Cabinet Office suggested Mandelson did not need security vetting, says Robbins as he describes ‘constant pressure’ from No 10 – live | EnContextoSocial.com
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Cabinet Office suggested Mandelson did not need security vetting, says Robbins as he describes ‘constant pressure’ from No 10 – live
Olly Robbins was sacked as Foreign Office permanent secretary over the Peter Mandelson security vetting revelations in the Guardian
The hearing has started.
Emily Thornberry, the chair, started by saying that Robbins did not tell the whole truth about this process when he gave evidence to it in November.
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I understand the FCDO insisted that DV was a requirement before Mandelson took up his post in Washington.
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Cabinet Office suggested Mandelson did not even need security vetting, Robbins tells MPs
In his letter to the committee, Robbins says the Cabinet Office suggested that Mandelson would not have to go through security vetting. He says:
After the announcement, I believe the Cabinet Office (CO) raised whether Developed Vetting (DV) was actually necessary. I understand the FCDO insisted that DV was a requirement before Mandelson took up his post in Washington.
Not content with appointing Peter Mandelson as US ambassador despite his links to Epstein, he tried to appoint another man with a known friendship with a sex offender.
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This is not just a lapse in judgment, it’s a pattern of behaviour.
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Every day this scandal gets worse, and it becomes clearer that the only way to draw a line under it is for Starmer to go.
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The evidence from Olly Robbins is devastating to Keir Starmer.
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It is clear that No10 not only made the appointment before vetting was completed, but that Mandelson was already acting as the Ambassador before the vetting – even seeing highly classified documents.
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With this, and the ‘constant pressure’ No10 applied to the appointment and their ‘dismissive attitude’ to vetting Mandelson, it is now absolutely clear that ‘full due process’ was not followed.
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Keir Starmer has misled the House.
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Asked what he had told the prime minister, Robbins said that was a legitimate question, but he said he could not speak about that.
Referring to possible legal proceedings about his sacking, Robbins said that he was in “unknown territory” and for the sake of his family he had to keep quiet for the time being.
(Permanent secretaries who get sacked in circumstances like this normally end up negotiating some sort of payoff. What gets said in public can influence this.)
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The very short answer is I don’t fully understand the reasons that I’m in the position I am in, but that is for a separate process for me to try to get to the bottom of.
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As a human being, I’m desperately, desperately sad about it.
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I love that job, I love that institution, I was proud to serve this government and any government that might follow it.
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I hope I was doing it to the best of my ability. I was certainly doing it as hard as I possibly could.
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I had wonderful colleagues who I miss deeply and the issues we were dealing with, and my colleagues are still dealing with, are of profound importance to the success of this government and the success of the country.
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It’s been the proudest part of my career to lead that institution because of their work, not because of mine.
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I just feel intensely proud of the people I’ve led and I wish them every success and wish I could still be with them.
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If we turn DV [developed vetting] into a pass/fail piety test, what we end up doing is robbing the British state of a lot of very, very capable people with complicated lives and potential vulnerabilities.
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And I really, really don’t want that for the sake of this country.
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If anything, this government needs to be served by an ever increasing range of people with broad experience and interesting lives, not suddenly find that the only people we can employ in sensitive roles are ones who raise no issues whatsoever.
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I was very conscious that if we went through the rigour of our process and decided against granting clearance that would have caused a real problem for the government and a problem for the country,
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I was conscious of that without letting it influence my judgment, let alone transferring any of that atmosphere on to the people charged with actually making that assessment.
I hate doing it, honestly. It’s some of the most emotional things I got involved with in my time in the job.
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I take those responsibilities extremely seriously. I have been prepared to follow through on tough advice.
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[This] probably flows from the rest of the evidence I’ve been giving you this morning. I think the system does not work if candidates for it don’t understand that this is an entirely different category of protection and losing that – I know it’s a cliche, but that trust, once gone, cannot be got back.
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Thousands of people go through this process. Thousands and thousands of documents and sensitive issues and operations depend upon it. And I am struck and saddened that within I think days – probably only a small number of days – the Cabinet Office for their own reasons, deciding to open that up to share what they thought they’d found and their perceptions of it internally with No 10.
