Sacked Foreign Office chief Olly Robbins to face MPs’ questions over Mandelson vetting

At 9am Olly Robbins will give evidence to the Commons foreign affairs committee about the appointment of Peter Mandelson as ambassador to the US. Until last week Robbins was permanent secretary at the Foreign Office and his predecessor but one in that office, Simon McDonald, was the man who terminated Boris Johnson’s career with a revelation showing that Johnson had lied about his knowledge of a sleaze allegation about a minister. Robbins is not expected to produce a bombshell on that scale, but his evidence will be a moment of jeopardy for Keir Starmer nevertheless.

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 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]."

Mandelson 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: "By the time we are describing [when DV was carried out], it was clear that the prime minister wanted to make this appointment himself."

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”.