#115: The Rt Hon Stephen McPartland, Former MP and Minister for National Security

0:00AI's allowed them to basically put rocket boosters under those opportunistic attacks. and what may have been taking 100 days, they can probably do in 100 hours.

0:15Back in May 2024, the McPartland Review was published, an independent assessment commissioned by UK government to explore, amongst other things, how cybersecurity can act as a catalyst for economic growth. It was led by the Right Honourable Stephen McPartland, the four-time elected MP and former minister for national security under Boris Johnson's cabinet. In this conversation, Stephen reflects on his unexpected journey into politics, his time as an MP for Stevenage, and what it was really like serving in government during one of the most turbulent political periods in recent memory. We also dive into how the UK stacks up globally when it comes to cyber resilience, the shifting nature of digital threats, and his views on the rise of agentic AI, along with, of course, the key insights from last year's landmark review that he chaired and was subsequently named after him.

1:12This is a unique behind-the-scenes look at how government and technology intersect through the lens of innovation, policy, and national security. This is a brilliant conversation. This is the Right Honourable Stephen McParkland.

1:33Stephen, thank you so much for coming on the Tech Leaders podcast. You're the first ex-government minister to come on to the podcast. You're the first MP as well, although we've had Carolyn Jones, the ex-Welsh first minister on before, but you're the first national MP. Thank you so much for joining us. Well, thank you for having me. It's a great honor to be here and to actually be invited. Absolutely, absolutely. I've been listening to your keynote at Crestcom this morning, actually, and I've got loads to ask you about, not just about your ministerial career, but also about many other things, cybersecurity related.

2:06There's so much going on at the moment in the world of AI. Technology innovation is accelerating at an untold rate. But let's start off with the question we always start off with, Stephen. What does good leadership mean to you? So for me, the best leadership I've seen is when leaders take people with them. So they listen to lots of different points of view and they take people with them. When I've seen bad leadership, that's often been people telling the leaders what they think they want to hear. So for me, it's actually open, collaborative and taking people with you. That's it for me. Absolutely.

2:41Bringing people on the journey and uniting them behind a common cause, I suppose, is something. Yeah, and delivering a result, delivering an output, because otherwise people just sort of sit there and then they essentially just all start agreeing with one another and then they're very confused that reality is quite different. And it's very much like their then fake idea doesn't really cope with contact with real life. And I think the military always talk about how everybody has great plans, but essentially they go out the window the moment you have contact with the enemy. and I always remember this wonderful quote actually from a boxer Mike Tyson and he said you know everybody has a plan until you get punched in the face.

3:26Classic, classic yeah I love that one, I love that. It's so true though isn't it? So Stephen you spent over a decade as an MP including a spell as a minister for national security. What motivated you to enter politics originally? I mean I was a member of Palmer for 14 years but um you know i was 33 when i was elected i was a candidate just before 30 and i think it's um for me you know i've come from a background where there's no real interest in politics my first degree was actually history and then i have a master of science in technology but one of the things i noticed was that people who actually created real change who delivered lasting impressions you know that actually happened inside places like parliament you know They're essentially the biggest platforms in the world to create real change.

4:15And I always wanted to do things and make a difference. I'm very output driven and I wanted to help people and stand up for, you know, basically the little person who's struggling against, you know, the man. And I sort of drifted into it that way. And I was surprised as anybody, they were interested in me being involved in politics. But one of the things that really struck me is when I won the seat originally back in 2010, Nobody expected us to win. We got double the national swing. And it was essentially, I was just out there talking to people and listening. And while I was a member of Parliament, that's all the things I did.

4:51And I'll probably bore you a little bit about all the different things we did. But we rebuilt schools, hospitals, new platform at the train station, billions in investment, you name it. And it was all driven by what local people wanted. So I was, again, very surprised that I fought for elections. and my vote and vote share went up in every single one. And I thought the more they got to know me, the less they'd like me. You were obviously doing something right. I know, I've got no idea what it was. But it was just talking and listening to people. And I ran lots of big national campaigns. I was a big rebel.

