Oliver Robbins testifies on pressure to fast-track Peter Mandelson’s security vetting

The sacked senior civil servant Oliver Robbins has said he was subject to “constant pressure” when he arrived in the Foreign Office to get Peter Mandelson in post as soon as possible.

He said the Cabinet Office urged the Foreign Office to allow Mandelson’s appointment as the UK’s ambassador to the US without the usual vetting process but the Foreign Office pushed back and the vetting eventually went ahead.

The former permanent secretary, who was sacked by Keir Starmer last week after the Guardian revealed he had overturned a ruling from UK Security Vetting (UKSV), confirmed to parliament’s foreign affairs select committee on Tuesday that he had not told anybody in No 10 about the initial decision.

Starmer had appointed Mandelson before Robbins took up his role as Foreign Office chief, and also before security vetting had taken place, with senior officials telling the Guardian it was clear to them that No 10 wanted Mandelson in Washington whatever the risk.

In testimony that could be key to Starmer’s survival as prime minister, Robbins revealed that prior to his own appointment there had been a “live debate” about whether Mandelson should have to undergo any vetting before he was appointed. He said his predecessor, Philip Barton, had to be “very firm in person” for it to take place.

He told the committee that Downing Street took a “dismissive” attitude to vetting and Mandelson was given access to the Foreign Office building, low-classification IT and to “higher-classification briefings” before he was granted security clearance.

Robbins told MPs: “I walked into a situation in which there was already a very, very strong expectation. And you have seen the papers released already under the humble address that’s coming from Number 10 that he needed to be in post and in America as quickly as humanly possible. The very first formal communication of this to my predecessor from Number 10 private office being that they wanted all this done at pace and Mandelson in post before inauguration.”

Asked who in No 10 had applied pressure, he said it was mainly the prime minister’s private office, which is staffed by civil servants. But he added: “I think that the private office would only have been [putting on] this pressure themselves if they were under pressure.”

In a letter to the committee before testifying, Robbins said he was briefed on the UKSV finding orally in January – understood to be by Ian Collard, the department’s chief property and security officer – and that no documents were presented to him.

He said UKSV considered Mandelson a “borderline” case and was leaning towards recommending that clearance be denied.

The Foreign Office’s security team, the Estates Security and Network Directorate, thought the risks of the appointment could be managed and mitigated, and Robbins added that UKSV had acknowledged that the Foreign Office might want to grant clearance with those mitigations.

Pressed by Emily Thornberry, the committee chair, about why he did not request the vetting document, Robbins said he always took oral briefings to ensure confidentiality.

Robbins said in his letter that he considered asking to see the contents of the UKSV recommendation in September after Mandelson was sacked. But despite having been told there would be a national security justification for doing so, he decided not to request the documents.

He added: “It is deeply worrying that within days of [Cabinet Office] officials briefing No 10 on the issues they perceived with Mandelson’s vetting, the story had leaked to the Guardian.”

Robbins insisted he did not tell anyone in No 10 about the UKSV recommendation, bolstering the prime minister’s claims that neither he nor any of his aides knew.

Asked if he had ever been tempted to tell people such as the then cabinet secretary, Chris Wormald, or the prime minister’s then chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, he said: “No, absolutely not. My understanding of custom practice and guidance is that the decision making within the box of the vetting process must remain entirely confidential.”

Robbins said it would have been “very difficult indeed” if he had denied Mandelson security clearance.

He told MPs: “The PM’s nominee had been put out there to the public, announced, blessed by the king, agreed by the US government. We were in receipt of formal letters from No 10 telling us to get on with it quickly. We had engineered agreement to arrive just before the inauguration.

“All I can do is agree with the premise that against that backdrop, the Foreign Office saying ‘OK but sorry, we can’t grant him clearance’ would have been a very, very difficult problem. And a difficult problem I would have been landing the foreign secretary with, and the prime minister.”