Whitehall 'muddling through'

The UK's national interest is threatened by a lack of strategic thinking at the heart of government, a committee of MPs warned today.

The public administration select committee identified a tendency for Whitehall to "muddle through" and pointed to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars as examples where there has been a lack of over-arching strategy.

The committee has called for the remit of David Cameron's National Security Council and National Security Adviser Sir Peter Ricketts to be expanded to include a central co-ordinating role on national strategy.

The report comes on the day when Sir Peter unveils the National Security Review, which is expected to identify terrorism and cyber-attacks as the two biggest threats facing the UK.

But the respected foreign affairs think-tank Chatham House warned that the review - which was commissioned by the Prime Minister in May - had been conducted too quickly, with "limited time for strategic reflection and ideas".

The report welcomed Foreign Secretary William Hague's promise earlier this year that the new coalition government would "develop a national strategy for advancing our goals in the world".

But it warned that the UK's capacity to think strategically had been undermined by long-standing assumptions that national interests are best served by the special relationship with the USA and economic links within the European Union.