on senior Whitehall positions “dealing with security and counter-terrorism”.
Until he emerged from the shadows in 2012, accompanying Theresa May when she appeared before the home affairs committee to defend her proposed Communications Data Bill, on the few occasions when he testified to Commons select committees, Farr insisted on being heard in secret.
The former chairman of the home affairs committee, Keith Vaz, was said to have exclaimed, when Farr told him he preferred to remain anonymous: “But everybody knows what you look like: you look like an older version of Harry Potter!”
Farr won admirers across politics and among independent security experts. Patrick Mercer, the former chairman of the Commons subcommittee on counterterrorism, once observed that improvements in the government’s counter-terrorism strategy were “principally because of his leadership”, though he acknowledged Farr’s “ruthless” streak.
Charlie Edwards, of the Royal United Services Institute, described him as “… not just an effective operator in the field, he is one of the most committed civil servants you will come across … and most importantly he gets the job done”.
But there were those, both inside and outside government, who felt that his activist, gung-ho style, fiery temper, intimidating intellect and intelligence officer training compromised his ability to give impartial advice, loyally implement decisions made by ministers and work in a collegiate environment – as civil servants are required to do.
“There’s not a lot of ministerial control or public accountability,” one professed “admirer” was quoted as saying. “Charles feels very uncomfortable in the world of domestic politics and doesn’t read it very well.”
In 2015, for example, he let it be known that he did not share the Prime Minister David Cameron’s approach to Islamist extremism after Cameron made a speech in which he claimed that some Muslim communities were “quietly condoning” radicalisation.
At a news conference on Israel, Farr warned against portraying Muslim communities as “intrinsically extremist” and argued that there was a “risk” of oversimplification. Privately, he described the Prime Minister’s speech as “not policy, merely prime ministerial aspiration”.
Complicating matters further was Farr’s private life. In 2012 he was revealed by the Mail on Sunday as being in a relationship with Theresa May’s special adviser Fiona Cunningham (later Hill), raising questions over potential conflicts of interest in a situation where the person who is giving the advice is sleeping with the person who is supposed to be judging that advice.
In 2014 their relationship was cited as a factor during a bitter row between the then Education Secretary Michael Gove and Theresa May over the government’s strategy for tackling extremism.
The dispute erupted after reports of a “Trojan Horse-style” infiltration of a number of schools in Birmingham when The Times quoted a “Department for Education source” claiming that Gove had become concerned about the Home Office’s approach, and in particular the attitude of Farr, who was said to be “beating back crocodiles” instead of “draining the swamp”.
The comments prompted an angry response from the Home Office, which released a confidential letter from May to Gove questioning the Education Department’s response to the “Trojan horse” allegations. “Why is the DFE wanting to blame other people for information they had in 2010?,” a “Home Office source” was quoted as saying. “Lord knows what more they have overlooked on the subject of the protection of kids in state schools? It scares me.”
Tasked with investigating the feud after David Cameron stepped in, the Cabinet Secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood ruled that Gove must apologise to Farr. In turn, Fiona Cunningham was forced to resign for her role “in relation to further comments to The Times”.
Charles Blandford Farr was born on July 15 1959. From Monkton Combe School, near Bath, he read English at Magdalen College, Oxford, staying on to take a Dphil in the Philosophy of Aesthetics.
He joined MI6 in 1985, serving in South Africa and Jordan, and later in Afghanistan, supplying money to Afghan warlords in return for stopping the production of opium. “Bad policy as it turned out,” one contemporary was quoted as saying, “but he did it very well”.
Before being appointed head of the Home Office’s new Office for Security and Counter Terrorism by the Labour Home Secretary John Reid in 2007, he was head of MI6’S counter-terrorism department. At the time of his death, as well as chairing the JIC, he was Professional Head of Intelligence Assessment at the Cabinet Office.
Charles Farr was appointed OBE in 2003 and, shortly before he died, the Queen approved a knighthood for him at the request of Theresa May.
Sir Charles Farr, born July 15 1959, died February 15 2019