5:24I ran big campaigns around tax credits, helped millions of people, cost the Treasury billions. I did a big one around cladding with a friend of mine. I mean, I did some stuff around the new Mokko vaccine in Africa. So you could create real massive change. And I think I got into it to do that. And when I was in there, I was doing it. And that was great. I think people often see the negative sides, not the positive sides. Yeah, of course. I mean, politics is a blood sport, they say, isn't it? And it's all about criticism and scrutiny. No one ever talks about the positive stuff. But it sounds like, and I'm not surprised, you were involved in mostly very positive things, which I'm sure you're very proud of.

6:06But two questions in terms of the direction you went in. You're from Liverpool, traditionally a very Labour area. I'm from South Wales, similar to myself. Why did you go in the direction of the Tory party? And the second part of that, why Stevenage? So the first was in terms of being a Scouts Tory, so to speak. Liverpool is a collection of wonderful people. And essentially, we don't like being told what to do. and I grew up under what you would consider to be militant labour. So I basically saw what happened in the city in the 80s and early 90s. That was my formative years and that essentially made me think about freedom and having the right to do the things I wanted to do and not be told what to do.

6:52So the Conservatives were the ones who, for me, offered those choices at the time and so that's why I went in that direction. Stevenage, I was an economic migrant, so I come down to Hertfordshire for work, and Stevenage was on the doorstep. And Stevenage is one of those interesting places. It's the first new town in the country. So it was actually built after the Second World War. And there's an old town, which the original A1 runs through. And so you have this really tiny old town, then this massive new town around it. And it builds satellites and missiles and everything else, you name it. It's a very interesting place.

7:30and everybody's from somewhere else, really. It's a bit like Milton Keynes, then, is it? Well, it predates Milton Keynes. So, Stephen's was the original first Newtown. Then you have places like Harlem and some of the others. And then Milton Keynes was probably the latest Newtown. So, essentially, everybody was sort of from somewhere else and it all had this energy and drive to actually do something different. So, it just sort of, I suited them and they suited me. Looking back now of your political career, What's your proudest achievement, would you say? I think there was quite a lot. I mean, the aspirin, as I mentioned, the Nirmocle vaccine in Africa, helping millions of people with tax credits.

8:10But I think also the leaseholder campaign, I mean, that helped 5 million people. They were trapped. And we managed to actually get their plight up there on a national level. And not only were we able to help, we actually then got the funds out the government to actually get rid of this huge issue that a lot of them had they were just completely trapped and have nowhere to go and I think yeah actually I mean obviously we didn't help everybody we couldn't but what we did do was we helped most of them and give everybody hope and I think as a member of parliament the thing I always ever wanted to do was to give people hope and give them an output and I think you know that was the one It took a couple of years, but it really, really did help millions of people and touch lots and lots of lives.

8:56I still get, I get stopped now. I was checking in at Heathrow Airport the other week to fly somewhere and the lady on the check-in desk thanked me. And I didn't get upgraded, but I got thanked.

9:11Wow. At least you had, there was nice words for you, I suppose. Exactly. what lessons from public office have you have been most useful to you in the work you now do in the private sector wow listening um i mean honestly you know when you go into so many rooms whether it's in business or politics everybody in there's got an agenda everybody in there's either covering the backside or they want to put somebody something over somebody else or they want to do this they want to do that so i think one of the key things i do is listen trying to understand what's actually going on in the room and i mean often people don't want an output they just want to moan and um some of the things i've learned is if i'm in a room where people just want to moan i have no interest so i have this weird little uh mantra which is um i turn down lots of roles and um i essentially say i'm only prepared to work with people i like on projects that are interesting and yeah i learned life was too short yeah of course so can i just talk about your ministerial period then it was a bit of a turbulent time can you talk us through how that come about then how did you get a cabinet role and how it played out and why did it end so i never wanted to be a minister i'd always um refused i really didn't want to do so i did the select committee route so i was actually chair with the regulatory reform select committee for four years and then i was on the joint committee of national security strategy for three years and i'd served on other ones previously so they were the two big ones you know so the national security strategy that looks after the architecture of the intelligence services and And how was the national security advising people like that to account?