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I’m not making accusations at anybody. It’s not my business to do so. I hope they’re being very rigorously investigated and the prosecutions will result, because this is a grievous breach of national security.
Asked to clarify this, Robbins said that he was not an investigator. But he said he was able to “put two and two together”. He said soon after Keir Starmer was told about the UKSV’s conclusions about Mandelson (on Tuesday last week, at the meeting described in this minute) the story was in the Guardian.
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I hope it’s clear from everything I have said so far that I believe that’s a misunderstanding and a dangerous misunderstanding of the necessity of confidentiality of the process.
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I’ve been interested, of course, over the last couple of days to read Lord Hague on this today and David Lammy even on Saturday, the former foreign secretary, deputy prime minister, where both have said in different language that they have never had vetting issues discussed with them in all their time as a minister and nor would they expect to.
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I’m afraid that’s exactly the culture I have been brought up in. It’s supported by guidance. You are not supposed to share the findings and reports of UKSV other than in the exceptional circumstances where doing so allows for the specific mitigation of risk.
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Robbins said there were “several discussions initiated by No 10 with me about potentially finding a head of mission opportunity for Matthew Doyle who was then the prime minister’s director of communications”.
Robbins said he “felt quite uncomfortable” about the proposals and kept “giving advice that I thought this would be very hard for the office and was hard for me personally to defend”.
I found it very hard to think how I would explain to the office what the credentials of Matthew were to be in an important head of mission role when I was in danger of making very senior, very experienced diplomats leave the office.
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It was not, I’m afraid I don’t think at the point of his appointment and for days thereafter, it was actually a given that he would be vetted.
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If you look at the documents submitted under the humble address there is no stipulation from number 10 that he should be vetted.
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The welcome that was sent to him immediately afterwards doesn’t say welcome to the Foreign Office subject to vetting; the announcement put out on 20 December says that he will be out early in the new year, it does not say subject to vetting.
Robbins said the contract issued to Lord Mandelson after he was vetted said he must maintain his clearance “but nothing about his appointment actually, as far as I’ve seen in writing, stipulates it”.
There was then a debate between Cabinet Office, FCDO, about how to make sure that he is sent out to post with the appropriate clearance and that took several days and a position taken from the Cabinet Office was that there was no need to vet Mandelson.
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He was a member of the House of Lords, he was a privy counsellor, the risks attending his appointment were well-known and had been made clear to the prime minister before appointment.
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In the end, the FCDO insisted and put its foot down. I understand my predecessor had to be very firm in person but that was a live debate at the point of announcement and I think it’s important to make that clear to the committee.
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UKSV do not deny clearance in the Foreign Office.
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They make findings and they make a recommendation.
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I was told that that recommendation was that they “leant against” and it was a borderline case. That’s the conversation I relayed to the committee. They do not deny clearance.
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The Foreign Office grants or denies clearance on the basis of a hugely experienced and capable personnel security team that responds to the fact that the Foreign Office is under more threat than the whole of the rest of government put together.
Robbins said that the security directorate at the Foreign Office took the final decison about vetting. He said they normally took that decision themselves, but sometimes they passed it up the system.
The conversation I recall it on 29 January was that they had debated some of the assessments that UK has being made about specific risks and indeed … some of those had shifted up and down a bit.
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And then the Foreign Office had reached his assessment and briefed me on it.
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So I can understand why we are all today focussed on the starkness of the form, albeit a form I have never seen.
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But the conversation has briefed to me was a dialogue between the two in which – clearly I’m not trying to pretend otherwise – there was unease in UKSV and the Foreign Office had to work out whether it could manage and mitigate that unease.
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Due diligence was done before the appointment. And I think that has been now released in the humble address papers.
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What I am, what I feel sad about, is that the prime minister’s nominee went ahead despite that due diligence.
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And months and months later, when in the immediate aftermath of Mandelson’s sacking, we were obviously thinking internally about how to respond to legitimate questions this committee and others had about that process.
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My recollection is, in a way, I wasn’t surprised by the direction from No 10 was we must make clear that these decisions were taken entirely independently of ministers and that they were not consulted other than to be told the outcome.
