The National Security Secretariat (NSS) in the Cabinet Office keeps the UK safe, secure and prosperous by bringing together the UK’s national security community, providing high-quality support to the Prime Minister and the National Security Council and maintaining centre-to-centre relationships internationally. Working within the wider Cabinet Secretariat and led by the Prime Minister’s National Security Adviser (NSA), we assist the Prime Minister and the Cabinet in the development, coordination and implementation of its highest priority objectives.
Our overarching strategy is set out in the here, which describes the Government’s vision for the UK’s role in the world over the next decade, and the action we will take to 2025.
The NSS value professional and personal development for all of our staff and recognise that a continued focus on learning and development (L&D) will enable us to grow our capability. We are also committed to fostering a culture which welcomes new ideas and fresh perspectives, and supporting diversity and inclusion, including through flexible patterns and ways of working.
We can offer stretching and engaging work to enhance career development and gain highly transferable skills. We expect our staff to rise to new challenges, demonstrating the agility required to respond to urgent and changing events, and to work collaboratively to achieve results both within NSS and across government. A role with the NSS is a real opportunity to impact the lives of our citizens and make a difference every day.
The Investment Security Unit (ISU) sits within NSS and leads the government's national security investment screening regime, including through advising the Deputy Prime Minister on the use of the National Security and Investment (NSI) Act. This includes detailed assessments of national security risks arising from investments into the UK economy, as well as wider policy and strategic development and communications. The ISU works closely with departments across the government on both specific NSI cases and wider issues, sitting at the heart of a growing economic security community.
The ISU is an exciting and diverse place to work, with teams delivering a range of operational, policy, analytical and international activity. We are a welcoming and inclusive team, actively seek a broad range of skills and perspectives to enable working across the breadth of national security, economic and international policy. We strongly encourage applications from individuals from under-represented groups.
The Policy Team owns the policy and strategy for the NSI Act, ensuring the legislation and its use remains effective and proportionate and leading strategic stakeholder communication, including with businesses and Parliament.
The Risk Assessment team leads investigations of NSI cases to advise the Deputy Prime Minister, using internal expertise and close relationships with other departments and legal advisers to identify national security risks and mitigations. As part of the investigations, the team engages with companies and their legal advisers whose transactions have been called in. This requires balancing the need to be open and transparent; ensuring businesses have a positive experience of the National Security and Investment process whilst balancing commercial sensitives and national security interests.
The role will span both the Policy and Assessment teams, driving greater joint working.
Responsibilities
Key responsibilities for the post will include:
- For the Policy Team, you will lead public engagement on the NSI Act, including developing strategic stakeholder engagement plans and speaking to a large number of interested stakeholders. You will support senior officials and ministers to do the same. You will consider the key messages to land, using knowledge of the audience, ministers’ priorities, and the NSI Act itself. As part of this, you will lead on drafting briefings for Ministers and senior civil servants for public engagements. You will also work on the strategic side of policy communications and public messaging.
- For the Risk Assessment Team, you will lead engagement with businesses, becoming a subject expert and working to improve consistency in how we approach these engagements. This requires supporting the Risk Assessment case lead to coordinate and judge what can be communicated to external parties whilst balancing the need to be transparent without prejudicing the final outcome of a case. As part of this, you will work with case leads to coordinate engagement with the ISU and other government departments and external parties. You will act as a centre of expertise on domestic handling on major NSI cases, using your expertise to advise case leads on drafting letters, communicating with affected parties, and leading engagement with Parliament on these cases.
- In this work, you will be producing high-quality written and oral advice to support senior officials when engaging with stakeholders. You will manage the implementation of a comprehensive calendar of events ensuring the seamless delivery of engagements, considering the wider strategic objectives of this programme of engagement. You will also conduct research to gather business insight and intelligence to better understand what their priorities and interests are.
- There will be opportunities to support wider casework, depending on case volumes, and other priority work across ISU. This could include leading on NSI investigations into acquisitions and crafting remedies imposing conditions on these acquisitions.
