MPS call for clarity on Cummings’s role in defence review
DOMINIC CUMMINGS’S role in the Integrated Defence and Security Review must be investigated, the head of the defence select committee has said.
The Daily Telegraph has learnt Boris Johnson’s chief aide has been twice invited to appear before the committee. He declined on the first occasion and has yet to respond to the second.
Tobias Ellwood, its chairman, said the second request was extended after it was revealed that Mr Cummings had been granted permission to visit five classified national security sites, ahead of the review. Mr Ellwood said: “It’s unclear what his role is and yet he’s happy to let it be known he is visiting clandestine agencies. We aren’t even clear as to who is running the report. If we don’t know who is running it then how can we test the parameters in which this review is being conducted?”
He said his committee called for Mr Cummings “to be treated in the same way any minister, general or civil servant is treated” after it became clear “he has a far greater involvement than anyone anticipated – you can’t have someone with the mindset of Dominic Cummings running a coach and horses through our defence architecture without proper scrutiny and transparency.”
Mr Ellwood added he was aware of “frustrations” within the Tory party about Mr Cummings’s “conduct of this Integrated Review”.
A Government source said Mr Cummings had been invited to the secure sites and it was “good he is”.
John Healey, the shadow defence secretary, previously said “plans for Britain’s future defence and security should not be in the hands of a political adviser” after the revelations in July that Mr Cummings had been given clearance to visit such sensitive sites.
It came after the committee published the report, In Search of strategy – the 2020 Integrated Review, which Mr Ellwood said was born of “a frustration that successive reviews in defence and foreign policy have not met the ambitions that were originally targeted”.
He called for “greater transparency” over who was leading the review and “an honest conversation with the public and real limitations of what our Armed Forces are capable of doing in the modern age”.
His comments were backed by Bob Seely, who sits on the foreign affairs select committee. “I don’t know who is leading the review,” Mr Seely said. “It would be good to have a named individual who oversees the contributions, and who can talk publicly about it.”
Mr Seely added: “Those running this review need to interact with as many different groups as possible … what we need is substantial debate, because we have a once in a generation chance to reset our international policy.”