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Doyle, who is now a peer, was Starmer’s head of communications at the time. He was also close to Peter Mandelson, and he was one of the No 10 people asked by Keir Starmer to question Mandelson about his links with Jeffrey Epstein ahead of Starmer’s decision to appoint him.
It was serious enough for the No 10 private office to bring up the head of the diplomatic service and ask for a forward look of available head of mission jobs. And that’s the point at which I thought that I needed to lay down some markers.
He also said that Mandelson was asked if there might be a job available for Doyle in the US embassy team.
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Robbins said that when he took over there was a “strong sense that there was an atmosphere of pressure and a certain dismissiveness about this process”.
But he said he does not recall Barton using those words. Barton is not the sort of person who would report language like that, he said.
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Asked if he was saying he was told that security vetting should be denied, Robbins said that he was telling the committee what he was told at that meeting. He was told that the decision was “borderline”, and that they were leaning against granting approval.
What my team will have done, I’m sure, is break that down, go through the specific issues that have led UKSV to their concern and then make an assessment as to whether they can be managed. And that’s what came to me.
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Olly Robbins’ testimony raises the extraordinary possibility that the permanent secretary was misled about Mandelson’s UK Security Vetting (UKSV) outcome.
Instead, he said he was given a briefing about Mandelson’s vetting file by security officials in his department. He said Mandelson’s case was described to him as “borderline” and that UKSV was “leaning toward” clearance being “denied”.
That account is at odds with the Guardian’s understanding. The Cabinet Office last week released a template of the UKSV file on Mandelson. (See 9.56am.) It lists three rankings for possible “overall concern”: low, medium and high. In the next box, there is a space for a vetting officer to list the outcome of the assessment with their “overall decision or recommendation”.
Again, there are three options: clearance approved, clearance approved “with risk management” or clearance denied. According to multiple sources, the UKSV process in Mandelson’s case concluded there was a “high” overall concern and concluded “clearance denied”. In the committee hearing, Robbins said those were terms he did not recognise.
Another committee member, John Wittingdale, specifically raised the Cabinet Office template document, and said the committee’s understanding was also that Mandelson got ticks in the two red boxes. Robbins said he did not recall the briefing being given to him being “that definitive”.
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He asked about the document released by No 10 on Friday showing how UKSV sums up its recommendations after security vetting interviews.
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The No 10 briefing implied that UKSV ticked the red boxes.
I certainly do not recall the way in which the UKSC findings were presented to me as being that definitive. As I say, it was briefed to me that they were leaning against. I think it’s the phrase I remember.
After they took a view on that, they came to him with a decision, he said. He said there were only two people in that meeting – him and the UKSV director of security.
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Olly Robbins has given remarkable evidence so far. He has spoken about the pressure the Foreign Office faced from Downing Street – weeks before he took the top job – about ensuring Peter Mandelson made it to Washington as ambassador. That included, Robbins claims, a discussion between the Cabinet Office and the Foreign Office as to whether or not Mandelson even needed to go through the vetting process.
Robbins said his predecessor had to be “very firm in person” about the necessity of Mandelson to face vetting in the days leading up to Christmas, in the face of arguments from the Cabinet Office that there was no need for Mandelson to face vetting, given he was a member of the House of Lords and a member of the privy council.
Given nearly all staff – including junior civil servants – in the Foreign Office require DV clearance, it would have been astonishing for the man in the top British diplomatic posting to not have received the same security clearance.
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Robbins said he would not answer that because the whole process relies on confidentiality. People comply because they know that they say will not be disclosed.
I trust you. I’m not sure that the whole of the rest of the world will hold off from wanting to know.
\n
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I was told that UKSV [UK Security Vetting] were leaning towards recommending against, but accepted it was a borderline case.
He said that, although reporting suggests this is process you pass or fail, that is not how the system works.
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We do know that Morgan McSweeney was a protege of Peter Mandelson, and we know that he was very keen on Peter Mandelson getting the job, and we know that he resigned, saying that it was all his fault and that he had advised the prime minister to appoint Peter Mandelson and took it on the chin.
Robbins said, when he said he didn’t know who the individuals were, he meant it.
