MI5 H Branch

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H Branch is a part of the UK Security Service (MI5) with responsibility for overseas liaison; finance and audit; policy and planning; and information management.[1]

Earlier incarnations

In the 1916 War Office reorganisation which created MI5, H Branch had responsibility for the secretariat, registry and administration.[2]

Modern version

In MI5's 1988 structure, H Branch had been recreated with responsibility for overseas liaison; training; finance and audit.[3]

In 1990, P Branch founded by Sir Antony Duff to review the service's organisation was wound up and its policy and planning functions incorporated into H Branch. In February 1990, Duff's successor Sir Patrick Walker tasked officer H1/0 to produce a strategic review of the Service. The result a year later was greeted with little enthusiasm within the Service. Jonathan Evans, then H1B/1, recalled a 'stormy' management board meeting at which Walker clashed with the MI5 legal advisor David Bickford.[4]

In MI5's 1994 structure S Branch and its information management functions were incorporated into H Branch.[5]

Stephen Lander became Director of H Branch in 1994. According to official MI5 historian Christopher Andrew, Lander took the "risky but ultimately successful" decision to upgrade MI5's troubled Unix-based word processing system GIFTED CHILD, (nicknamed SPOILED BRAT) to a Microsoft-compatible system.[6]

Authors Mark Hollingsworth and Nick Fielding offer a more critical account of the episode. They report that MI5 spent four years attempting to develop an in-house system codenamed GRANT before Lander unilaterally decided to scrap the project, which had cost £25 million, in 1995 and buy an off-the-shelf Windows system. Only 40 per cent of MI5 staff had access to the new system by early 1997.[7]

In 1997, former MI5 officer David Shayler highlighted H Branch's role when he complained about what he considered excessive bureaucracy in obtaining warrants for telephone tapping:

You have to go through a deputy assistant director of the branch, then an assistant director, a director, over to H Branch [Corporate Affairs], back to the desk officer, back to H Branch and then the Deputy Director General would see it. Finally [after his or her approval] you could probably go ahead.[8]

Structure

The following list is taken from the 2003 edition of Hollingsworth and Fielding's Defending the Realm: Inside MI5 and the War on Terrorism and may now be somewhat dated.[9]

  • H1 and H2: Liason with Whitehall, the police and the media, covert financial enquiries, management policy including information technology.
  • H4: Finance.
  • R2: Main Registry
  • R5: Restricted 'Y-boxed' files.
  • R10: Registry for temporary files.
  • R20: Administers GCHQ material.

People

Directors

Others

Notes

  1. Christopher, Andrew, The Defence of the Realm, Allen Lane, 2009, p.864.
  2. Christopher, Andrew, The Defence of the Realm, Allen Lane, 2009, p.84.
  3. Christopher, Andrew, The Defence of the Realm, Allen Lane, 2009, p.862.
  4. Christopher, Andrew, The Defence of the Realm, Allen Lane, 2009, pp.779-780.
  5. Christopher, Andrew, The Defence of the Realm, Allen Lane, 2009, p.864.
  6. Christopher, Andrew, The Defence of the Realm, Allen Lane, 2009, p.806.
  7. Mark Hollingsworth and Nick Fielding, Defending the Realm: Inside MI5 and the War on Terrorism, André Deutsch, 2000, p.54.
  8. Mark Hollingsworth and Nick Fielding, Defending the Realm: Inside MI5 and the War on Terrorism, André Deutsch, 2000, p.89.
  9. Mark Hollingsworth and Nick Fielding, Defending the Realm: Inside MI5 and The War on Terrorism, André Deutsch, 2003, pp.320-321.