10:46When I was chair of the Registry Reform Select Committee, that's very much around actually Registry Reform Orders, which is about a third of all English laws in many ways. And that's often by camel with the laws. And I was appointed to that by the members on the committee. And they're all ex-clerks of the House and heads of the Civil Service and things like that. So it's quite humbling that they felt I was able to do the role. inside that role. That then put you on the Liaison Select Committee, which holds the Prime Minister to account. So they were the big, powerful roles that I did. And the Minister for National Security, it was very turbulent time, as you said.

11:23There'd been lots of talk about me potentially taking that role for a period. And I think because I was going to be leaving, I wasn't completely opposed to it. And because it's national security and I have an interest, I was very happy to do it. And essentially, we needed to get the national security bill through Bill Committee. And there was some bits and pieces in there. And it always tries to be non-political. And I have a good relationship with all sides of the house. So when they needed to make the change, I agreed to step up and do it. So I was asked, yeah, I think in some ways you're voluntold.

11:57So I think I agreed. I was happy to do it. And then when the new administration came in, they wanted me to be taking on a slightly different role. And I reminded them that I actually didn't have any interest in being a minister. That wasn't my actual interest. I was happy to do a national security issue to help, but that's all I wanted to do. And so we discussed it. And after a lot of different conversations, as always in those places, I basically said that I didn't want to continue. The new leadership you were talking about was when Liz Trust came in, is it? Then you left that role upon that.

12:35Yeah, I mean, there was no issues with it. The emergency was over. So basically, I'd stepped in to do it out of an emergency. I'd always done other things as well, which I had to give up to take that role on. So I essentially, at the end of it, I was quite happy to be moving forward. And obviously, it would have happened. walking away from the from the melee and the whirlwind i suppose back into your everyday role where you can make an impact i suppose yeah yeah and also i mean it was quite clear what was going to be happening in some ways and um i mean obviously rishi's people came in again have more conversations and i was just clear that you know i was happy to do it if it was necessary but i didn't want to actually be a minister my interest was always in making a difference and doing other things and yeah so it was very intense while I did it was very interesting I worked on the national security bill and the economic crime bill and it was it was wonderful in terms of getting those ready and pushing them through yeah of course but wonderfully interesting but you know I wouldn't want to have lived that life month after month and I'm quite pleased I had the honor of doing it briefly so I've done pretty much every job you could do so I'm quite lucky Yeah, yeah, of course.

13:47I just wanted to ask you about Boris Johnson. You talk about leadership at the beginning. What was it like working under a colourful character like him? Do you have fond memories of that period? And how would you describe Boris's leadership skills? He's great at motivating people. He's great at getting people who don't want to be ministers to become ministers. Evidently, yeah. Yeah, he'd definitely be able to get you to buy anything you wanted. He is wonderful at that. I think, you know, I mean, I worked with five different prime ministers. So, you know, there's lots of different roles which are not really seen publicly.

14:22So I worked with all five different prime ministers on different projects, doing different things. And they all had different characteristics. but the one thing that they all had in common is that they were incredibly intelligent. They were actually really quite, now whether they have different views to you or not, I don't think you should ever dismiss how intelligent they are, how quickly they can grasp huge amounts of information. And they were all prepared to make a decision. That's something that most people are not prepared to do. So these people were all prepared to make a decision and go outside in front of a TV camera and talk about it.

14:58I can't imagine there's that many people in big business around this country are prepared to make a decision right now and then go outside on TV and talk about it and have their career staked to what they just did. Absolutely. And there's a lot of armchair critics around, as we know, but very few people would walk a mile in their shoes realistically if they knew what was really involved in it. It's like football, isn't it? We shout, we shout, shoot. Oh, I can't believe he didn't do that. It's like, mate, you're not even good enough to go on the pitch. I know. What do you miss most about Parliament, you know, the House of Commons, you know, the government spell you had?

