The Foreign Office had to “put its foot down” to insist that Peter Mandelson went through the developed vetting process before taking up post as the UK’s ambassador to Washington in January 2025, according to former permanent secretary Sir Olly Robbins.
Giving evidence to the Foreign Affairs Committee, Robbins also described the leaking of details surrounding Mandelson's vetting process as a “grievous breach of national security”, and insisted that the Foreign Office did not “overrule” UK Security Vetting when granting the former peer developed vetting clearance.
Robbins explained that when he took up post at the department in January 2025, there was an “atmosphere of pressure” surrounding Mandelson’s appointment, with regular phone calls from the No.10 private office to chase up the process.
At the point he took up his post, he noted, Mandelson had already been announced as the next ambassador to Washington, the UK government had received formal approval (agrément) for the posting from the US government, and Mandelson was also being given access to the Foreign Office buildings and some classified documents.
“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 said, describing “constant chasing” from No.10.
He also described a “dismissive attitude” to the vetting clearance, explaining that in handover talks with his predecessor Sir Philip Barton, it was clear that the vetting process was only being carried out at the insistence of the Foreign Office, which would not issue Mandelson with a contract or send him to Washington without “extant DV clearance”.
“A position taken from the Cabinet Office was that there was no need to vet Mandelson," Robbins said. "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.
“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,” he said.
Despite this atmosphere of pressure, he said, the FCDO security team had been “rigorously independent” in making the decision on Mandelson’s clearance: “They are entirely professional people. They care deeply about national security. They run one of the toughest security functions in government given the attack we’re under. I trusted their judgment and I backed it.”
Robbins was dismissed from his job as FCDO perm sec last Thursday following reporting in the Guardian newspaper that Mandelson had “failed” the developed vetting process carried out by UKSV and this decision had been “overruled” by Foreign Office officials.
He explained to MPs that UKSV does not make final decisions on DV for the FCDO. “They make findings and they make a recommendation,” he explained, and then “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.”
In the case of Peter Mandelson, Robbins said he did not recognise phrases which have been briefed to the media that UKSV had flagged him as “high” overall concern and marked “clearance denied” on a “summary decision” form – a template of which was released by No.10 last week.
Robbins said he had “never seen a form like that” until the government published one, and instead was given an oral briefing by his head of security Ian Collard on 28 January, the day before Mandelson was issued with his contract from the FCDO.
At this meeting, Robbins recalled, he was told that Mandelson’s was a “borderline case”, that UKSV was “leaning against” granting clearance, but that the FCDO security team had assessed that the identified risks – which he was told did not relate to Mandelon's relationship with convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein – could be mitigated.
The prime minister has since described the fact that he was not told about the advice given by UKSV either when Mandelson was appointed nor after he after his sacking a few months later as “unacceptable” and “unforgiveable”.
However, when asked whether the prime minister is right to have expected that he should have been told about the advice, Robbins said: “I believe that's a misunderstanding, and a dangerous misunderstanding, of the necessity of confidentiality of the process.”
He noted that ministers and former ministers have openly said in recent days “they have never had vetting issues discussed with them in all their time as the minister and nor would they expect to…that's exactly the culture I have been brought up in and 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.”
He added that once Mandelson had been sacked in September 2025 over his links Epstein, there was a clear direction from No.10 that all responses to "legitimate questions” about his appointment should “make clear that these decisions were taken entirely independently of ministers and that they were not consulted other than to be told the outcome”.
Robbins was also asked whether there had been any other political appointees at the the FCDO during his tenure and what process had been followed before their appointment. There had been no appointment, he said, but in March 2025 he had been asked by No10 “about potentially finding a head of mission opportunity for Matthew Doyle, who was then the prime minister's director of communications.”
“I was under strict instruction not to discuss that with the then foreign secretary,” Robbins added, which he found “uncomfortable”. He also expressed concerns, he said, at being asked to appoint an external candidate for a prominent role at a time when he was making redundancies among senior staff.
“I did my duty,” Robbins said. “I looked at the forward look of available jobs and shared with Number 10 what some of those might be… but I also felt quite uncomfortable about it and I kept giving advice that I thought this would be very hard for the Office and was hard for me personally to defend.”
Responding to Robbins comments, the PM’s official spokesperson rejected the claims that No.10 had shown a “dismissive” approach to vetting Mandelson and that there was an “atmosphere of pressure” and “constant chasing” from within the private office about Mandelson’s vetting.
They said: “There’s clearly a difference between asking for updates on an appointment and the idea of… being dismissive about vetting.”
The spokesperson added: “I would draw a distinction between the idea of pressure and being kept informed about the process and the progress of the appointment.”
A No.10 spokesperson said the prime minister told his Cabinet today that Robbins was a “man of integrity and professionalism” who made an “error of judgment”. In a readout of the meeting, he said: “[Starmer] concluded by saying that Sir Oliver Robbins made an error of judgement, but that he is a man of integrity and professionalism. He said it is wrong that the current cabinet secretary and permanent secretary at the Cabinet Office had been attacked despite doing exactly the right thing and sharing the information with the prime minister once they had gone through the correct processes to do so. He said that there are thousands of hard-working civil servants across the country who are full of integrity, doing excellent work every day.”
‘Trust once gone, cannot go back’
Robbins was also asked for his views on the implications of the leak around Mandelson’s vetting process and subsequent public discussions on vetting. He responded that "the vetting 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, decided 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.”
The former perm sec also raised concerns about possible changes to the way in which the FCDO can make developed vetting decisions.
Two days after Robbins dismissal, chief secretary to the prime minister Darren Jones said he had suspended the right of the Foreign Office and a “small number” of other departments to "overrule" UKSV recommendations.
“I'm very worried about that,” Robbins told MPs. “In my experience there are very, very good reasons why the Diplomatic service is given a degree of expert latitude over these things. The vetting system cannot be entirely one size fits all...the risks that are manageable in the Food Standards Agency are different from the risks that are manageable in our embassy in Beijing.”
Vetting candidates in the Foreign Office, he continued, “very often have a broader and deeper range of international contacts and experience than most” and while international contacts are an area of focus for the DV process, the risk and significance of those contacts in the FCDO context are best left to “an expert personnel security department”.
‘I loved that job’
Robbins appeared at times to become emotional as he reflected on the loss of a job he “loved” and his pride in the civil service. He had written to the committee before the session saying he was unable to discuss the circumstances of his dismissal as he was still seeking advice about it, but when pressed by MPs he 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 loved 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.”