Sir Olly Robbins, the sacked Foreign Office mandarin, has told MPs that Downing Street was 'dismissive' of the need to vet Peter Mandelson before his appointment as UK ambassador to Washington. Appearing before the Foreign Affairs Committee, Robbins claimed that it was 'not a given' that Mandelson would be vetted at all, piling further pressure on Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
Robbins, who was dismissed on Thursday evening, revealed that when he took up his post last January, Mandelson's name had already been announced and he had been given access to IT systems. He said there was a 'very, very strong expectation' from No10 that Mandelson needed to be in post 'as quickly as humanly possible', before Donald Trump's inauguration.
The former official told the committee that the Cabinet Office had initially taken the position that vetting might be unnecessary because Mandelson was a member of the House of Lords and a privy counsellor. 'The briefing I had on arrival was that there had been a position taken from the Cabinet Office that... vetting might be unnecessary,' Robbins said.
Robbins also disclosed that UK Security Vetting (UKSV) had been 'leaning toward' refusing Mandelson's clearance, but the decision was taken that concerns could be managed. He said he received only an oral briefing on UKSV's findings, with no documents presented. The leak of UKSV's findings, he added, posed a 'massive threat to national security'.
The PM has insisted he was never informed that UKSV did not approve Mandelson's clearance, and that neither was his team. Robbins was sacked shortly after the revelations emerged. The committee also heard claims that Robbins was pressured to find an ambassadorial job for one of the PM's key aides, and was asked whether Starmer's former chief of staff told the Foreign Office to 'just f***ing approve' the vetting.
