Keir Starmer speaks to House of Commons and declares ‘I discovered this staggering’
This is a breaking news story and is being constantly updated by our reporters as the breaking news story develops
Starmer has addressed MPs this afternoon(Image: PA)
Keir Starmer has told the House of Commons he found it “staggering” that no one told him Peter Mandelson was granted vetting clearance against normal UK recommendations after failing checks.
The PM said had he known that Mandelson failed vetting checks, he would not have appointed him as US Ambassador. Sir Keir Starmer tells MPs: “If I had known, before he took up his post, the UKSV [UK Security Vetting] recommendation was that developed vetting should be denied, I would not have gone ahead with the appointment.”
Sir Keir Starmer said as soon as he found out Mandelson had failed security vetting, he began work so that he could update the House of Commons. He says he only “found out for the first time” last Tuesday evening that Foreign office officials “granted [Mandelson] developed vetting clearance against the specific recommendation of United Kingdom Security Vetting that developed vetting clearance should be denied”.
Starmer said the officials who made that decision did not tell him, the foreign secretary, the deputy prime minister, any other minister or even the cabinet secretary. “I found this staggering,” the PM said.
He says he asked his officials “to establish the facts urgently on my authority… for the precise and explicit purpose of updating this House”.
Starmer told MPs: “I want to make clear to the House that for a direct ministerial appointment, it was usual for security vetting to happen after the appointment, but before starting in post. That was the process in place at the time.” However, he said ministers have now changed the system because of the Mandelson scandal. All appointments now have to be vetted before being announced.
Keir then moved on to firing Sir Olly Robbins, the former permanent secretary of the Foreign Office who the PM sacked last week. The PM insisted he should have been informed Mandelson failed vetting checks carried out by quango, UK Security Vetting (UKSV).
He says: “Given the seriousness of these issues and the significance of the appointment, I simply do not accept that Foreign Office officials could not have informed me of UKSV’s recommendation, whilst also maintaining the necessary confidentiality that vetting requires.”
Robbins’ allies say under the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act, national security vetting is legally independent of ministers and therefore the senior civil servant was unable to alert the PM or ministers. Starmer disagreed though, insisting: “There is no law that stops civil servants sensibly flagging UKSV recommendations, while protecting detailed sensitive vetting information to allow ministers to make judgements on appointments or on explaining matters to parliament.
“The recommendation in the Peter Mandelson case could and should have been shared with me before he took up his post.”
He added: “If I had known, before he took up his post, the UKSV [UK Security Vetting] recommendation was that developed vetting should be denied, I would not have gone ahead with the appointment.
“It beggars belief that, throughout this whole timeline of events, that officials in the Foreign Office saw fit to withhold this information from the most senior ministers in our system of government.
“It is surely beyond doubt that the recommendation from UKSV that Peter Mandelson should be denied developed vetting clearance was information that could and should have been shared with me on repeated occasions.”
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