15:39What do you miss most about that Westminster part of your career? So I'm one of the few people who was very keen to leave. I was looking forward to it. You were glad to get out of there. Yeah, yeah. I told them in August 2021 I wanted to leave. That's where I made my decision. And then obviously I thought the election would have been a bit earlier than it was. So for me, it was a little bit weird in the sense of I'm very happy to have left. I love doing the things I do now. I loved being an MP. It was a very important part of my life. I miss some of my friends because you see them all the time.

16:15I miss some of the cut and thrust because it's amazing how fast life changes in that place. I mean, you could be talking about something that's terribly important at two o 'clock and by three o 'clock the world has literally changed. And, you know, you then think, oh, well, the things we moan about at two o 'clock, they look like really tiny now in Paris. So I do miss that cut and thrust. It was a wonderful part of my life, which I really loved and enjoyed. But I did want to leave. I did 14 years. And I think that's a very, very long time. I think I'm the longest slave in MP in my constituency's history.

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17:47You worked across national security, welfare reform, technology policy, But just to zoom in a little bit on national security in the context of cyber security, okay, and the digital economy. How does the UK compare on the global stage in your view? So I wrote a report before I left for the government, which they very kindly named after me. So I didn't want to talk about it from a defensive point of view. I want to talk about it from an economic growth. So it's called the Macparton Review into cyber security as an enabler of economic growth. And the idea is to think more about how can we make it more relevant to organisations because everyone just thinks it's defensive, it's expensive, it's irritating, it's boring, it stops you doing things.

18:35So, and it leads into how well-prepared is the UK. So the UK is incredibly well-prepared. We're one of the most advanced nations on the planet when it comes to cyber security. We're one of the most digitized economies ourselves, and the Americans are both attacked most because of it. But it also means we're uniquely vulnerable. So the Office of Budget Responsibility did some analysis, and they estimate the successful cyber attack on the UK would cost 1.6 % of GDP. Now, to pop that into context, we spend just over 2 % on our armed forces. So if you think about the actual tens of billions that we're talking about, just from one successful site that can be repeated every couple of days or week.

19:16You can see how vulnerable we are. And anybody who's listening to this, for example, who's in London, if they were to lose their mobile phone, they probably wouldn't be able to get home. They probably wouldn't be able to buy much in the shops. I mean, the current government is talking about trying to make shops accept cash because so many of them just don't accept cash anymore in parts of London and places like that. So we are uniquely vulnerable as a highly digitized society. So in some ways, even though we're massively prepared, it's because we're even more vulnerable. So one of the things that became very, very clear when I was doing the review was that most small businesses have very little basic cyber hygiene or cybersecurity.

19:58And most people would be like, oh, well, it's only small business. What does it matter? Well, there's two reasons why it matters. So the first is that over 99 % of all businesses in the UK are classified as small businesses. So we've just agreed that over 99 % of the UK's economy has very little cyber security or basic cyber hygiene. And then the second, even more important reason is you see all these big companies. So when I was a member of Parliament, you have companies like Airbus that build a third of the world's telecommunications satellites in Stevenage. But they stand on the shoulders of 4 ,000 small businesses.

20:31so those 4 ,000 small businesses provide all the components and different bits and pieces and it goes to Airbus and they put it together so if you want to attack Airbus and the satellites you attack a small business in that supply chain of course because everything's just in time and if you disrupt that you then maybe stop the satellite being made in time so maybe it misses its launch window so maybe there's a gap in the capability and you can just see well why does it matter that you hit a small business so when the ministry of defense had that problem with their attack that led to the information around some of the armed forces personnel being leaked it wasn't the ministry of defense that was hacked it was a third-party payroll supply wow okay yeah so supply chain cyber security is incredibly important and when you start to think about that the supply chains in the united kingdom are global so i'm a volunteer for crest which is a um not for i'm their first global ambassador so it's a not-for-profit cyber security accreditation organization only has about 420 members of these companies providing the best of the best type of protections the UK foreign office European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the Australian Foreign Office have just funded a number of crest camps across 14 countries and those crest camps are cyber accelerated maturity programs and they're essentially designed to try and help those individual countries develop their internal cyber security capacity and protection.

