The prime minister has spoken to reporters in Paris this morning, saying it is “unforgivable” and “staggering” he wasn’t told Peter Mandelson was denied security clearance.
He said:
That I wasn’t told that he’d failed security vetting when I was telling parliament that due process had been followed is unforgivable.
Not only was I not told, no minister was told and I’m absolutely furious about it.
Keir Starmer added:
It is totally unacceptable that the prime minister making an appointment is not told that security vetting has been failed.
He added he will “set out all the relevant facts in true transparency” to parliament on Monday.
Keir Starmer believes Parliament had a right to know Peter Mandelson failed his security vetting, the prime minister’s spokesperson said.
Asked if Starmer had misled MPs, they said:
He’s very clear that Parliament had a right to know this, and indeed that he had a right to know this, and that it’s completely staggering that UK security vetting recommended against the developed vetting security clearance for Peter Mandelson and that he was not told, the foreign secretary was not told and as a result Parliament was not told.
The Liberal Democrats have asked Keir Starmer’s ethics adviser to investigate the Prime Minister for failing to tell Parliament Peter Mandelson had failed his security vetting as soon as he became aware.
In a letter to Laurie Magnus, Lib Dem frontbencher Lisa Smart said the prime minister “appears to have failed in his obligation to correct inadvertent errors ‘at the earliest opportunity’”, as required by the ministerial code.
In a separate statement issued by the Lib Dems, Smart said:
The Prime Minister failed to tell Parliament that he knew Mandelson had been denied vetting on Wednesday, presumably crossing his fingers and hoping the truth would not come out. What a shameful way for a Prime Minister to behave.
To stand in front of the dispatch box and deny Parliament such crucial information looks like a serious breach of ministerial code. That’s why I’ve written to the ethics adviser to report this breach and ask him to investigate at the earliest opportunity.
Starmer made catastrophic errors of judgment from the very beginning of the Mandelson scandal and it seems he has just kept on making them. His position is now untenable.
Downing Street has said it does not accept that the Foreign Office felt pressure to overrule UK Security Vetting’s recommendation against Mandelson receiving developed vetting clearance.
Asked whether Number 10 would accept that the FCDO felt pressured over the appointment, a Downing Street spokesman said:
No. The security vetting process that the Foreign Office led obviously took place following the appointment, as is often the case in these appointments, but at no point – the Prime Minister has said he finds it completely staggering that at no point in that vetting process the fact that UK Security Vetting had recommended against providing Peter Mandelson developed vetting was ever communicated to Number 10.
Downing Street insisted that nobody in Number 10 was told that Lord Peter Mandelson had failed his security vetting despite repeated requests for “assurances”.
A Downing Street spokesman said:
Nobody in Number 10, officials or otherwise, had this information.
He added:
The Foreign Office have run this vetting process, and at no point, at any point in any part of this process was anyone in Number 10, PM or otherwise, informed by the Foreign Office that the recommendation of UK Security Vetting was for him not to pass his developed vetting.
Number 10 has, as you would expect, been repeatedly asking for assurances on the facts of this case, including the vetting, and at no point in that process was Number 10 told about security vetting recommending against his vetting.
Parliament had “a right to know” that Peter Mandelson had failed his security vetting, Downing Street has said.
Asked whether Keir Starmer had misled Parliament over Lord Mandelson’s vetting, a Downing Street spokesman said:
He’s very clear that Parliament had a right to know this, and indeed that he had a right to know this, and that it’s completely staggering that UK Security Vetting recommended against the developed vetting security clearance for Peter Mandelson and that he was not told, the Foreign Secretary was not told and as a result Parliament was not told.
The spokesman would not be drawn on whether Starmer thought he had been misled by the Foreign Office, saying:
He’s said that it’s staggering that he wasn’t told that he’d failed his developed vetting when he was telling Parliament that due process had been followed.
And this is why he has ordered an urgent investigation into how this decision was taken and why he was not informed earlier.
Keir Starmer has said it is ‘staggering’ and ‘unforgivable’ he was not told that Peter Mandelson had failed vetting.
The prime minister was responding to Guardian revelations that Peter Mandelson failed his security vetting clearance but the decision was overruled by the Foreign Office to ensure he could take up his post as ambassador to the US.
Olly Robbins, the UK Foreign Office’s top civil servant, has already been forced out of his post overnight and there are calls from opposition parties for the prime minister himself to resign.
Starmer is in Paris to chair a gathering of world leaders on the opening of the strait of Hormuz as the revelations sink in in Westminster and Whitehall.
In other news, police have said they are investigating a security incident near the Israeli embassy in London after officers found a number of discarded items in the area.
A statement said Counter Terrorism Policing London was aware of a video shared online overnight in which a group claimed to have targeted the embassy with drones carrying dangerous substances.
Police said the embassy had not been attacked and urgent inquiries were under way. “We do not believe there to be any increased public safety risk at this stage,” the statement said.
A Labour backbencher has said it “doesn’t sound credible” that Keir Starmer was unaware Peter Mandelson had failed his security vetting.
Veteran MP Jon Trickett said:
It simply doesn’t sound credible for Keir Starmer to claim that he was unaware that Mandelson had been denied security clearance.
If the PM did not know, it raises gravely serious issues about the way we are governed.
Either way, the excuses coming from Downing Street won’t cut it on the doorstep in the run-up to the local elections.
Here are some images of Peter Mandelson walking his dog in London this morning.
He has not publicly commented on his failed security vetting, as revealed by The Guardian last night.
Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar said Downing Street should answer questions in parliament, following the revelations about the vetting of Peter Mandelson.
Speaking as he campaigned in Edinburgh for the Scottish parliament election, Mr Sarwar said the scandal around Mandelson was the “tipping point” which led to his earlier call for Keir Starmer to quit.
Asked if he thought the prime minister had misled parliament, Sarwar told the Press Association:
These are questions that of course have to be answered by Downing Street – in the parliament and also in any appropriate parliamentary committees.
I stated my position back in February, I stand by my position, I don’t recoil from it. And many people will know that the Mandelson scandal was the tipping point for me.
The prime minister has spoken to reporters in Paris this morning, saying it is “unforgivable” and “staggering” he wasn’t told Peter Mandelson was denied security clearance.
He said:
That I wasn’t told that he’d failed security vetting when I was telling parliament that due process had been followed is unforgivable.
Not only was I not told, no minister was told and I’m absolutely furious about it.
Keir Starmer added:
It is totally unacceptable that the prime minister making an appointment is not told that security vetting has been failed.
He added he will “set out all the relevant facts in true transparency” to parliament on Monday.
We might have a chance to hear from Keir Starmer directly for the first time since the Guardian’s revelations as he’s just arrived in Paris for talks over reopening the strait of Hormuz.
He will co-host a virtual meeting with French president Emmanuel Macron and then have lunch. Around 40 countries and the International Maritime Organisation are expected to be on the call.
Watch that live here:
Former Labour leader Neil Kinnock has insisted that Keir Starmer will not quit over what he described as the Peter Mandelson “horror show”.
“Keir is not going. If we subtract the Mandelson thing over the last day, or the last eons, regardless of the 8 May outcome, it is widely understood that the last thing the Labour party needs is the approach that the party, a party, is more concerned with its own welfare than the condition of the country,” he said.
Speaking at a Best for Britain event unveiling shifting voter sentiment in favour of Labour being more ambitious in relation to its reset with the EU, he said that he believed Starmer would have not have known about the vetting.
“This is a very straight and honest guy who would not have sustained his argument previously for many many months” if he had not told the truth about what he knew about Mandelson’s vetting, he said.
He described the scandal as the “Mandelson horror show”.
