The Secret Intelligence Service, which is responsible for security and intel operations outside of the UK, has promoted its current head of innovation and technology to the agency’s top job
MI6 has appointed its first ever female chief. Blaise Metreweli – who moves into the top job from her current post as director of technology and innovation – will be the 18th chief of the Secret Intelligence Service.
Commonly referred to as ‘C’, the chief has operational responsibility for MI6, the UK’s foreign intelligence service, and is the only publicly named member of the organisation. They are accountable to the foreign secretary.
Metreweli is currently director general ‘Q’ – named after the gadget-giving Bond character – a post focused on the agency’s use of tech and other new innovations in intelligence work. She has also previously held a director-level role in MI5.
A career intelligence officer, having joined the service as a case officer in 1999, Metreweli has spent most of her career in operational roles in the Middle East and Europe. She studied anthropology at Pembroke College, Cambridge.
She will now succeed current MI6 chief Sir Richard Moore, who will leave the service in the autumn.
The outgoing chief said that he was “absolutely delighted by this historic appointment of my colleague” – and gave particular praise to his successor’s tech and digital credentials.
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“Blaise is a highly accomplished intelligence officer and leader, and one of our foremost thinkers on technology,” Moore said. “I am excited to welcome her as the first female head of MI6.”
Metreweli said she is “proud and honoured” to be asked to lead the service, adding: “MI6 plays a vital role – with MI5 and GCHQ – in keeping the British people safe and promoting UK interests overseas,” she said. “I look forward to continuing that work alongside the brave officers and agents of MI6 and our many international partners.”
The prime minister, Keir Starmer, said: “The historic appointment of Blaise Metreweli comes at a time when the work of our intelligence services has never been more vital. The United Kingdom is facing threats on an unprecedented scale – be it aggressors who send their spy ships to our waters or hackers whose sophisticated cyber plots seek to disrupt our public services.”
While the MI6 chief is frequently depicted as a woman in film and TV (played by Dame Judi Dench in the James Bond films – although she was known as ‘M’ – and Fiona Shaw in BBC series Killing Eve), the Secret Intelligence Service has never had a female boss in real life.
MI5, the domestic security service, has had two female bosses, the first of whom was appointed in 1992. GCHQ, the intelligence and cybersecurity agency, appointed its first female director, Anne Keast-Butler in 2023.
