Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government how many people employed by the private sector are currently awaiting security vetting by United Kingdom Security Vetting.

As Minister for State at the Cabinet Office I am able to provide a response in relation to National Security Vetting (NSV). UKSV acts as the service provider for NSV across His Majesty’s Government (HMG). NSV remains a separate and distinct process to recruitment and onboarding processes and provides an additional personnel assurance within both public and private sector for roles and projects that require access to the sensitive assets and Protectively Marked Materials (PMM).

The government does not comment on the workings of the NSV process at the strategic or tactical level for security reasons and thereby details of numbers awaiting NSV cannot be shared. However the following information may be useful.

The Baseline Personnel Security Standard (BPSS) is not a level of NSV, nor conducted by United Kingdom Security Vetting (UKSV); it is a separate pre-employment check conducted locally by recruiting departments. As this is a localised departmental element, no central record of data for BPSS is held within HMG at this time.

Following a stabilisation programme initiated in 2023, there have been sustained and stable improvements in performance against Key Performance Indicators (KPI) across all service levels of National Security Vetting clearances which includes Counter Terrorist Check (CTC), Security Check (SC) and Developed Vetting (DV). Across core services:

• Accreditation Checks (AC), a level of NSV, primarily used by the aviation industry, are being completed in five days or less.

• The KPIs for both CTC and SC are 25 days, on 29th February 2024 96% of cases were being processed within that time frame.

• The KPI for DV is 95 days; on 29th February 2024 93.48% of initial DV cases were being processed within that time frame.The Performance Indicator for DV Renewals is also 95 days; on 29th February 2024 13.78% of these cases were being processed within that time frame. However we expect that DV renewals submitted from 1st April 2024 will be delivered within the KPI of 95 days.

The requirements for security cleared roles across HMG vary and are set by individual department and partner agencies dependent on duties and level of access to Protectively Marked Materials (PMM). It is, therefore, not possible to provide confirmation of the performance of NSV in relation to specific roles. In line with the practice followed by successive administrations, the Government does not otherwise comment on security matters, including average actual processing times.