Sacked UK official says Downing Street pressured inquiry to clear Mandelson

Pressure from Downing Street to install Peter Mandelson in Washington was relentless, with security concerns seemingly treated as an obstacle to be pushed aside, a dismissed senior official told MPs today.

Olly Robbins, until last week the most senior civil servant at the Foreign Office, said Keir Starmer’s team showed a “dismissive attitude” toward the security vetting process for the government’s choice of ambassador to the United States.

He appeared before a parliamentary watchdog committee as the prime minister continued to grapple with the fallout from Mandelson’s appointment, a controversy that has dogged him for months.

The Foreign Office ultimately approved Mr Mandelson’s posting – despite his long-established links to the late US sex offender Jeffrey Epstein – even though the government has now acknowledged that independent vetting officials had advised that security clearance should be refused.

Keir Starmer dropped Peter Mandelson in September 2025

The embattled prime minister has said officials failed to make him fully aware of the clearance issue, and on Tuesday rejected accusations that he had misled parliament in earlier remarks about the affair.

In closely watched evidence, Mr Robbins struck a more measured tone, saying he signed off on Mr Mandelson’s appointment after officials responsible for vetting – based in a separate department – judged him to be a “borderline” case.

“I was briefed that … they were leaning towards recommending that clearance be denied but that the Foreign Office security department assessed that the risks … could be managed and/or mitigated,” Mr Robbins told MPs.

“I was also told that the risks did not relate to Mandelson’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein,” he added.

Reports in the British media have said the concern centered instead on connections between Mr Mandelson’s now-closed lobbying firm and Chinese companies.

Mr Robbins said that when he took over as the Foreign Office’s top official in January 2025, there was a “very strong expectation … coming from Number 10 (Downing Street) that he needed to be in post and in America as quickly as humanly possible”.

“I’m afraid what that translated into for my team in the Foreign Office… was what I felt was a generally dismissive attitude to his vetting clearance,” Mr Robbins said.

“My office, the foreign secretary’s office, were under constant pressure, there was an atmosphere of constant chasing.”

Mr Mandelson was appointed to the high-profile diplomatic role in December 2024, only weeks before US President Donald Trump returned to office the following month, and he began work in February 2025.

Questioned on whether Mr Mandelson’s clearance could have been blocked, Mr Robbins acknowledged that doing so would have created a “difficult problem I would have been landing the foreign secretary with and the prime minister with”.

But he said “that was not what was on my mind as we took this decision” and added that refusing clearance would have “damaged” relations between London and Washington.

Mr Starmer removed Mr Mandelson from the post in September 2025, seven months after he arrived in Washington, after fresh details surfaced about the extent of the former envoy’s connections to Epstein, who died in a US jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges.

Police in the UK are now examining allegations of misconduct in public office involving Mr Mandelson, 72, during his time as a Labour minister more than 15 years ago.

He was arrested in February and later released without charge. Mr Mandelson denies criminal wrongdoing.

Overnight, Mr Trump entered the row after previously criticising Mr Starmer over what he sees as insufficient backing for his Iran war.

On Truth Social, he endorsed the view that Mr Mandelson “was a really bad pick” for the Washington post.

Still, in a modest note of encouragement, Mr Trump added: “Plenty of time to recover, however!”

Mr Starmer said yesterday that he had ordered a review of the security vetting system, though former civil servants have accused him of making Mr Robbins the fall guy.

MPs were due to stage an emergency debate in parliament today after Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said there were still “serious questions about what he [Starmer] knew and when”.

Read more: Starmer says he was wrong to appoint Mandelson as US envoy