Hereward the Wake

Sir Keir Starmer has told his Cabinet that Olly Robbins was a 'man or integrity and professionalism' who made an 'error of judgement' “(He) concluded by saying that Sir Oliver Robbins made an error of judgment, but that he is a man of integrity and professionalism. “He said it is wrong that the current Cabinet Secretary and permanent secretary at the Cabinet Office had been attacked despite doing exactly the right thing and sharing the information with the Prime Minister once they had gone through the correct processes to do so. “He said that there are thousands of hard-working civil servants across the country who are full of integrity, doing excellent work every day.”

****THE OLLY ROBBINS BOMBSHELL EVIDENCE**** * Number 10 applied 'constant pressure' to the foreign office to clear Mandelson's appointment and took no interest in his vetting. The message was 'get this done' * The Cabinet Office argued that there was no need to vet Mandelson at all. The Foreign Office insisted that there needed to be security vetting * No 10 took a 'dismissive approach' to the vetting process. There was 'constant chasing' from Starmer's private office in No 10 over Mandelson * Mandelson was given access to the FCDO building and granted 'higher classification briefings' before he was granted security clearance * Sir Keir Starmer tried to get his then director of communications Matthew Doyle an ambassadorship. Robbins was told not to inform David Lammy, the then foreign sec. Robbins resisted on grounds that Doyle did not have the credentials to become an ambassador. Doyle was subsequently found to have given public support to a sex offender * Robbins directly contradicted Starmer's claim that he would not have appointed Mandelson if he had known he failed his vetting. Robbins says that it would have been 'very difficult' to block him given the pressure from No 10 * He pointed to the fact that the appointment had been announced, the King had been informed, agrement had been secured with the US - all before the vetting had taken place * He says that blocking Mandelson's appointments would have 'damaged US-UK relations' and caused issues with Donald Trump and his administration * Starmer's central charge against Robbins is that he failed to tell him that Mandelson had not cleared his vetting. Robbins says he did not see the vetting report. He was given a verbal briefing by the foreign office's security team that UK Security Vetting considered Mandelson's vetting to be borderline although it was 'leaning against'. The foreign office security team considered that the security risk could be managed. He agreed. Mandelson was granted developed vetting * Robbins's case is two-fold: 1) He couldn't have told Starmer something he didn't know and 2) He was the ultimate arbiter of whether Mandelson should be granted DV status * Robbins says that when Mandelson was sacked he tried to get hold of the Mandelson UKSV vetting document. He was told by the Cabinet Office that he needed a UK national security justification to access it