British Prime Minister Keir Starmer fired Oliver Robbins as Permanent Undersecretary at the Foreign Office last week.PETER NICHOLLS/Reuters
The former top official in Britain’s Foreign Office has defended his handling of the appointment of Peter Mandelson as U.S. ambassador and contradicted accusations made against him by Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
Mr. Starmer fired Oliver Robbins as permanent undersecretary at the Foreign Office last week and accused him of failing to reveal that Mr. Mandelson had been denied security clearance before taking up the diplomatic post in February, 2025.
Mr. Mandelson was a long-time Labour Party stalwart and a well-known associate of U.S. sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
On Tuesday, Mr. Robbins told MPs on the House of Commons foreign affairs committee that he was under pressure to get Mr. Mandelson to Washington quickly. Mr. Starmer had announced the appointment a month earlier and Downing Street wanted Mr. Mandelson on the job around the time of U.S. President Donald Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20, 2025.
“Throughout January, my office, the Foreign Secretary’s office, were under constant pressure. There was an atmosphere of constant chasing,” said Mr. Robbins, who started his job as permanent undersecretary on Jan. 20, 2025.
The United Kingdom Security Vetting, or UKSV, an agency within the Cabinet Office that handles security clearance for high-profile appointments, began its review of Mr. Mandelson in late December, 2024. Mr. Robbins said Downing Street was so intent on the appointment going through that there was “a generally dismissive attitude to his vetting clearance.”
The vetting went ahead, and on Jan. 29, 2025, Mr. Robbins met with Foreign Office officials to review the UKSV’s findings. He said the agency considered Mr. Mandelson a borderline case and leaned toward not granting clearance. Foreign Office officials, including Mr. Robbins, believed they could mitigate the concerns which did not relate to Mr. Mandelson’s relationship with Mr. Epstein. Mr. Robbins declined to provide details about what issues the UKSV had flagged.
The UKSV “acknowledged that [the Foreign Office] may wish to grant clearance, with appropriate risk management,” Mr. Robbins told the committee. Once the mitigations were in place, clearance was granted and Mr. Mandelson started work as U.S. ambassador on Feb. 10, 2025.
Mr. Starmer fired Mr. Mandelson last September after more details of the closeness of his relationship with Mr. Epstein surfaced in the media. The Prime Minister has since apologized repeatedly for the appointment and accused Mr. Mandelson of misleading officials about his ties to the New York financier.
Mr. Starmer said he only found about the UKSV concerns last week during a review of documents related to Mr. Mandelson’s appointment. He promptly fired Mr. Robbins and told the House of Commons on Monday that it was staggering that the permanent undersecretary had not told anyone about the findings.
“If I had known before he took up his post that UKSV’s recommendation was that vetting clearance should be denied, I would not have gone ahead with the appointment,” Mr. Starmer said.
On Tuesday, Mr. Robbins said he followed a long-standing government practice that UKSV information was not to be shared. Mr. Starmer’s comments are “a dangerous misunderstanding of the necessity of confidentiality of the process,” he told MPs.
Had the Foreign Office revoked Mr. Mandelson’s appointment, it would have caused “quite an issue in the relationship” between Britain and the U.S., Mr. Robbins added. And he regretted that Mr. Starmer announced the appointment before the vetting process had even started.
Mr. Robbins indicated that he had no idea why he had been fired and hinted that he may sue. “I don’t fully understand the reasons that I’m in the position I am in, but that is for a separate process for me to try to get to the bottom of. As a human being, I’m desperately, desperately sad about it,” he said.
He also revealed that in March, 2025, Mr. Starmer asked the Foreign Office to find an ambassadorship for his former head of communications, Matthew Doyle. Mr. Robbins said he was told not to discuss the request with then-foreign minister David Lammy.
Mr. Doyle was not given an appointment and was later suspended from the Labour Party because of his connections to Sean Morton, a Scottish Labour councillor who has been convicted of child sex offences.
Mr. Robbins’ testimony will do little to ease the pressure on Mr. Starmer, who has faced calls to resign over his handling of the Mandelson appointment.
“Every day, this scandal gets worse, and it becomes clearer that the only way to draw a line under it is for Starmer to go,” Ed Davey, leader of the Liberal Democrats, said Tuesday.
“The evidence from Olly Robbins is devastating to Keir Starmer,” said Conservative Party Leader Kemi Badenoch.