Former senior national security official Ciaran Martin has said he “cannot comprehend the basis” of the decision to sack Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office perm sec Sir Olly Robbins, and that the move will have a “detrimental, chilling effect on serving civil servants”.
Robbins was forced to step down from his post late on Thursday evening following revelations by the Guardian that Peter Mandelson had been appointed as the UKs ambassador to Washington DC despite having “failed” a developed vetting process conducted by UK Security Vetting in January last year.
The newspaper reported that UKSV’s “decision was overruled by the Foreign Office” so that Mandelson could take up the post, having already been announced as the incoming ambassador in December 2024.
Downing Street has insisted that no minister was told this had happened either when Mandelson was appointed, or after his sacking in September 2025. Prime minister Keir Starmer today described the situation as “staggering” and “unforgivable”.
“I was not told that [Mandelson] had failed security vetting,” he told reporters. “No minister was told that he had failed security vetting. No.10 wasn't told that he failed security vetting. That is completely unacceptable.”
However, Martin – the former director of GCHQ’s National Cyber Security Centre and now a professor at the Blavatnik School of Government – told BBC Radio 4's World at One programme this afternoon that this characterisation of vetting as a simple pass/fail process is incorrect and he cannot see why Robbins was sacked.
“I don't understand the basis of the dismissal, based on my knowledge of the vetting system and how it's supposed to work,” he said. “As far as I can tell, from what little we know, there is no abuse of process. There's no failure of process there. Not only is there no duty to disclose the details of a vetting case, there is a duty not to disclose them.”
The vetting process, he explained, is not something you pass or fail, like a driving test. Rather, he said, it’s “a risk assessment” .
“Most people have some risk attached to them, particularly if they're going to be in senior office…and particularly when an appointment has already been announced, as in this case, you're presented with an analysis of the risks and a handling plan.”
It is then up to an official – in this case it would “obviously” have been the permanent secretary, he said, because of the seniority of the post – to decide whether the risk is manageable and therefore whether the appointment should go ahead.
“Ministers never get details of the vetting process”
Martin added that ministers are never given details of the process “because otherwise the vetting system would collapse” as people would not undertake the process if they believed details of their private lives would be shared with ministers.
“So when the chief secretary to the prime minister, as he did this morning, said he was astounded to find out that this power of override existed, and I think equally surprised that there was no communication from the permanent secretary of the Foreign Office to the central machinery of government… that is his own ignorance, because this is simply part of the machinery of vetting.”
Asked about the prime minister's description of the process as shocking and unacceptable, Martin said: “It's for the prime minister to account for his own words and assessment, and he will have access to information in this case that I have not. But I do have a detailed knowledge of the British civil service vetting system, and that's the way it works. There isn't an override power in the way it's been portrayed here.”
He added that he went through this pocess many times including as head of Gus O’Donnell’s office when the latter was cabinet secretary, and “the one thing you do not do is go to the Prime Minister's Office and start telling the details of probably the most personally intrusive process there is in the country”.
Asked whether it was possible to argue that Robbins made a “grave mistake” in his assessment over Mandelson’s appointment, Martin noted that “there was a huge amount of publicly available information around controversies relating to Lord Mandelson” and the “prime minister, in making the appointment will have been fully aware of that”.
“The job of the vetting system is not to compile press cuttings,” he continued. “Other people can do that. The job for the vetting is to probe more deeply into other issues and manage the risk.” Noting that it was Mandelson’s “known links to the convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein” which caused his dismissal, and that these were known before Robbins took up his post, Martin said: “It does not appear to me that there was anything that [Robbins] signed off on in terms of this risk assessment that wasn't already known, and therefore, I don't see how one could sustain the allegation that he has made a serious misjudgement in this case, because he certainly didn't have a duty to tell No.10. He had a duty not to.”
Chilling effect
Martin confirmed that he had “briefly” spoken to Robbins and that the former permanent secretary is “coming to terms with the loss of a job that he loved. “I would want to extend support in those very sad circumstances,” Martin said.
Martin also expressed his disappointment that an “outstanding public servant…is no longer in public service. I think he was doing an excellent job at the Foreign Office. It was a difficult environment, not just obviously the global climate, but the financial climate. And he's a real loss to the public service, and it's one that I don't think the state can really afford.”
Asked whether he sees a pattern forming after the prime minister recently dismissed a cabinet secretary, Martin said: “I'm profoundly worried at the state of relationships between the top level of administerial level and the civil service at this point. I think it will have a very detrimental chilling effect on serving civil servants and people considering a civil service career. Put it this way, if a friend were to ask me about the wisdom of accepting a senior civil service job at the moment, I would think twice before advising them to accept.”