Keir Starmer should “retract his accusations” about Sir Olly Robbins and reinstate him as permanent secretary of the Foreign Office, former cabinet secretary Mark Sedwill has said.
In a letter to The Times, Lord Sedwill said the prime minister had appointed Peter Mandelson as ambassador to the US “against official advice, announced that appointment without security vetting having been completed and claims that he would have changed his mind had he been told that the vetting process had raised the concerns about Mandelson’s previous conduct of which he was already well aware”.
Sedwill’s comments come days after Robbins was forced to step down as perm sec over the row.
Speaking yesterday in the House of Commons, the prime minister said it “beggars belief” that the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office did not tell ministers that Peter Mandelson had failed UK Security Vetting’s so-called “developed vetting”checks before being appointed as the UK’s ambassador to the US.
But appearing before the Foreign Affairs Committee the same day, Robbins said the findings of the vetting process should not be shared “other than in exceptional circumstances” – and that the findings in this case were “absolutely within the normal parameters of a set of findings from UKSV”.
Sedwill, who also served as a national security adviser, said the key question for Robbins during the vetting process was “not whether to tell the prime minister what he already knew, but whether those issues could be mitigated enough to allow Mandelson access to the secret intelligence necessary to do his job”.
“He made the professional judgement that they could. Unwisely as it turned out, he shouldered his responsibilities rather than shunting them,” he said.
“The prime minister should retract his accusations against Olly Robbins and reinstate him to the job the country needs him to do of getting the Diplomatic Service into shape for the second quarter of the 21st century.”
Starmer told MPs yesterday that had he known UKSV had recommended that Mandelson be denied developed vetting clearance, he would not have gone ahead with the appointment.
However, Robbins said the FCDO had had to “put its foot down” to insist that Mandelson go through the developed vetting process, and described No.10’s attitude as “dismissive”.
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”.
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.
He also described an “atmosphere of pressure” surrounding Mandelson’s appointment, with regular phone calls from the No.10 private office to chase up the process.
PM 'losing the ability to work with the civil service'
Following the select committee hearing, Dave Penman, general secretary of the FDA union, said people would “come to the conclusion that Olly was tossed out by the prime minister and did absolutely nothing wrong”.
“He got the sack for doing what he was asked to do. I don’t think anyone is going to conclude that Olly should have been dismissed or treated the way he was. It was completely unjustifiable, and yet that’s what happened,” he said.
Penman told BBC Newsnight that he believes “the prime minister is losing the ability to work with the civil service”.
"Who in the civil service would now think they would be immune from when it is politically expedient to be dismissed? That's not a place any government wants to be because it doesn't deliver for the people of the country," he said.
And Mike Clancy, general secretary of Prospect union – which represents "thousands of workers subject to security vetting" – said the vetting system "requires the full confidence of those subject to vetting that the sensitive information they disclose will not be shared either now or in the future".
"While of course it is right that parliament closely scrutinises the actions of ministers and officials in relation to Peter Mandelson, it is vitally important that the basic principle that the content of vetting decisions must not be shared is not brought into question," he said.
"There is a real risk that the events of recent days may have put doubt in the minds of many of the workers concerned. It is beholden on all political leaders to make clear they will uphold this vital principle going forward."
'Chucked under the bus'
Sedwill is the latest former senior official to express support for Robbins.
Former FCDO perm sec Simon McDonald has also called for Robbins to be reinstated, in an opinion piece for The Guardian.
"Robbins did his job, aware of the pressure from across Downing Street but not buckling to it," McDonald said. "And yet misunderstanding about what that job required led the prime minister to rush to a wrong judgment. I cannot believe that, had he waited until after the foreign affairs select committee session, the PM would have sacked Robbins.
"The world is an uncertain place. The Foreign Office and its professional head are dealing with simultaneous crises in Ukraine, the Middle East and the transatlantic relationship. Britain cannot afford a gap at the top, nor can it afford to lose the services of a first-class civil servant whose diligence and thoughtfulness were on full display yesterday in Portcullis House. There is one immediate conclusion in my view: the government should reinstate Robbins as permanent undersecretary."
And over the weekend, Helen MacNamara, a former director general of the Cabinet Office’s Propriety and Constitution Group and deputy cabinet secretary, told The Observer that Robbins had been “totally unfairly treated” and had been “trying to do what the prime minister wanted”.
“It’s bad to fire civil servants for the prime minister’s judgement. The problem is the fallout from the appointment of Peter Mandelson as ambassador,” she said. “There aren’t many people as good as Olly in Whitehall so how can it be in the national interest that he gets fired for this?”
“If, as soon as there’s any sign of trouble, people get chucked under the bus, that’s going to make civil servants more risk-averse, cautious, less likely to want to put their head above the parapet. That’s bad for the country because you need bold, creative, confident public servants to deliver change,” she added.
Similarly, Gus O'Donnell, another former cab sec, said last week that Starmer "appears to have taken a very rapid decision to dismiss someone for applying what seems on the face of it to be an entirely standard, reasonable and perfectly obvious interpretation of the law and rules as they stand", which he said “risks having a serious and sustained chilling effect on serving and prospective civil servants… and must be fixed”.
Writing for The Times, Lord O’Donnell said Starmer “appears to have taken a very rapid decision to dismiss someone for applying what seems on the face of it to be an entirely standard, reasonable and perfectly obvious interpretation of the law and rules as they stand”.