PM recruits Government 'outsiders'

Falklands hero and former head of the Royal Navy, Admiral Sir Alan West, was made security minister in the Home Office, while former CBI director-general Sir Digby Jones was appointed minister for trade and investment in the new Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform.

Meanwhile, the post of junior international development minister went to former Treasury aide Shriti Vadera, and leading surgeon Sir Ara Darzi became a health minister. Former Metropolitan Police Commissioner Lord Stevens of Kirkwhelpington - who last week turned down the offer of a ministerial post - was appointed Mr Brown's adviser on international security issues.

And Mr Brown recruited two Liberal Democrat peers in advisory roles - Baroness Neuberger working with him on voluntary sector issues and leading lawyer Lord Lester of Herne Hill advising Justice Secretary Jack Straw on constitutional reform. Party leader Sir Menzies Campbell previously turned down an offer for Lib Dems to serve as ministers in the Brown administration.

Their appointments follow the naming of Sir Mark Malloch Brown, former deputy to United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, to a ministerial post in the Foreign Office.

The importance of the appointments of Lord Stevens and Admiral West was underlined by the discovery of a massive car bomb outside a nightclub in London's West End in the early hours of Friday.

The bomb - which was disarmed without going off - was discussed at an unusual Friday meeting of Cabinet on Friday morning, called by Mr Brown to discuss his plans for constitutional reform. And new Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, appointed on Thursday, chaired a meeting of the Government's Cobra emergency committee to assess the situation.

The security alert delayed Mr Brown's plans to fill remaining ministerial posts in his Government. Mr Brown is expected to set out his proposals for constitutional reform to MPs in his first statement to the House of Commons on Monday.

Mr Straw indicated that they would include measures to give Parliament the final say in a decision to go to war and to take intelligence assessments out of the hands of Government press officers. The plans, trailed before Mr Brown became Premier, will be seen as a symbolic break with the Tony Blair era, which was dominated in its latter stages by controversy over war in Iraq.

Mr Brown later completed his reshuffle by naming appointments to ministerial posts below Cabinet level. Among the changes was a promotion for his long-time Treasury lieutenant Dawn Primarolo from paymaster-general to be Alan Johnson's deputy as minister of state in the Department of Health.