Starmer ‘not aware’ Foreign Office overruled Mandelson vetting ‘until this week’

Sir Keir Starmer was not aware that the Foreign Office overruled a security vetting process for Lord Peter Mandelson to become UK ambassador to Washington “until earlier this week”, the Government has said.

The Foreign Office meanwhile has said it is “working urgently” to comply with a request from the Prime Minister to establish the facts of how developed vetting was granted.

It comes after The Guardian reported that security officials initially denied the peer clearance, but the Prime Minister had already named him as Britain’s top diplomat in the US, and the Foreign Office took the rare step of overruling the recommendation.

Sir Keir has previously insisted due process was followed in the appointment, and that former Labour grandee Lord Mandelson had lied about the extent of his links with paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein.

A government spokesperson said: “The security vetting process for Peter Mandelson was sponsored by the FCDO.

“The decision to grant developed vetting to Peter Mandelson against the recommendation of UK Security Vetting was taken by officials in the FCDO.

“Neither the Prime Minister, nor any government minister, was aware that Peter Mandelson was granted developed vetting against the advice of UK Security Vetting until earlier this week.

“Once the Prime Minister was informed he immediately instructed officials to establish the facts about why the developed vetting was granted, in order to enact plans to update the House of Commons.”

The Guardian had also reported that senior Government officials were weighing whether to withhold documents from Parliament that would show Lord Mandelson failed the security vetting.

The spokesperson however said the Government is committed to complying with the parliamentary motion to disclose documents relating to Lord Mandelson’s appointment “in full as soon as possible”.

Documents to be provided to the parliamentary intelligence and security committee (ISC) as part of the disclosure will include documents provided to the FCDO by UK Security Vetting, the spokesperson said.

An FCDO spokesperson later said: “The Prime Minister has initiated a process to establish the facts of the granting of developed vetting and we are working urgently to comply with that process.”

Sir Keir has previously said that vetting carried out independently by the security services “gave him clearance for the role”.

But the peer was not granted approval following the secretive process by the Cabinet Office’s UK Security Vetting (UKSV) last January, The Guardian reported.

Sir Keir is facing calls to stand down over the matter.

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said Sir Keir had misled Parliament by saying “full due process” was followed, that he had wrongly said Lord Mandelson cleared the vetting, and that he failed to put out all documents required under a parliamentary measure to disclose details of the appointment.

She said: “Each of those three things is a very serious problem for the Prime Minister, unless he can prove all three wrong, he is definitely in resigning territory. There are not enough Conservative MPs to make that happen.

“However, Labour MPs now need to ask themselves, are we prepared to keep this man who has lied and lied again in Downing Street?”

Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey said: “Keir Starmer had already made a catastrophic error of judgment. Now it looks as though he has also misled Parliament and lied to the British public. If that is the case, he must go.

“Labour came into government on a promise to clean up politics. Instead we’re seeing the same old sleaze, scandal and cover-ups as we did under the Conservatives.”

The Green Party and Reform UK also called for Sir Keir to resign.

Labour backbencher Graham Stringer said that if the Prime Minister was aware that Lord Mandelson had failed his vetting, he should resign.

“Whether you’re a junior minister or the most important minister, the Prime Minister, if you lie to Parliament knowingly, then you have to go,” the MP for Blackley and Middleton South told LBC.

Dame Emily Thornberry, senior Labour MP and chairwoman of the Foreign Affairs select committee, said: “My committee asked several times whether red flags had been raised by Peter Mandelson’s vetting process.

“It seems there were. Who overrode these concerns?

“Why were we kept in the dark? People need to stop messing us about and tell us the truth.”

The committee intends to summon the Foreign Office’s top civil servant, Sir Olly Robbins, over evidence he previously gave on the vetting process.

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 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.

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 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.

Foreign Office officials deployed a rarely used authority to override the decision to deny Lord Mandelson clearance, and he was told days later that he had passed, according to The Guardian.

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

Some material is expected not to be published either because it relates to a police investigation into Lord Mandelson, or because Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee believes it could jeopardise national security or diplomatic relations.

But keeping documents from the committee could amount to a breach of the Conservative motion to release “all papers relating to Lord Mandelson’s appointment”.

Lord Beamish, the ISC chair, told the Press Association it was a “welcome clarification” from the Government that documents would be disclosed in full.

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”.

Mike Clancy, general secretary of Prospect – the trade union which represents vetting officers at UKSV, said it was “deeply unfortunate” that Downing Street “allowed the impression to circulate that the vetting of Peter Mandelson had not been done correctly by UK Security Vetting”.

He said: “Civil servants, particularly those working in the most sensitive parts of government cannot speak publicly, and deserve ministers to take responsibility for the decisions they take and not to seek to deflect blame onto them.”

The Cabinet Office and the Foreign Office have been contacted for comment.