Officials deliberately withheld Mandelson vetting result from me, Starmer says

The PM said it was "frankly staggering" he was not told even when he launched a review of the vetting process.

While he accepted "sensitive, personal information" provided during the vetting process should be protected, he rejected the idea ministers could not be told the overall recommendation.

The most senior civil servant at the Foreign Office, Sir Olly Robbins, was effectively sacked on Thursday, after a Guardian investigation revealed his department had gone against the recommendation that Lord Mandelson should not be given security clearance.

Sir Keir did not name Sir Olly in his initial statement to MPs, instead referring to officials.

However, asked directly what Sir Olly had told him about why he overruled the vetting recommendation, the PM said the civil servant's view was "he wasn't allowed to provide this information to me".

Allies of Sir Olly have argued he had a duty not to disclose details of the vetting, which are highly intrusive and personal, as this would undermine the process.

He is due to give evidence to the Commons Foreign Affairs Commitee on Tuesday morning.

Labour MP Dame Emily Thornberry, who chairs the committee, said that when it previously asked the senior civil servant about the vetting process "we got a partial truth".

She questioned whether for certain members of the PM's team "getting Peter Mandelson the job was a priority that overrode everything else and that security considerations were very much second order".

Thornberry was one of a number of Labour MPs who made critical interventions in the Commons.

While last week some Labour MPs were reluctant to criticise the prime minister, one told the BBC the his performance was "abysmal" and the mood among backbenchers was "very, very bad".

Chris Hinchliff, the Labour MP for North East Hertfordshire, said it "seems wholly incredible" that the decision to overrule the vetting recommendation "was made on a personal whim by a senior civil servant".

Instead he suggested there was "political political pressure from Number 10 to advance a man who a particular faction in the Labour Party has looked to for moral and spiritual leadership for years".

Fellow Labour MP Neil Duncan-Jordan also questioned why Lord Mandelson was "ever considered for such an important role".

Sir Keir insisted there was no pressure from Downing Street to push through the appointment of the former Labour minister, whose links to Epstein were public knowledge at the time.

Earlier, it emerged that Sir Keir appeared to have been advised to make Lord Mandelson go through security vetting before he was announced as ambassador.

An official document published last month showed Lord Case, the UK's top civil servant at the time, wrote to Sir Keir a month before Lord Mandelson was appointed suggesting a political appointee should get security clearance before a candidate is confirmed as the PM's choice.

However, Sir Keir argued it was normal for security clearance to happen after appointment and before the individual takes up the post, pointing to comments from Lord Case's successor Sir Chris to the Foreign Affairs Committee last year.

The PM added that he changed the process after Lord Mandelson's sacking so an appointment cannot be announced until after security vetting is passed.

The Foreign Office's power to make the final decision on security clearance was also suspended last week.

Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey said the PM should resign after a "catastrophic error of judgement" in appointing Lord Mandelson.

Reform UK and the Green Party have also called for Sir Keir to go, accusing him of lying about Lord Mandelson's vetting.

Plaid Cymru said the PM should stand down for misleading the public, while the SNP suggested Sir Keir was either "gullible, incompetent or both".

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