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After the announcement, I believe the Cabinet Office (CO) raised whether Developed Vetting (DV) was actually necessary. I understand the FCDO insisted that DV was a requirement before Mandelson took up his post in Washington.
\n
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Thornberry is asking where the pressure for the appointment to go through very quicky was coming from. (See 9.14am.)
I didn’t come here today to put scapegoats other civil servants. I came here to make sure the committee understood the circumstances.
\n
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I wasn’t walking into a vacuum. I arrived to a situation in which a due diligence report had been undertaken into Mandelson by the Cabinet Office, assessing the reputational risks and his fitness for office.
\n
The prime minister had then presumably taken advice on his fitness for office.
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The name had been submitted to the king as ministers’ recommendation.
\n
The prime minister had made an announcement that Mandelson was his nominee without caveats.
\n
The British government had sought agreement, the formal diplomatic process for a host government accepting a nominee from the US government, and that had been obtained before I arrived in post.
\n
He’d been given access to the building. You’ve been given access to low classification [information]. And, from time to time for case specific issues, he was being given access to higher classification briefing.
\n
So I’m afraid I walked into a situation in which, there was already a very, very strong expectation [that the appointment would go through].
Robbins also said that “coming from No 10” there was an expectation that “he needed to be in post and in America as quickly as humanly possible”.
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In an interview with Sky News this morning, Miliband claimed that David Lammy, the deputy PM who was foreign secretary at the time of the appointment, also had doubts about the appointment.
They clashed when they were both cabinet ministers when Gordon Brown was PM, and when Miliband subsequently became Labour leader, he marginalised Mandelson – who in turn became a critic of Miliband’s leadership strategy.
You’re asking me should Keir Starmer resign over the appointment of Lord Mandelson? And I’m saying to you, no, I don’t think he should.
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Because I think if every time a prime minister made a mistake they resigned, we would shuttle through prime ministers like nobody’s business.
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Prime ministers make mistakes.
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I think on big judgments for this country, the biggest judgment of all, whether to join the war against Iran, Keir Starmer made a big and fundamental correct judgment.
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I’ll be honest with you, people don’t like Keir on the door but it’s not over this Mandelson thing. They don’t like him personally.
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There’s been a fantastic campaign by opposition parties to undermine him …
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I think that so much attention being given to the minutiae of this just confirms the Westminster bubble in their mind and they don’t like it.
But Champion also said that a leadership challenge was “absolutely the last thing that we want right now”.
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post","caption":"Trump post","credit":"Photograph: Truth Social"}}],"attributes":{"pinned":false,"keyEvent":true,"summary":false},"blockCreatedOn":1776755891000,"blockCreatedOnDisplay":"09.18CEST","blockLastUpdated":1776756165000,"blockLastUpdatedDisplay":"09.22CEST","blockFirstPublished":1776756165000,"blockFirstPublishedDisplay":"09.22CEST","blockFirstPublishedDisplayNoTimezone":"09.22","title":"Trump says Starmer made 'really bad pick' when he chose Mandelson as US ambassador","contributors":[],"primaryDateLine":"Tue 21 Apr 2026 13.07 CEST","secondaryDateLine":"First published on Tue 21 Apr 2026 09.15 CEST"},,{"_type":"model.dotcomrendering.pageElements. 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Robbins was sacked because he had not told Starmer that Mandelson failed his security vetting interview after Starmer had announced he was getting the ambassador’s job. If Robbins were to prove that Starmer were told, that would be career ending for the PM. But no one is expecting that.
Instead, the hearing will illustrate the dispute between the PM and the former head of the Foreign Office over whether Robbins should have told Downing Street. Starmer says he should; Robbins is expected to say that that he was meant to keep the process confidential because all that ultimately mattered was the final decision – which is that Mandelson did get vetting approval, because Robbins used his judgment as the decision-maker to ignore the recommendation from officials and grant vetting approval.
The most interesting question is, why? And here it will get difficult for Starmer, because Robbins is likely to argue that he felt under pressure to grant vetting approval because Starmer had already said he wanted Mandelson to get the job, despite knowing full well about the multiple factors that made his appointment problematic.
