Report identifies critical gaps in UK National Security Strategy

A new report on the UK’s National Security Strategy (NSS) has identified capability delivery and funding gaps, calling for more transparency from the government. 

Authored by the UK Parliament’s Joint Select Committee on the NSS, the report – published on 27 March – was commissioned to scrutinise the strategy. 

The NSS, released in August 2025, aims to deliver a framework for increasing UK national security, building strength internationally, and bolstering “sovereign and asymmetric capabilities”. 

However, in the report, the committee said: “We are unclear on the adequacy of cross-government accountability, and funding for commitments.” 

On funding, the report raises concerns around the 1.5% of GDP planned to enhance resilience and security by 2027. This is intended to support NATO in its target to spend overall 5% of GDP on defence by 2035 (alongside 3.5% of core defence spending). 

This “additional resilience” capability includes, for example, improving the physical and cyber security of critical national infrastructure.

Besides spending concerns, the committee report found that “a detailed plan for the development of sovereign capabilities is also lacking”, with no definition for ‘sovereign capabilities’ in the NSS.  

Without a definition, industry stakeholders giving evidence for the report said that they are unsure what this means for their multinational supply chains. 

Moving forward, the report calls on the government to combat these issues by: 

• Strengthening buying signals for industry 

• Providing detail on funding mechanisms to support defence SMEs 

• Ensuring more robust accountability on departmental security commitments 

• Providing clarity around the 1.5% of GDP security and resilience funding 

• Undertaking more detailed planning on critical infrastructure protection 

• Defining ‘sovereign capabilities’ 

Beside these points, the report advocates for an improved “national conversation” on security, advising the government that “recent strategy documents do not constitute a national conversation (despite contributing to it).”