I’m afraid I walked into a situation in which um there was already a very very strong expectation and you would have seen the papers released already under the humble address uh that coming from number 10 that he needed to be in post and in America as quickly as humanly possible. The very first formal communication of this to my predecessor from number 10 private office being that they wanted all this done at pace and Mandlesson in post before inauguration.
So that’s the situation I faced. Um >> I’m sorry. So there is paperwork about that and that can presumably will be disclosed to parliament. >> It already has been chair. That letter from number 10 private office is already in the disclosures made. >> Um there’s nothing improper about it, but that’s the con that’s the context I walked into.
So I’m afraid what that translated into um for my team in the foreign office and certainly the handover briefing I was getting as I arrived at post was what I felt was a generally dismissive attitude to his vetting clearance. Uh the briefing I had on arrival was that there had been a position taken from the cabinet office that as I say uh some of uh Manderson’s status meant that vetting might be unnecessary and that that had been a discussion for several days after the press notice.
It had been resolved before Christmas and resolved in the FCDO’s favor. And I I only mention it chair because I think to say now that it was always clear that his appointment was subject to vetting uh is something that the the committee should um should consider whether that’s something they need to take more evidence on. >> Before we move on then, you’re not you’re not sure who it was in the cabinet office, but can I ask this? Was it was it uh was it a politician or was it um civil servants? >> I I don’t know. I was not in post at the
time. All I understand is that there was a live debate I think at at official level but I couldn’t swear. >> Going back to uh the point where Sir Phillip was still permanent under secretary. It is reported by I think it’s Sam Coat that the uh Morgan Mweeny the chief of staff rang Sir Phillip uh and said in terms stronger than those that I can use before the watershed.
I think you should. >> Well, I I’ll just say that it was just to prove it with a with um terms stronger than that. Does that accord with your impression? >> Just approve it. >> Does it accord with your impression when you took over from Sir Phillip? I I think I recall Philillip saying to me certainly Philillip’s handover to me has contributed to my strong sense that there was an atmosphere of pressure and a certain dismissiveness about this DV process which I I hope I’ve tried already to to uh be honest with the
committee about. I don’t remember Philillip using those words. Uh also I’m proud to say Philillip’s probably not the sort of person who would report them verbatim. >> Thank you. We understand indeed the government has published the template decision making form in which there are three boxes at the end.
A green one uh an amber one which says approved but remain uh remain valid concerns and the red one the final one clearance denied or withdrawn. Now we are told that the tick was in the red box clearance denied or withdrawn. Now that doesn’t seem to me borderline. Were you aware that the tick was in the red box? >> Um, I have before the government chose to publish it.
I’ve never seen a form like that. Um, and so if I may make two points to John, I certainly do not recall the way in which the UKSV findings were presented to me as being that definitive. As I say, um, it was brief to me that they were leaning against, I think, is the phrase I remember, >> but leaning leaning against is not the same as the decision.
We we are told that the decision the recommendation rather from UKSV was clear. The recommendation was denial. It wasn’t leaning. It was denial. >> Well, you asked me what I heard in that meeting and I’m I’m trying to remember to the best of my ability. Um the the other the other point which I think in the way you’ve asked the question you understand perfectly well but just in case that you know that that form is consumed differently in the foreign office and in half a dozen other departments than it is in other parts of the system. Those are recommendations
and not decisions. And so what my team will have done, I’m sure, is break that down, go through the specific issues that have led UKSV to their concern and then make an assessment as to whether they can be managed. And that’s what came to me. >> Your team did that. Um, the meeting you had was only with the director of security.
So it would have been his officials who have broken it down and he would have reported to you the outcome of that process. >> Right. And a note was then circulated afterwards saying what the decision was. Did that note simply say it has been decided that Lord Mandlesson is to be granted clearance or did it say despite the recommendation of UK SV it has been decided? >> Um I think that that minute is um not a minute I can properly discuss.
Sir John, I’m it’s no longer sadly my document. Um, and as I said in answer to the chair’s questions earlier, it’s it’s a it’s a minute that certainly uh would give you the public, but also our adversaries quite a strong sense of how we tried to manage that process. But in are you aware that anybody else other than you and the director of security who took that decision were aware outside that the decision went against the recommendation of UK SV? Um I so apologies for repeating myself but I I was told that it was borderline
and that they were leaning against recommending against. Um I don’t remember anybody at any stage saying anything different to me. Um certainly not about red boxes. Um so I’m sorry I don’t know if that answers your question but >> I’m afraid it doesn’t quite go. My essentially my question is you took a decision in a meeting with just one other person present.
Um was an
ybody else aware after that meeting that the decision had been to overturn or to uh go against the recommendation of UKSV or was it simply reported we’ve had a meeting and we’ve decided that he should obtain clearance. Um I’m I’m sure um the director and sorry I did answer the chair earlier.
I don’t think it was just the director in the meeting with me. I think there was at least one member of his team there. I’m sure they will have debriefed to some extent on the conversation but um uh I don’t know precisely what was said. >> Sure. What I want to ask having heard everything you’ve given us so far is what do you think would have happened if you’d denied clearance? >> How would you have gone about that? >> What would the what would the >> question >> what would have what would the impact of that be? >> Would it even be possible? Um so maybe
this is the first time remembering back to the chair’s introduction where I can abandon the civil servants’s um response of saying that’s a hypothetical question. Um uh I think I think it would have been very difficult indeed Mr. Mr. Cardon. I mean again if I can walk you back to uh the situation I came into the post in.
We had been through all of these steps very publicly in which the prime minister’s nominee had been put out there to the public announced blessed by the king agreed by the US government. Uh we were in receipt of formal letters from number 10 telling us to get on with it quickly. Um we had engineered Agrial to arrive just before the inauguration.
