Civil Service Neville-Jones was a career member of
Her Majesty's Diplomatic Service from 1963 to 1996, during which time she served in British Missions in
Rhodesia,
Singapore,
Washington, DC and
Bonn. Between 1977 and 1982 she was seconded to the
European Commission where she worked as Deputy and then
Chef de Cabinet to Commissioner
Christopher Tugendhat. From 1991 to 1994 she was Head of the Defence and Overseas Secretariat in the
Cabinet Office and Deputy Secretary to the
Cabinet. During 1993 and 1994 she was Chairman of the
Joint Intelligence Committee. From 1994, until her retirement, she was Political Director in the
Foreign and Commonwealth Office, in which capacity she led the British delegation to the
Dayton negotiations on the
Bosnia peace settlement. In 2003 the
Bosnian leader
Alija Izetbegović commented that during these negotiations she "never tried to conceal her dislike for us". Before she left the civil service, Neville-Jones was openly critical of the Foreign Office for passing her over for the post of
ambassador to France.
Business dealings with Milosevic In 1996, shortly after resigning from the Foreign Office, Neville-Jones and her former boss Douglas Hurd were hired by NatWest Markets, a British bank, to travel to Belgrade and negotiate a privatisation deal with Slobodan Milosevic for Serbia's state telecoms industry. The money from the deal revitalised Milosevic's dictatorship and may have helped fund his later war in Kosovo. Neville-Jones and Hurd were extensively criticised for their decision to take part in the deal.
Politics In January 2006 she joined one of the
Conservative Party's new 'policy groups' on national security. On 2 July 2007 her appointment as a
working peer and
Shadow Security Minister was announced. Her title was gazetted as
Baroness Neville-Jones, of Hutton Roof in the County of Cumbria on 15 October 2007. On 9 January 2009, Lady Neville-Jones warned that
Israel's ongoing war in the Gaza Strip would encourage revolutionary
Islamism in Arab countries and
Islamic terrorism beyond, and called for a revival of the
Middle East peace process. On 13 May 2010, she was appointed
Minister of State for Security and Counter Terrorism in David Cameron's Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition government, and was also sworn of the
Privy Council. On 31 March 2011 she told
The Daily Telegraph that Britain's Muslim population needs to be persuaded by the Government that Britain is a single nation, and that they can't just "rub along together" but must be persuaded that their long-term future lies in Britain. Neville-Jones later spoke out against "internet hate preaching and jihadist rhetoric", arguing that the
murder of Lee Rigby was likely to have been inspired by such material. at the
Halifax International Security Forum 2012 On 9 May 2011, Neville-Jones left her post as Minister of State for Security and Counter-Terrorism in the Home Office at her own request. ==Positions==