22:01So one of the other things I talk about in my speeches is that you can't really transition towards a digitized economy unless you've got some form of cyber security that's in-country and low cost to provide solutions to those small and medium-sized companies inside countries like Egypt, Morocco, and a number of these other countries that are inside our supply chains. So although we are well prepared in many ways and other ways were uniquely vulnerable. Yeah, when you think of your cybersecurity posture, you think of your own internal processes and what is directly in your control. You don't think about your supply chain or your IT assets, which is obviously part of your supply chain typically.

22:42So that is a really good point. And I don't know if you know about what we do outside of the podcast. We're an IT asset management consultancy firm. So we help organizations understand security risk profile in their software supply chain, because they'll have products, in some case services, which may present a risk from an SME who does all from a big software company. And there may be a component to that product, which presents a risk to the organization, you know, especially now, it's a minefield in light of the just in crazy acceleration of AI innovation now and agentic AI, which is changing everything, Stephen, isn't it?

23:22What's your thoughts on how AI throws a spanner in this works? Well, I mean, you've got everything from AI being used in drones on the battlefield in Ukraine on both sides, and AI managing a lot of the electronic warfare. So we actually have AI in use in quite kinetic environments as we speak. We then, you know, take a step back in terms of, you know, we both know that cybercrime is basically cybercrime as a service, and we've seen that with the attacks on the recent retailers in the UK. And I think AI is just allowing people to speed everything up because a lot of the attacks are opportunistic and AI is allowing them to basically put rocket boosters under those opportunistic attacks.

24:05And what may have been taking 100 days, they can probably do in 100 hours. So that's multiplying everything, making it much bigger and much harder. And if there is an opportunity, you know, AI can replicate and move things on a much faster glide path, so to speak. So it just, it gets quite difficult quite quickly. If you were in Keir Starmer's shoes, for instance, okay, or, you know, you win in a government minister role, what can government do at a policy level, okay, to ensure agility in terms of the way the UK deals with cybersecurity threats? What can the UK do from the top down to ensure a robust security posture for the country?

24:45So national security is always non-political. It's just the nature of it. So I don't believe you can have true national security without good economic security. So essentially, one, pay for it, and two, so that you are actually in a position to help if there is a problem. So there's a lot of organisations out there who, once there is a challenge, they roll into action and they can help. One of the recommendations in my review was around cyber securing supply chains. And the government is taking forward a piece of legislation which is essentially going to say that critical national infrastructure has to look towards cyber securing their supply chains.

25:24So there is a lot of work going on in this area. But at the end of the day, it still comes down to over 99 % of businesses in the UK are SMEs. And everybody's got a responsibility to be looking at what they can and can't do. So to pop into context, there's some statistics that get bandied around. And there's a suggestion that around 60 % of businesses that survive a cyber attack actually still go bust within 12 months. And that's because they just never recover from the cash flow. So one of the things I talked about was that cyber security was seen as an IT issue, not as a board level issue. But essentially, boards understand financial risk and regulatory risk, but they don't understand cyber risk.

26:07And that's incumbent on us inside our industry. So I essentially say that we need to be explaining to boards about how the cyber risk has this financial or regulatory risk. We need to explain it through. We need to talk about, well, if you're investing in these products or doing this, this is your return on investment. And that's why I wanted to talk about cybersecurity as an enabler of economic growth. Because if we say to businesses, look, you're really interested in doing some stuff around AI. But essentially, we've got to protect our customers' data. We need to cybersecure the data that's going into the language models because if I manipulate that data going in, I can manipulate the answer coming out.

26:49So we need to do that. But instead of doing that, people are just rushing towards AI. And it's like, essentially, well, people like quality. They like reassurance. They like robustness. And if you're a company that's providing to your customers, whether they're bigger businesses or the general public, you know, a very robust and resilient service that they can trust. There's economic value there. And I think that's that we need to start thinking about cybersecurity as being more, you know, when everything else happens, we're the ones you can rely on. Yeah, absolutely. So that was obviously something that you emphasized in the McPartland review then?