Officials in the Cabinet Office advised that Peter Mandelson should undergo developed vetting for the position of ambassador to the US, the department's most senior civil servant has said.
Cabinet Office permanent secretary and civil service chief operating officer Cat Little appeared before the Foreign Affairs Committee this morning, two days after prime minister Keir Starmer said it “beggars belief” that the FCDO did not tell ministers Mandelson had failed UK Security Vetting’s so-called “developed vetting” checks before being appointed as the UK’s ambassador to the US.
Little is the civil servant responsible for ensuring the government complies with a humble address motion submitted by opposition leader Kemi Badenoch in February to disclose information about Mandelson’s appointment as ambassador.
Her appearance also came two days after Sir Olly Robbins – who was sacked as Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office permanent secretary last week over the row – gave evidence to the committee.
On Monday, Robbins told the MPs that his department had “put its foot down” to insist that Mandelson go through the developed vetting process, and that No.10 had been “dismissive”. Robbins described "pressure" from No.10 surrounding Mandelson’s appointment, which had already been announced.
Robbins told the Foreign Affairs Committee that the Cabinet Office’s position had been that “there was no need to vet Mandelson” because “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 the appointment”.
Little told the MPs today that she had seen email correspondence between the Foreign Office’s personnel security team, UK Security Vetting – which carries out the checks – and the Government Security Group in the Cabinet Office seeking advice on whether developed vetting should take place.
“The presumption had been that, given Peter Mandelson had been a member of the House of Lords, the longstanding convention that he didn't require developed vetting was assumed, and they wanted to get proper policy advice from experts on whether that was the case,” Little told the MPs.
She said the audit trail showed a “discussion between security officials debating how the policy framework would apply”.
“What I can see is there is a senior official from the government security group that goes back to the Foreign Office security team and advises two things: one, that this is a decision for the Foreign Office; and two, that they would advise developed vetting is sought.”
‘Due process was followed’
Last week, a leak reported by the Guardian revealed that Mandelson had failed the vetting process and that the Foreign Office had “overruled” UK Security Vetting’s decision to deny him security clearance.
Asked whether this was the case, Little said: “My view is that due process was followed.”
“UKSV make a recommendation, and the Foreign Office make a decision as to whether to grant DV. That is the process… agreed with the Foreign Office,” she said.
Little explained that the Foreign Office is a “make-recommendation department”, making it an exception in government – along with some other departments that Little did not name. UKSV undertakes a risk assessment and provides two conclusions: the level of concern around a candidate and its overall recommendation on whether to grant developed vetting. However, the recommendation is non-binding and the FCDO is the “ultimate decision maker” in the process.
'I acted as swiftly and appropriately as I could'
Many of the MPs’ questions to Little were about who had seen which documentation related to the process and when they had seen it.
Earlier this week, Robbins told the committee that he had asked for access to the developed vetting file and had been denied on the basis of national security. Little said that she had not seen an audit trail for this request.
She said she had seen records of a request from the Foreign Office security team to UKSV in mid-September requesting access to “a number of documents relating to the vetting file” that were sent over the same day.
There were also questions about a 10-page summary that UKSV had put together detailing its case officer’s considerations during the vetting process. This summary document was submitted to the Foreign Office, which it used to make its decision about whether to grant DV.
Little confirmed that these summary documents “are currently being processed in accordance with the humble address”.
The perm sec said she had first learned of the summary document’s existence in March. “I specifically asked to see this document in any decision making audit trail around those judgments at the time it was made clear to me that that information would not be forthcoming,” she said.
She said the reasons for denying her access to the document “were not discussed”, but she said at the time there was “a discussion taking place, given the complexity of the framework and the guidance… there was a lot of back and forth discussion about the status of how we would treat vetting information”.
At this point, Little said she took the “very unusual judgement” that she should request the information directly from UKSV.
“I did that because [of] my responsibilities to discharge the humble address, which is a responsibility that is unique to me, and I take very seriously. I felt that I needed to see some relevant documentation so that I could advise the prime minister as to whether we had fully complied and gathered the information that's available and within scope,” she said.
Little said she was provided the document and UKSV’s recommendations at the end of March. She then commissioned advice on the legal and policy frameworks for handling the document and on its relevance to the scope of the humble address.
She also sought advice from the senior official who was liaising with the criminal investigation being carried out by the Met Police into allegations of misconduct by Mandelson when he was in office, to ensure her handling of the document would not prejudice that investigation; and from the Cabinet Office’s priority and ethics team “as to any other considerations I should take into account”.
Having ascertained that the information was within the scope of the humble address and her responsibility to advise the PM, she told Keir Starmer about the document on 14 April. Starmer then instructed her to undertake further fact finding “immediately and urgently with the specific intent that I could advise him on how to inform parliament”.
Information identified during that fact-finding exercise included an email from the FCDO’s director of security to the department’s chief operating officer, copied to Robbins, setting out the decision to grant developed vetting as well as some “mitigations”. The email did not go into the detail behind the decision or the risks the vetting process uncovered, she said.
Asked whether the prime minister had seen that email, Little said she did not want to “get into exactly who has seen what information” but confirmed that the PM “has seen relevant information”.
Asked why she had not spoken to the prime minister about the document for nearly three weeks after receiving it, Little said she had waited to receive legal, policy and propriety advice first “because this is such an unusual thing for a government official to do and to handle that sort of security information”.
“I believe I have a responsibility to handle that sensitive information within the framework of both the law and the guidance that I'm subject to, and I did not feel that I could share that information until I understood the consequences and the authority that I had to share the information,” she said.
“Yes, it did take some time... I firmly believe that that is the professional and appropriate thing to do when dealing with such sensitive information that is so important to be protected as part of our overall national security framework… I truly believe that I acted as swiftly and effectively and appropriately as I could.”