Government officials scrambled to obtain information on Peter Mandelson’s security vetting last September, days after The Independent told Downing Street he had failed the critical checks.
Cat Little, the most senior official in the Cabinet Office, told MPs on Thursday that details were requested on 15 September. The Independent had contacted Sir Keir Starmer’s then director of communications, Tim Allan, on 11 September and later that same day ran a front-page story revealing that Lord Mandelson had failed vetting.
The prime minister has told MPs that he and his ministers only found out that UK Security Vetting had advised Lord Mandelson should be denied clearance last Tuesday evening, setting off a chain of events that have engulfed his embattled government ever since. But Sir Keir faces questions over how he could have failed to have known about the issue when his communications chief was told directly and the story became headline news.
Giving evidence on the Mandelson scandal to the foreign affairs select committee, Ms Little said her investigations allowed her to see an audit trail that showed that “on the 15th of September last year, the Foreign Office security team requested access to a number of documents relating to the vetting file and, on the same day, the documents requested are sent to the Foreign Office”. She did not know who else saw the documents at the time, she told MPs.
The revelations about the Labour grandee have sparked a clamour of calls from across the political spectrum for the prime minister to resign. Lord Mandelson was sacked months after his appointment over his links to Jeffrey Epstein and is now facing a police inquiry over claims he leaked sensitive government documents to the paedophile financier when he was business secretary.
During the evidence session, Ms Little, who has been uncovering documents related to the peer’s appointment being released under the humble address procedure forced by MPs in February, was asked by committee member Alex Ballinger which organisations would have known of the vetting outcome, with the Labour MP pointing out “there was an article in The Independent where it was suggested Peter Mandelson had failed his vetting”.
She said she could not go into too much detail in a “public forum”, but she did not deny The Independent’s reporting that Sir Olly Robbins, until last week the most senior civil servant at the Foreign Office, was sacked by the prime minister without even being asked to explain his handling of the vetting saga.
Sir Keir told the Commons on Monday, in answer to a question by the veteran Tory MP Sir Julian Lewis, whether he had sought an explanation from Sir Olly: “I did ask him, and I did not accept his explanation. That is why I sacked him.” But friends of the former permanent under secretary have told The Independent that “no question was asked”.
Asked exactly what information the prime minister had when he took the decision to fire the civil servant, Ms Little said: “I can confirm that the prime minister would have had relevant information and whilst I must make very clear I’m not involved in the prime minister’s decision here, I do know that there were conversations directly between the PM and Sir Olly."
In her evidence, Ms Little also revealed that the “presumption” had been that Lord Mandelson did not need developed security vetting before he was sent to Washington to become the UK’s chief diplomat in the US because he was already a member of the House of Lords.
She also insisted “due process” was followed, as Sir Keir has claimed. She said Sir Olly had refused to share vetting information with her and that she took the “very unusual” decision to request it from security officials directly. She had known since 25 March about sensitive information linked to Lord Mandelson’s vetting, she said.
On Wednesday, the work and pensions secretary, Pat McFadden, repeatedly declined to say whether he believed the sacking of Sir Olly was fair. But Labour backbenchers have openly voiced doubts about Sir Keir’s future as a result of the latest scandal. Junior minister Alex Norris said on Thursday that claims of a Cabinet split over the scandal were “a load of guff”.
As pressure mounts against the prime minister, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch is pressing for his referral to the privileges committee, like Boris Johnson was over Partygate, claiming he misled MPs.
Sir Keir has accused his opponents of making politically motivated allegations about the Mandelson vetting scandal. Asked on a visit to Newcastle whether he had considered resigning, he said: “Last week, my political opponents were saying that there’s no way a civil servant wouldn’t have told me about the outcome of a developed vetting security exercise. Turns out my political opponents were completely wrong about that.
“Then they said that I was dishonest. It turns out they were completely wrong about that. They are now putting any allegation they can and I will tell you for why: they are opposed politically to what this government is trying to achieve.”
He has denied misleading MPs.
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