Brown: Govt strongest on security when joined-up

Britain is best-protected from an increasing number of national security threats when its intelligence, military and police services are joined up with diplomacy, Gordon Brown believes.

The prime minister made the claim as he announced details of the UK's first national security strategy to the Commons.

He said war, terrorism, climate change, disease and poverty were the "great insecurities" threatening Britain and warned threats to national security have proliferated in the last 20 years.

"The national security strategy shows a Britain resolute in the face of an unstable and increasingly uncertain international security landscape and demonstrates the lessons we and other countries have learned in recent years," he said.

These include expanding policing, security and intelligence capacity, clamping down on arms control and boosting international institutions.

He concluded an equal priority was the need to "always be vigilant, never leaving ourselves vulnerable - supporting, and at all times and wherever necessary strengthening, as we do today, our defences and civilian support for national security".