Starmer 'furious' he wasn't told Mandelson failed vetting as he faces calls to quit

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has said he is “furious” and it was “unforgivable” that neither he nor any minister was told Lord Peter Mandelson had failed security vetting.

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

Starmer said he will “set out the relevant facts” in Parliament on Monday.

The Prime Minister had previously told MPs that “full due process” was followed in the appointment process, leading to calls for his resignation for lying to the House.

The Prime Minister was not aware that the former Labour grandee was granted developed vetting against the advice of UK Security Vetting until Tuesday night, and other senior ministers were unaware until the Guardian broke the story on Thursday.

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 was already 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.