Helen MacNamara

Some of this, I'm sorry, Chris, I will give it my best shot.

But this feels quite a lot like some of those Brexit rows.

Yes, it does.

You're in the right place.

Malt House compromise, meaningful votes, all of this stuff.

So the very basic thing is there's a developed vetting service that does vetting for everybody who needs security clearance.

Fine.

Mostly policemen, ex-policemen.

kind of they go around they do their best then they do a very kind of mechanical process if you like actually that's developed betting there are departments in whitehall that have to do it differently because it's not just most of the time for domestic civil servants developed betting is basically about you personally are you trusted can you be blackmailed but it's pretty vanilla and it doesn't really make that much of a difference if you're a civil servant in the department for communities and local government or

I'm sure there are people who develop betting in the Department for Education.

But do you know what I mean?

It's like it doesn't make any difference.

It makes a real difference in terms of what the balance of risk is for a security clearance if you're somebody who works in the diplomatic service.

Because you're going to have a much more interesting life history, probably.

You're going to have much more difficult to judge equities within your own family.

So you genuinely do if you're the Foreign Office.

What do you mean by equities in your own family?

Well, so say if I'm, it doesn't really matter if I'm going to be a civil servant on domestic policy, who, what my family background is, who I'm related to, what's, you know, you would hope.

If you're a foreign, if you're a foreign office civil servant and you, or you're going to go and join the foreign office and you're going to go into a particular part of the world for us in terms of security clearances and risk mitigation.

It's another thing we've heard too much about this week, probably.