We know this because Robbins suggested as much when he last gave evidence to the committee about this appointment, in November last year. Robbins told the committee:
Back before Lord Mandelson was announced as the appointee, there was a process … within the Cabinet Office to make sure that the prime minister was aware of Lord Mandelson and the issues around his appointment. There was then a process of clearing his conflicts of interest, which the employing department [the Foreign Office] oversaw, which we have talked about. In parallel with that process, we also went through the standard UK national security vetting process for DV [developed vetting].
Mandleson failed the DV interview. But Robbins was making the point that, by then, Mandelson had already been approved by the Cabinet Office’s due diligence process (a separate vetting exercise). Robbins also told the committee:
In the Times, Steven Swinford and Oliver Wright highlight this in their story on today’s hearing, saying Starmer “will be accused of pressuring the Foreign Office into approving the appointment of Lord Mandelson despite being aware of his friendship with the paedophile Jeffrey Epstein and his business links to Russia and China”.
9.30am: The Good Growth Foundation holds a day-long National Growth Debate, with speeches from Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, and Darren Jones, the chief secretary to the PM.
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Key events
Ed Davey says revelation about No 10 wanting diplomatic job for Matthew Doyle 'incredibly damning' for PM
Badenoch claims Robbins' evidence shows Starmer misled MPs, because 'due process' not followed in Mandelson appointment
Robbins declines to discuss conversation with Starmer when he was sacked, implying legal proceedings likely
Robbins says he's 'desperately, desperately sad' about being sacked
Robbins says security vetting shouldn't be 'pass/fail piety test', because UK state needs 'interesting' people working for it
Robbins says blocking Mandelson would have caused 'real problem' for PM - but claims this wasn't reason for approval
Robbins says leak of Mandelson vetting story to Guardian was 'grievous breach of national security'
Robbins explains why he disagrees with Starmer's claim he should have been given details of Mandelson's vetting
Robbins said he was told not to tell foreign secretary about No 10's proposal to give Matthew Doyle diplomatic post
Robbins says Foreign Office had to 'put its foot down' to ensure Mandelson did go through security vetting
Robbins says UKSV did not have the power to refuse security vetting
Robbins says Mandelson's appointment should have been blocked after Cabinet Office's 'due diligence' scrutiny
Robbins says No 10 wanted Foreign Office to be clear vetting decisions 'taken entirely independently of ministers'
Robbins tells committee he opposed proposal from No 10 for Matthew Doyle to be given ambassadorial post
Robbins says he can't confirm Morgan McSweeney told Foreign Office about Mandelson vetting 'just fucking approve it'
Robbins rejects suggestion he was explicitly told officials recommended refusing Mandelson's vetting
Was Robbins misled about what UKSV actually concluded about Mandelson's vetting?
Robbins said he was never shown form saying Mandelson had failed security vetting interview
Analysis on Robbins' revelation about the Cabinet Office saying security vetting not needed
Robbins refuses to say if Mandelson's security vetting threw up concerns not 'already in public domain'
Robbins says he does not know if Morgan McSweeney was behind No 10 trying to rush Mandelson appointment
Cabinet Office suggested Mandelson did not even need security vetting, Robbins tells MPs
Robbins says Foreign Office was under 'constant pressure' from No 10 to push through Mandelson appointment
Robbins says No 10 wanted Mandelson in US 'as quickly as humanly possible' before security vetting started
Foreign affairs committee releases letter from Olly Robbins
Robbins gives evidence to foreign affairs committee
Ed Miliband says he always thought appointment of Mandelson as ambassador to US would 'blow up'
Voters 'don't like' Starmer, but leadership challenge 'last thing we want right now', says Labour MP Sarah Champion
Trump says Starmer made 'really bad pick' when he chose Mandelson as US ambassador
Sacked Foreign Office chief Olly Robbins to face MPs’ questions over Mandelson vetting
Ed Davey says revelation about No 10 wanting diplomatic job for Matthew Doyle 'incredibly damning' for PM
In his response to the hearing, Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, has focused on the revelation about No 10 wanting for find an ambassador’s job for Matthew Doyle. (See 10.29am and 11.03am.)
This is incredibly damning for Keir Starmer.
Not content with appointing Peter Mandelson as US ambassador despite his links to Epstein, he tried to appoint another man with a known friendship with a sex offender.
