Mandelson failed US ambassador vetting – but was given the job anyway

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Sir Keir Starmer has been accused of misleading parliament over Peter Mandelson’s appointment as US ambassador after it emerged that he failed crucial security vetting– but was given the job anyway.

Lord Mandelson was denied critical clearance after the prime minister had already announced he would be sent to Washington, but the Foreign Office took the rare step of overruling the recommendation.

The disgraced peer was sacked months later over his links to Jeffrey Epstein and is now facing a police inquiry over claims he leaked sensitive government documents to the paedophile financier when he was business secretary.

The latest revelations have sparked a clamour of calls from across the political spectrum for the prime minister to resign. Leading them was Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch, who said Sir Keir had told parliament three times that full due process had been followed.

She said: “If he has misled parliament, as it looks like he has, he should resign. If he has broken the ministerial code, as it looks like he has, he should resign. If he withheld documents by a cover-up from parliament, he should resign. Labour MPs are the ones who can remove him; they need to look at whether they want someone who has been telling lies to all of us and to the country, whether they want to keep him in No 10 or not.”

The reports follow The Independent’s report last September of concerns that Lord Mandelson had not cleared vetting due to worries over his business links to China and fears that his past links to Epstein “would compromise him”. Lord Mandelson is believed to have been unaware that he failed the vetting.

In the wake of reports in The Guardian, the government admitted that officials in the Foreign Office had overruled the recommendation and granted Lord Mandelson what is known as “developed vetting”. But a government spokesperson insisted that neither the prime minister nor any government minister was aware that this had happened 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,” they said.

The vetting was a two-step process that initially looked at information in the public domain at the time and was followed by highly confidential background vetting by security officials. But documents released last month showed that Sir Keir was warned of a “general reputational risk” over the association with Epstein, even before he made Lord Mandelson the UK’s top diplomat in the US.

The Foreign Office 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.

The revelation about Foreign Office officials will pile pressure on the former foreign secretary David Lammy, who is now deputy prime minister.

Sir Keir said in February that Lord Mandelson had been cleared by security vetting, and suggested the system had to be strengthened as he hit out at what he said were his lies. He said: “There was a due diligence exercise that culminated in questions being asked because I wanted to know the answer to certain issues. That’s why those questions were asked. The answers to those questions were not truthful.

“There was then, I should add, security vetting carried out independently by the security services, which is an intensive exercise that gave him clearance for the role, and you have to go through that before you take up the post.

“Clearly, both the due diligence and the security vetting need to be looked at again. I’ve already strengthened the due process. I think we need to look at the security vetting because it now transpires that what was being said was not true. And had I known then what I know now, I’d never have appointed him in the first place.”

Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey said: “Keir Starmer had already made a catastrophic error of judgement. 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 also called on Sir Keir to resign, accusing him of having “lied and lied again”. Green MP Sian Berry said: “He must resign. Starmer told parliament ‘due process’ had been followed. This report makes clear that was untrue. He has tried to blame the vetting process, when in fact it is reported that a decision was taken to ignore a failed vetting. We need answers on what and when Starmer and David Lammy knew about this decision to overrule the vetting report.”

Ms Berry also called for the “precise reasons” that Lord Mandelson failed the vetting to be made public.

Mike Clancy, the general secretary of Prospect, the trade union which represents vetting officers at UK Security Vetting, said: “It is deeply unfortunate that following the resignation of Morgan McSweeney, Downing Street allowed the impression to circulate that the vetting of Peter Mandelson had not been done correctly by UK Security Vetting.

“Not only were UKSV put in an invidious position by being asked to conduct vetting after an appointment had been announced, but now deeply troubling reports have appeared in the media claiming that UKSV advice was overruled.

“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.”

Ministers are set to release more documents on Lord Mandelson’s appointment in the coming months, but The Guardian also reported that senior government officials had been weighing up whether to withhold some papers that would show he failed vetting. This was denied by the government.

Some material is expected to be held back because it relates to the police investigation, following Lord Mandelson’s arrest in February on suspicion of misconduct in public office. Parliament’s intelligence and security committee will consider whether the material could jeopardise national security or diplomatic relations. But keeping papers from the committee could amount to a breach of the Conservative motion, which requires ministers to release “all papers relating to Lord Mandelson’s appointment”.