The Prime Minister said it ‘beggars belief’ that he was not told Lord Mandelson had failed vetting checks.
Sir Keir Starmer has blamed former top civil servant Sir Olly Robbins for deliberately keeping him in the dark over Lord Peter Mandelson’s failure to pass security vetting checks before taking the role of ambassador to the US.
The Prime Minister said he would not have appointed Lord Mandelson if he had known the peer had failed the checks and insisted there was no pressure from No 10 to push through the high-profile appointment.
Sir Keir fired Sir Olly from his role as the Foreign Office’s top official after finding out last week that Lord Mandelson had been granted security clearance despite failing the checks.
The Prime Minister faced accusations of lying to MPs by failing to set out the full picture around how Lord Mandelson was granted developed vetting (DV) status.
He insisted he had been let down by officials, with Sir Olly claiming he was not allowed to share the information that the UK Security Vetting (UKSV) agency had declined to give the peer the green light.
The Prime Minister accepted responsibility for the decision to appoint Lord Mandelson, who was sacked after nine months in the job over his links with paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein.
The architect of New Labour was a political appointment to the plum diplomatic role, rather than the Washington job going to a career diplomat.
Dame Emily Thornberry, Labour chairwoman of the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, said: “I am afraid to say, doesn’t this look like, for certain members of the Prime Minister’s team, getting Peter Mandelson the job was a priority that overrode everything else and that security considerations were very much second order.”
Sir Keir denied this, telling her it was “unforgivable” that the full information about Lord Mandelson’s appointment had not been disclosed.
He said this “wasn’t an oversight” but “a deliberate decision was taken to withhold that material from me” on repeated occasions by the Foreign Office.
The Prime Minister said Sir Olly’s view was “that he couldn’t provide this information to me because he wasn’t allowed to”, which No 10 has claimed is not correct.
Whitehall veteran Sir Olly will face MPs on the Foreign Affairs Committee on Tuesday to give his account.
Sir Keir said he challenged Sir Olly over why he went against the recommendation of UKSV.
“I did ask him and I didn’t accept his explanation,” Sir Keir said. “That’s why I sacked him.”
The Prime Minister said there were a series of occasions when the information could and should have been disclosed.
“I do not accept that I could not have been told about UKSV’s denial of security vetting before Peter Mandelson took up his post in January 2025,” Sir Keir said.
Then-cabinet secretary Sir Chris Wormald could have been told in September 2025 when he carried out a review of the process, and the Foreign Secretary could have been told when making statements to the Commons committee that year, he said.
He added that it was “frankly staggering” he was not told when he ordered a review of the UKSV process.
The Prime Minister said the situation was “incredible” and “it beggars belief that throughout the whole timeline of events, officials in the Foreign Office saw fit to withhold this information from the most senior ministers”.
He told MPs: “It is surely beyond doubt that the recommendation from UKSV that Peter Mandelson should be denied developed vetting clearance was information that could and should have been shared with me on repeated occasions.
“And therefore, should have been available to this House and ultimately to the British people.”
Sir Keir said he found out last Tuesday that Lord Mandelson had failed the vetting check.
Tory leader Kemi Badenoch accused the Prime Minister of breaching the ministerial code by not coming to the Commons to set out the facts earlier.
“The earliest opportunity to correct the record was Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday, almost a week ago. This is a breach of the ministerial code.”
Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey urged the Prime Minister to resign, telling MPs “the only decent thing” for him to do “is to take responsibility”.
Reform’s Lee Anderson was thrown out of the Commons after accusing Sir Keir of lying and then refusing to comply with Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle’s demand to withdraw the accusation.
“I have the greatest respect for you and your office, but I will not withdraw it,” he told the Speaker. “That man couldn’t lie straight in bed.”
The Prime Minister faced repeated questions over a letter from former cabinet secretary Lord Simon Case, from November 2024, which appeared to advise Sir Keir that security clearances should be done before confirming Lord Mandelson as his choice for the role.
The note said that in the case of a political appointment “you wish to take, you should give us the name of the person you would like to appoint and we will develop a plan for them to acquire the necessary security clearances and do due diligence on any potential conflicts of interest or other issues of which you should be aware before confirming your choice”.
The Prime Minister insisted the usual process for a political appointment had been followed, but that procedure had been changed after the Mandelson row.
The terms of a probe into Government security vetting have been updated in light of the latest revelations about Lord Mandelson and the inquiry will be led by Sir Adrian Fulford, a senior judge and chairman of the Southport Inquiry.