This is not just a lapse in judgment, it’s a pattern of behaviour.
Every day this scandal gets worse, and it becomes clearer that the only way to draw a line under it is for Starmer to go.
Badenoch claims Robbins' evidence shows Starmer misled MPs, because 'due process' not followed in Mandelson appointment
Kemi Badenoch claims that Olly Robbins evidence shows that “due process” was not followed in the appointment of Peter Mandelson, and that therefore Keir Starmer misled MPs when he claimed it had been.
She has posted this on social media.
The evidence from Olly Robbins is devastating to Keir Starmer.
It is clear that No10 not only made the appointment before vetting was completed, but that Mandelson was already acting as the Ambassador before the vetting – even seeing highly classified documents.
With this, and the ‘constant pressure’ No10 applied to the appointment and their ‘dismissive attitude’ to vetting Mandelson, it is now absolutely clear that ‘full due process’ was not followed.
Keir Starmer has misled the House.
The final question in the session came from John Whittingdale, who asked if he was confident that the government would comply in full with the Commons humble address saying the government had to publish all paperwork relating to Mandelson’s appointment, and messages between Mandelson and officials.
Robbins said it was a very wide-ranging motion. In theory, a huge amount of information would have to be disclosed. This had to be done in a way that would not create an “unmanageable burden” and an “unmanageable security risk” he said.
But he said it was now up to the Foreign Office and the Cabinet Office to explain what they were doing about it.
Robbins declines to discuss conversation with Starmer when he was sacked, implying legal proceedings likely
Yesterday Keir Starmer described a conversation he had had when he sacked Robbins, saying that he did not agree with the Foreign Office permanent secretary about his argument about not being able to disclose information about Mandleson’s vetting process.
Asked what he had told the prime minister, Robbins said that was a legitimate question, but he said he could not speak about that.
Referring to possible legal proceedings about his sacking, Robbins said that he was in “unknown territory” and for the sake of his family he had to keep quiet for the time being.
(Permanent secretaries who get sacked in circumstances like this normally end up negotiating some sort of payoff. What gets said in public can influence this.)
Robbins says he's 'desperately, desperately sad' about being sacked
Asked about his reaction to being sacked, Robbins said:
The very short answer is I don’t fully understand the reasons that I’m in the position I am in, but that is for a separate process for me to try to get to the bottom of.
As a human being, I’m desperately, desperately sad about it.
I love that job, I love that institution, I was proud to serve this government and any government that might follow it.
I hope I was doing it to the best of my ability. I was certainly doing it as hard as I possibly could.
I had wonderful colleagues who I miss deeply and the issues we were dealing with, and my colleagues are still dealing with, are of profound importance to the success of this government and the success of the country.
It’s been the proudest part of my career to lead that institution because of their work, not because of mine.
I just feel intensely proud of the people I’ve led and I wish them every success and wish I could still be with them.
Asked if he would have done anything differently, Robbins said there were various aspects of the system I think could be improved”.
But he said he was concerned about the way that the British state was “dissecting itself” in public over this.
He said he thought anything that undermined the integrity of the security vetting process could pose a risk to people working in embassies in Moscow or Beijing.
And he said he found himself “wondering who this helps” – implying this is a controversy that will help hostile states.
Emily Thornberry, the committee chair, challenged what Robbins said about how security vetting should not stop the state employing people with “interesting” lives. She said there was “interesting” – and then there was Peter Mandelson, and the threats that he posed.
Robbins said that the Cabinet Office due diligence process (which he thinks Mandleson should have failed – see 10.38am) covered Mandelson’s public record.
He said security vetting served a different purpose.
There’s not a sort of big surprise in the fact that Peter Mandelson had an interesting life.
What I say to you still is that DV is for a different purpose. It’s to establish vulnerabilities that lead to an unmanageable risk to UK national security. That’s the process I hope that we undertook in good faith.
Thornberry said Mandelson was a threat; he was leaking state secrets to a bank.
Robbins said that was not the reason for Mandelson being sacked; those emails only came out after he was sacked.
