Tories to propose security council

The Conservative are to call for the creation of a US-style National Security Council.

Tory leader David Cameron will this week claim that better co-ordination is needed of foreign, defence and domestic security policy.

Shadow security minister Baroness Neville-Jones, a former head of the government's joint intelligence committee, said on Sunday that the party would also call for the creation of a special unit of several thousand troops for deployment in case of national emergency and disaster.

She said that such situations should take priority over interventions abroad.

The peer told BBC One's Andrew Marr Show that: "We would like to do something which takes its inspiration from the American model of the National Security Council.

"But we would include - unlike the Americans - all the aspects which they call homeland security, all the internal stuff as well.

"We want to try to bring foreign policy, defence policy, internal security issues which dominate so much of our consciousness now, and also things that really go to the underlying causes that lead people into the paths that might take them off into terrorism - the issues of national cohesion."

She added that the armed forces' overseas commitments may have to be reduced in order to ensure that there is capacity to respond alongside the emergency services at home.

"Don't you think that domestic security and domestic safety comes absolutely first? I do," she said.

"If it means we can't send troops to Kosovo, that's a correct order of priorities.

"It is not that the military don't perform well now, but their presence can't be guaranteed.

"We must be able to guarantee them. It shouldn't be a question of what is available now."