Professor Anthony Glees Dr Julian Richards University of ... - PCG

One of the most important points to understand was that the requirements ofthe system had to be informed by the threat. Across government there hadbeen concern some years ago that the vetting system itself was perhaps fallinginto disrepute because people were relying on it too heavily and applying it in amuch too blanket fashion across a number of organisations across contracts andso on. A first task, therefore, had been to revisit the purpose of vetting. If thequestion were put as to why so many people been put through this process(some 250,000 a year) the answer was that the vast majority of thoseclearances were at CTC and SC levels and not the more intrusive and involvedDV level of vetting. Even so, they were part of national security vettingnonetheless and this situation would not change.If one were to ask why organisations were relying so heavily on national securityvetting, one answer was that within government and across the governmentsector, an appropriate level of recruitment controls had been found to belacking. It had followed that end-users might have been too reliant on nationalsecurity vetting in a lot of instances instead of more appropriate recruitmentcontrols. One outcome of this had been that much work was done to develop amore appropriate set of recruitment controls for government contractors andpeople with access to government assets. These had been set down in theBaseline Personnel Security Standard which, again, had been made available bythe Cabinet Office on its website. 5The Baseline Standard and the recruitment checks had become a very importantelement in the discussion because those checks were very important checks ofidentity, something that the vetting process itself largely presupposed wouldhave been already checked and carried out. The recruitment checks – theBaseline Standard itself – had therefore become fundamental to underpinningthe vetting process. It had become clear that weight needed to be taken off thevetting process and that organisations needed to shift more towards recruitmentchecks, allowing them to ask themselves whether they would really be obliged toput people through the more intrusive, more labour-intensive, resource-5 http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/media/45160/baseline-personnel-security-standard.pdf33