Henry Zeffman
Chief political correspondent

Olly Robbins should be reinstated as permanent secretary of the Foreign Office, a former head of the civil service says.

Lord Sedwill, who served as the cabinet secretary from 2018 to 2020 and is also a former national security adviser, said that the prime minister should “retract his accusations” against Robbins.

In a letter to The Times newspaper, Sedwill wrote:

“In his evidence to the foreign affairs committee, Sir Olly Robbins displayed the calm integrity and intelligence which have characterised his distinguished career of public service.

“The prime minister appointed Peter Mandelson 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.

“As Robbins explained yesterday, the question for him 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 judgment that they could. Unwisely as it turned out, he shouldered his responsibilities rather than shunting them.

“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.”

Olly Robbins "made the judgement" that he did not have to tell Keir Starmer about Lord Mandelson not clearing security vetting, says the work and pensions secretary.

Pat McFadden tells BBC Breakfast that while the call made by Robbins was likely "in good faith", it ultimately led to the prime minister losing confidence in him.

McFadden also told Breakfast that while he was the minister in charge of the Cabinet Office at the time Robbins said the department signalled there was no need to vet Mandelson, he had "no involvement in any such signal being sent".

The way Prime Minister Keir Starmer sacked Olly Robbins sends a "real chill throughout the civil service," says the boss of the the FDA trade union.

Dave Penman is the general secretary of the FDA trade union - which represents civil servants across the UK.

He told the BBC's Newsnight: "I think 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?" Penman asked.

"That's not a place any government wants to be because it doesn't deliver for the people of the country," Penman added.

Starmer struggling to escape Mandelson rowpublished at 07:37 BST

07:37 BST

Chris Mason
Political editor

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This is the seventh day in a row that the self-inflicted damage of the Lord Mandelson saga has rained down on Keir Starmer, and this element of it over the last week is but a chapter in the wider story.

The minutiae of the prime minister's most politically consequential decision in office are now being forensically dissected and, frequently, in public.

At the select committee, in the Commons and in the press.

The building blocks of a judgement call Starmer now acknowledges he got catastrophically wrong are being scrutinised daily.

So much for the grid of announcements and campaign events Labour folk in Scotland, Wales and in the areas of England with council elections would love to be focused on. Instead, there is incessant conversation about Lord Mandelson.

And Olly Robbins - who was dumped on by Downing Street from a prime ministerial height over the last few days - responded with a modestly expressed assault on its judgement, sense of fairness and proportion.

Granted, they have been gunning for his judgement too, in a circular firing squad about credibility.

With Prime Minister's Questions at lunchtime and the prospect in the coming weeks of the next deluge of documents relating to Lord Mandelson's appointment being published, this is a foul-up Starmer is struggling to escape.

You can read more analysis from our political editor here.

Pressure on Starmer as he prepares for PMQs while Mandelson row continuespublished at 07:21 BST

07:21 BST

Henry Zeffman
Chief political correspondent

Some weeks it’s hard to predict what Kemi Badenoch will ask about at Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs). This is not one of those weeks.

She will presumably seize on the elements of Olly Robbins’s evidence yesterday where he described the pressure from No 10 to approve and expedite Lord Mandelson’s appointment.

No 10 denies that they put pressure on the Foreign Office. There is also an important nuance here which is that Robbins’s argument is that he withstood the pressure, and that his decision to approve Mandelson’s security clearance was unrelated to the pressure he felt.

His accusation matters nevertheless, because at the core of why Keir Starmer professes to be so angry now is that he says he would have cancelled the appointment of Mandelson had he known about the vetting concerns.

Robbins, on the other hand, describes a No 10 so determined to press ahead with the appointment that it was even mooted at one point that there be no vetting at all.

Those two accounts are hard to reconcile.

This morning, Starmer’s team is drawing some comfort from the fact that Emily Thornberry, the Labour MP who chaired yesterday’s hearing, has backed Starmer’s decision to sack Robbins, saying he should have told No 10 more details of the vetting process.

Dan Carden, another Labour MP on the committee, takes a different view. He’s said Robbins was “put in an impossible position” and has “had the goalposts moved”, adding: “Why he was sacked... still needs answering”.

It will be a PMQs where it’s not just what Badenoch asks that matters, but also the mood among Labour MPs sitting behind Starmer while he answers.

Olly Robbins spent almost two-and-a-half hours giving evidence to MPs on the Foreign Affairs committee on Tuesday.

Here is a reminder of the key things that he said:

• Robbins told MPs yesterday that when he began the top job in the Foreign Office in January 2025, there was "already a very very strong expectation" from No 10 that Mandelson "needed to be in post" as quickly as possible
• He spoke of a "dismissive" attitude in Number 10 to Mandelson's vetting, but insisted that his department followed the process "rigorously"
• He told MPs that he was briefed that the body that conducts vetting considered Mandelson a "borderline case" and were "leaning towards" recommending that clearance be denied
• Asked about the impact on the government if Mandelson's clearance had been denied, Robbins said: "I think it would have been very difficult indeed"

A member of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee says he understands why Olly Robbins may feel "angry and upset" by his dismissal.

John Whittingdale tells BBC Breakfast that Tuesday's meeting of the committee was an "extraordinary session", later adding that Lord Mandelson should never have been appointed as the UK ambassador to Washington "in the first place".

Asked whether he agrees that Robbins should have been sacked, Whittingdale says that he does not, and goes on to say: "I understand why he feels angry and upset by that, and that was apparent when he was giving evidence to us yesterday."

Whittingdale adds: "We still don't know why it was that the prime minister was so determined to appoint somebody to this incredibly important position who was so obviously the wrong person to be in it."

Questions over who knew what and when about the appointment of Lord Mandelson as US ambassador continue to be asked, seven months after his sacking from the top job in Washington.

Here's a reminder of how this row has played out:

Keir Starmer will face fresh questions from MPs later today, after Olly Robbins's evidence to MPs over Lord Mandelson's vetting for the US ambassador job.

Wednesday's Prime Minister's Questions session comes after Robbins - former top civil servant in the Foreign Office - accused Downing Street of taking a "dismissive attitude" to vetting during Mandelson's appointment to the Washington post.

He also said that there was "constant pressure" to get Mandelson into the job.

Robbins was sacked last week after it emerged that the peer had been sent on the diplomatic mission despite officials raising security concerns, without telling Starmer.

The PM will be in the Commons from 12:00 BST, but stick with us as we bring you all of the latest updates and analysis.

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