Dr Michelle Haslem CMG
Biography
Dr Haslem is the Director General for Homeland Security in the Home Office.
She is a national security professional with 27 years’ experience gained from roles in the UK, Asia, the Middle East and Europe.
Michelle served as a director general at the FCDO from 2019 until 2025.
Director General, Homeland Security Group
The Homeland Security Group sits at the heart of the UK’s national security system, setting strategic direction and playing a crucial enabling role in national security and law enforcement operations.
Its mission is to reduce national security risks to the UK’s people, prosperity and freedoms. It focuses on the highest harm risks to the homeland, whether from terrorists, state actors, or cyber and economic criminals.
The Homeland Security Group:
- provides system leadership for counter-terrorism and the domestic response to state threats
- provides joint leadership for countering illicit finance and economic crime
- maintains and delivers the legal and policy frameworks for some of the most important national security and policing powers, in particular investigatory powers, and delivers crucial investigative capabilities, including communications data
- facilitates the warrantry for the use of policing and investigatory powers and the oversight of operational partners
- coordinates the operational response to a domestic national security incident including by facilitating COBR and authorising military assets during an ongoing terrorist incident
- supports sensitive immigration decisions needed as part of a live incident and on a routine basis
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makes a critical contribution to harnessing cutting-edge capabilities and building UK cyber power by:
- leading efforts to deliver next-generation interception of communications
- providing critical investment in science and technology to anticipate the emerging technologies of the future.