In the past six month politicians from across the political spectrum have called for a national security strategy. The strategy, they believe, is needed to manage and co-ordinate security policy across Whitehall in order to respond to the security challenges of 21st century. So the recent decision by the Home Secretary John Reid to split the Home Office into two departments focusing on national security and justice surprised ministers and caught senior officials off guard.

Why, people asked, was John Reid proposing the split at a time when the general consensus across Whitehall is that national security is no longer about Home Office policy, and international security about defence policy and foreign affairs? The majority of security challenges facing the UK are inextricably linked and as such can no longer be dealt with by a single department.

Even so Government sources told the BBC that the department was to be split ‘within months’, with the Home Secretary’s plans for reform going before the Cabinet ‘in weeks.’ But since the frenetic media activity around the proposed Home Office split in January of this year nothing more has been said by Ministers. Is Reid’s review dead?

To shelve the review would be politically dangerous at a time when the Home Secretary has staked his reputation on transforming the Home Office, but separating the department in to a national security and justice ministry seems to make little sense at a time when the government has committed itself to taking a more joined-up and collaborative approach to public services. While some of the functions of the Home Office should be hived off, such as making the Immigration and Nationality Directorate (IND) an executive agency, splitting the department into two seems counterproductive.

Furthermore the current questions over the future of the Home Office highlight a fundamental misunderstanding of the current security environment and how the government should respond. While reorganising the department may lead to achieving some goals in the short term it will inevitably lead to fragmented policy and delivery in the long term. Criticism of this approach has been made before of government. A report by the House of Commons defence committee recently stated that in many areas the government confused activity with achievement. To counter this, the committee suggested creating a strong central authority to lay down the clear criteria for the work of individual government departments and to coordinate the efforts of other agencies.

The world has changed radically in the past decade, a fact the Labour Party seemed to have recognised ten years ago. The 1997 Labour manifesto committed the party to conducting a strategic defence and security review to reassess the UK’s ‘essential security interests and defence needs’. However ‘security’ was so narrowly defined that the subsequent review focused solely on the roles, missions and capabilities of the British armed forces. The rest of the security architecture was left alone – with, for example, the intelligence agencies continuing to focus predominantly on Northern Ireland. However the Strategic Defence Review noted the need to ‘address new challenges: weapons proliferation, ethnic tensions, population pressures, environmental degradation, drugs, terrorism, crime and the failure of state structures’.

These challenges cannot be tackled by one department alone but demand a cross-government approach. Many of the security challenges facing the UK are seemingly unbounded in scope, time and resources, and there is no clear agreement about what a solution looks like, let alone how it can be achieved. Yet frequently, government departments claim to have a comprehensive mission – stating that they are: ‘responsible for keeping the UK safe from any threat to our national security’ (Home Office); ‘defending the United Kingdom and its interests’ (MoD) or working ‘for UK interests in a safe, just and prosperous world’ (FCO).

All too often, however, policies and missions are pursued by departments that are in conflict with each other, resulting in poor coordination, failure to meet policy goals and objectives, and a sense of confusion in government. This can be seen, for example, with the lack of consistency in applying the UK’s counter-terrorism strategy (known as CONTEST) around the four strands – prevent, pursue, protect and prepare.

The current proposal to split the Home Office is out of place with genuine cross party and Whitehall support for creating a national security strategy, an idea mooted by both the Chancellor Gordon Brown, and the Leader of the Opposition David Cameron in recent months. In short, the current attempt to restructure the Home Office is likely to distract from supporting the whole of Whitehall in its effort to build a safe, just, tolerant and secure society.