Top Foreign Office civil servant to leave post after Starmer loses confidence

The Foreign Office’s top civil servant will be leaving his post after it emerged the department had overruled a security vetting process to clear Lord Peter Mandelson to become UK ambassador to the US.

Sir Keir Starmer and Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper have lost confidence in Foreign Office permanent under-secretary Sir Olly Robbins, the Press Association understands.

Security officials initially denied the peer clearance, but Foreign Office officials took the rare step of overruling the recommendation.

The Prime Minister was not aware that the former Labour grandee was granted developed vetting against the advice of UK Security Vetting until earlier this week, the UK Government has said.

He has instructed officials to establish the facts about why vetting was granted, and the Foreign Office earlier said it is “working urgently” to comply.

Downing Street sources say the Prime Minister is “absolutely furious”.

David Lammy, who was foreign secretary when Lord Mandelson was appointed, did not know the Foreign Office had overruled the vetting until Thursday afternoon, it is understood.

A report in The Guardian revealed that security officials initially denied the peer clearance but that the Foreign Office overruled the recommendation.

A Westminster government spokesperson later confirmed that “officials in the FCDO” had taken the decision to grant developed vetting against the recommendation.

The Prime Minister has faced calls to stand down over the matter, with Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch calling it “preposterous” to claim he did not know Lord Mandelson failed security vetting.

She said: “If the Prime Minister doesn’t know what’s happening in his own office, he shouldn’t be in charge of our country. He should go.”

Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey said Sir Keir should have told Parliament “at the earliest opportunity” when he learned what had happened earlier this week, rather than having “waited for the media to force the truth out”.

Plaid Cymru, The Green Party and Reform UK have called for Sir Keir to resign.

Lord Mandelson, a political appointment rather than a career diplomat, was sacked from his Washington role last September when more details emerged about his relationship with paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein, who died in 2019.

Sir Keir has been under fire over the decision to give Lord Mandelson the job despite it being known that his dealings with Epstein continued after the financier’s conviction for child sex offences.

Judgment

Questions over his judgment intensified after the first batch of documents related to the decision published last month showed that he was warned before announcing Lord Mandelson’s ambassadorship of a “general reputational risk” over his association with Epstein.

That warning stemmed from the first part of the checks, carried out by the Cabinet Office, which was based on information in the public domain at the time.

The second was the highly confidential background vetting by security officials, which followed the announcement but came before Lord Mandelson took up his role in February 2025.

Information unearthed in this process – including any concerns – is never shared with ministers, and the result is binary, either clearing the candidate or barring them.

More documents relating to his appointment are yet to be released at the behest of MPs.

Sir Keir said in February that Lord Mandelson was cleared by security vetting, which he criticised for failing to disprove the former Labour grandee’s lies.

When Morgan McSweeney stepped down as Sir Keir’s chief of staff in February, he took “full responsibility” for giving his boss advice that resulted in the “wrong” appointment decision, while also calling for the vetting process to be “fundamentally overhauled”.