Pressure Builds On Starmer As Olly Robbins Testimony Threatens To Blow The Defence Apart
The Prime Minister dismissed Sir Olly from his senior Foreign Office role on Thursday night Credit: TOLGA AKMEN/AFP via Getty
Sacked civil servant Sir Olly Robbins is set for a showdown against Sir Keir Starmer in Parliament next week, The Telegraph understands.
Allies of the former Foreign Office chief mandarin said he had accepted a request to appear before the foreign affairs committee on Tuesday.
His testimony will risk causing fresh problems for the Prime Minister, who has insisted that neither he, nor any ministers or officials, were told that Lord Mandelson had failed his security vetting for the role of ambassador to the US.
The Prime Minister will deliver his own statement on the Lord Mandelson vetting fiasco in the Commons on Monday, after saying he was “absolutely furious” to have been kept in the dark.
Ciaran Martin, a former National Cyber Security Centre boss and ally of Sir Olly, said on Friday that there had been “no abuse of process” by his friend as the permanent secretary had a duty not to disclose vetting assessments.
He said the vetting process was not a pass or fail scenario like a “driving test”, but would rather flag specific risks.
No 10 disputed that claim on Friday evening by releasing a template of a vetting form, which shows that staff must tick a box confirming that clearance for a job candidate has been approved, approved with risk management or denied.
Downing Street also released a readout from a meeting that took place on Tuesday evening, in which Sir Keir was informed of the situation. In the email, the Prime Minister’s Principal Private Secretary claimed that Sir Keir had been unaware it was even possible to deny clearance if vetting officers had objected to an appointment.
The email also claimed that Catherine Little, the Cabinet Office’s most senior civil servant, had known of Lord Mandelson’s vetting failure in March.
Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative Party leader, said the Prime Minister was “falling well short” of the standards he set for Boris Johnson during partygate and demanded he release the remaining Mandelson files by the end of the week.
Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform UK, said the Prime Minister had used Sir Olly as a “sacrificial lamb” and claimed Sir Keir had misled Parliament.
The Prime Minister was also reported to his independent ethics adviser by the Liberal Democrats for an alleged breach of the Ministerial Code.