Robbins says security vetting shouldn't be 'pass/fail piety test', because UK state needs 'interesting' people working for it
Robbins said that security vetting should not become a “pass/fail piety test”. He explained:
If we turn DV [developed vetting] into a pass/fail piety test, what we end up doing is robbing the British state of a lot of very, very capable people with complicated lives and potential vulnerabilities.
And I really, really don’t want that for the sake of this country.
If anything, this government needs to be served by an ever increasing range of people with broad experience and interesting lives, not suddenly find that the only people we can employ in sensitive roles are ones who raise no issues whatsoever.
Robbins says blocking Mandelson would have caused 'real problem' for PM - but claims this wasn't reason for approval
Asked what would have happened if the Foreign Office had refused to give Mandelson developed vetting clearance, Robbins said that this would have caused “a real problem” for the government and the country.
He went on:
I was very conscious that if we went through the rigour of our process and decided against granting clearance that would have caused a real problem for the government and a problem for the country,
I was conscious of that without letting it influence my judgment, let alone transferring any of that atmosphere on to the people charged with actually making that assessment.
Robbins also said that vetting was one of the hardest bits of his job.
I hate doing it, honestly. It’s some of the most emotional things I got involved with in my time in the job.
I take those responsibilities extremely seriously. I have been prepared to follow through on tough advice.
Robbins says leak of Mandelson vetting story to Guardian was 'grievous breach of national security'
Robbins said the leak to the Guardian of details of Mandelson’s vetting was “a grievous breach of national security”. He suggested he thought the leak happened once information about the UKSV process in this case was passed on to the Cabinet Office and No 10 as part of the process of scrutinising which documents will have to be published to comply with the Commons humble address.
He explained:
[This] probably flows from the rest of the evidence I’ve been giving you this morning. I think the system does not work if candidates for it don’t understand that this is an entirely different category of protection and losing that – I know it’s a cliche, but that trust, once gone, cannot be got back.
Thousands of people go through this process. Thousands and thousands of documents and sensitive issues and operations depend upon it. And I am struck and saddened that within I think days – probably only a small number of days – the Cabinet Office for their own reasons, deciding to open that up to share what they thought they’d found and their perceptions of it internally with No 10.
I’m not making accusations at anybody. It’s not my business to do so. I hope they’re being very rigorously investigated and the prosecutions will result, because this is a grievous breach of national security.
Asked to clarify this, Robbins said that he was not an investigator. But he said he was able to “put two and two together”. He said soon after Keir Starmer was told about the UKSV’s conclusions about Mandelson (on Tuesday last week, at the meeting described in this minute) the story was in the Guardian.
Robbins explains why he disagrees with Starmer's claim he should have been given details of Mandelson's vetting
Robbins told the committee that he did not accept Keir Starmer’s argument that he should have been given more details of Mandelson’s security vetting.
He said:
I hope it’s clear from everything I have said so far that I believe that’s a misunderstanding and a dangerous misunderstanding of the necessity of confidentiality of the process.
I’ve been interested, of course, over the last couple of days to read Lord Hague on this today and David Lammy even on Saturday, the former foreign secretary, deputy prime minister, where both have said in different language that they have never had vetting issues discussed with them in all their time as a minister and nor would they expect to.
I’m afraid that’s exactly the culture I have been brought up in. It’s supported by guidance. You are not supposed to share the findings and reports of UKSV other than in the exceptional circumstances where doing so allows for the specific mitigation of risk.
Robbins said he was told not to tell foreign secretary about No 10's proposal to give Matthew Doyle diplomatic post
And here is more from what Robbins told the committee about the proposal for Matthew Doyle to get a diplomatic job. (See 10.29am.) Robbins said he was told not to discuss this with the foreign secretary, David Lammy.
Robbins said there were “several discussions initiated by No 10 with me about potentially finding a head of mission opportunity for Matthew Doyle who was then the prime minister’s director of communications”.
He went on:
I was under strict instruction not to discuss that with the then foreign secretary, which was uncomfortable.
Robbins said he “felt quite uncomfortable” about the proposals and kept “giving advice that I thought this would be very hard for the office and was hard for me personally to defend”.
He said:
I found it very hard to think how I would explain to the office what the credentials of Matthew were to be in an important head of mission role when I was in danger of making very senior, very experienced diplomats leave the office.
