‘Unacceptable’ to overrule Mandelson vetting recommendation – Darren Jones

It is “beyond unacceptable” that the Foreign Office was able to overrule a security vetting process to clear Lord Peter Mandelson to become UK ambassador to the US and rules have been changed to prevent it happening, Darren Jones said.

The Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister said Sir Keir Starmer was “furious” at the situation but denied the premier had misled Parliament over the Mandelson scandal.

The Foreign Office’s top civil servant Sir Olly Robbins was effectively sacked after the revelation that officials took the rare step of overruling the recommendation from UK Security Vetting.

Mr Jones told LBC Radio: “Given the nature of the problem here, not just in terms of the appointment, but the position that it has put the Prime Minister and Cabinet ministers in as a consequence of the decision to overrule the recommendation of UK Security Vetting, and the fact that the system even allowed for that to happen in the first place, it’s of a scale of a problem that we’ve not experienced in government before.

“It is beyond unacceptable.”

Mr Jones said he had suspended the ability of the Foreign Office and a “small number” of other organisations to overrule recommendations by UK Security Vetting.

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 Government has said.

Mr Jones accepted the situation was embarrassing and “the Prime Minister is furious”.

Sir Keir will face MPs on Monday amid calls for him to resign for misleading Parliament over his insistence that the proper process was followed during Lord Mandelson’s appointment.

Mr Jones said: “The very fact that the Foreign Office and a small number of other organisations have the right to overrule a recommendation from UK Security Vetting not to appoint someone to a sensitive post because of security concerns is quite frankly, astonishing.

“So I took the immediate decision last night to suspend the right for all of those organisations, including the Foreign Office to do so and I’ve commissioned an urgent review to understand how often this behaviour has taken place across government.”

Sir Keir has not considered resigning over the allegation he misled Parliament, Mr Jones said.

He told BBC Breakfast: “The Prime Minister was right when he told the House that due process had been followed, because it had, but the fact that that process did not require officials to tell the Foreign Secretary or the Prime Minster that they ignored the advice of security and vetting officials is totally unacceptable.”

Asked if Sir Olly had resigned or been fired, Mr Jones said: “He has lost the confidence of the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary, which is effectively a dismissal.”

Mr Jones said the vetting papers could be released to Parliament under the terms of the motion passed by MPs demanding access to the files relating to Lord Mandelson’s appointment.

He said “we’re not far off” releasing the second batch of files and when the information emerged that UK Security Vetting had recommended against his appointment “legal advice was taken about being able to include that in the humble address, and we intend to do so once it’s gone through the Met Police and the Intelligence and Security Committee”.

Mr Jones said the documents produced by UK Security Vetting were tightly controlled.

“They go through financial, personal, sexual, religious and other types of background information and that is why it is kept extremely private on a portal that only a few people have access to.

“The Prime Minister was not given those documents because he would not routinely be giving them about individuals’ appointments.”

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”.

The Green Party and Reform UK have also 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.

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.