British Security and Counter-Terrorism Minister Pauline Neville-Jones is stepping down from the government at her own request, Prime Minister David Cameron's office said on Monday. Neville-Jones announced her decision a few days after English local elections and a referendum on voting reform which raised tensions in the ruling Conservative-led coalition.
The government published an exchange of letters between Neville-Jones, a Conservative who was not a member of the cabinet, and Cameron. Neither gave a reason for her decision but Cameron said she had told him at the start of this year that she planned to leave government around the time of the local elections.
Neville-Jones, a former chief of Britain's Joint Intelligence Committee, is being replaced as a Home Office minister by a fellow Conservative, Angela Browning. Cameron has appointed Neville-Jones as special representative to business on cyber security, his office said.
A former high-ranking diplomat, Neville-Jones was Britain's lead negotiator at the Dayton peace accords which ended the conflict in Bosnia during the 1990s. Neville-Jones helped the year-old coalition government draw up its plans for a new National Security Council and a National Security Strategy and urged the government to step up its focus on security against cyber attacks.