Um as required by that original letter that’s been published as part of the humble address response. So I I’m not trying to hide from your question but I suppose all I can do is agree with the premise that against that backdrop uh the foreign office saying okay but sorry we can’t grant him clearance would have been a very very difficult problem and a difficult problem I would have been landing the foreign secretary with and the prime minister with and of course given the commentary of the last few days I’m acutely conscious of that and I’ve done
the odd bit of whatifery myself um uh but uh I suppose just in case. This is the thrust of your question. That was not what was on my mind as we took this decision. I have spent uh 25 years now just as a civil servant. About half of that period I’ve been in jobs that have a an acute bearing on national security.
I I I live and breathe this stuff possibly to a fault, Mr. Cardon. And I believe passionately that it’s one of the jobs of the civil service creatively, flexibly to support ministers in protecting national security. That’s what I wanted the team performing this assessment to feel and that’s the conversation that was going on in my head as I listened to their recommendations.
And so if we go back again, the cabinet secretary at the time, Lord Casease, advised the prime minister to carry out security vetting prior to announcing any appointment. Why would that advice not have been followed? >> Um here here I will take the civil servants answer if I may. I it’s a hypothetical I can’t possibly have a bearing on.
I I mean I >> I wonder why it wouldn’t have happened automatically if that was the view of the civil serves. Why wouldn’t that advice just automatically be be followed that vetting would be would be gained before an announcement made? >> Um I mean I I can only guess. I mean I I you know the prime minister had received a due diligence report in which the very well-known reputational risks of appointing Manson were presumably made clear to him.
He had advice uh on different options for the post. I assume he would have looked at the risks around Mandlesson and maybe he thought, look, you know, this is a very well-known character. I’m making a risk judgment that his political skills and uh nouse in Washington is just what this country needs at this time.
And he decided um there’s not much more that any process can tell me uh ahead of me making this announcement and making this appointment. Now, as I’ve said earlier in response to questions, I hope that if I’d been in the system at the time those decisions were being made, first I I hope the number 10 or the cabinet office might have wanted to consult me.
I I don’t think at the time the foreign office was consulted. Um and then I hope my advice would have been that’s adding unnecessarily to your risk. Prime Minister, >> were there other were there other political appointees? Did did number 10 operation propose any other political appointees during your tenure as permanent secretary and did they abide by the standard practice during that process in that no appointment could be made until the process had been completed and as a result of that were you more comfortable
in not appointing those people? Um I think in my tenure as permanent under secretary there was only ever one other uh serious proposal um made and I think that was in March 2025. Um >> what role? >> Sorry, >> what role? Uh there were several discussions initiated by number 10 with me um about potentially finding a head of mission opportunity for Matthew Doyle who was then the prime minister’s director of communications.
Um and the uh the I was under strict instruction not to discuss that with the then foreign secretary which was uncomfortable. Um but the context here Mr. Mel was you know I was still in my early months in the job but I’d already concluded as indeed I think I gave evidence to this committee about not long afterwards that the foreign office needed quite serious reform.
I was in the process of uh talking to the top team about quite a profound restructuring involving uh job losses and I was um I found it very hard to think how I would explain to the office um what the credentials of Matthew were to be in an important head of mission role when I was in danger of making very senior very experienced diplomats uh uh leave the office.
So I mean after a couple of you I did my duty. I looked at the forward look of available jobs. I I shared with number 10 what uh some of those might be. It was to be honest hard to find something that I thought might be suitable but in but I also felt quite uncomfortable about it and I and I kept giving advice that I thought this was um this was this would be very hard for the office and was hard for me personally to defend.
So your question obviously given what we’re talking about today is about the interaction with vetting that didn’t arise because Matthew was already imposed um in the foreign office as a special adviser sorry in in number 10 as a special adviser um and um after a day or two uh the idea seemed to get dropped um so uh I don’t think back to your question this specific issue of a political appointee and the interaction with the vetting process came up again during my on >> and and perhaps the committee will be taking evidence from from them or others. But uh according to the
recollection of the national security adviser Jonathan Powell when he was reflecting on this time last September, he recalls that Sir Phillip Barton also had reservations about the appointment of Lord Mandlesson. What did you know about Sir Phillip’s reservations when you were preparing to take over from him? Um again I I’m reluctant to speak for Philillip if I if I may say that because um so much of this has become so now so loaded and controversial.
I I I do remember the general atmosphere in the foreign office when I arrived, which I think Philillip probably shared, was that a number of senior appointments um had been made under the new government uh which might in the past or sometimes always in the past had been occupied by diplomats were now going to one type or another of outsider.
He may even in the back of his mind have been thinking about me as he said that. Um but uh you know Jonathan would have been in that category. Uh Jonathan Pal and and others and so I think he was nervous and certainly others who then were my senior team as I arrived in the office were nervous that this was a sort of a creep of senior diplomatic roles going to non-career diplomats.
Um, and of course it’s possible that he was worried about exactly the same reputational risks that were uh detailed for the prime minister uh at the time he made the appointment, but it that’s a matter for him to talk to you about. Uh, in that time when you were the designate permanent under secretary, um, what conversations did you have with advisers or officials that might have led you to believe that Lord Mandlesson needed to take up this role? regardless of the outcome of developed vetting.
>> Um, it was never put to be I can say uh with certainty it was never put to me that way. I certainly did, as I I hope I’ve said clearly to the committee, I certainly did arrive to an atmosphere where this wasn’t just um please get this done quickly. It was and get it done.
Um, and so, uh, that was, I think, a pretty unmistakable feeling, as I hope I’ve also been clear to the committee. I don’t think I allowed that, and certainly did the security team didn’t allow that to cloud their judgment. >> There’s interesting and Peter Mandlesson’s life and the threats that he may have had to the British state. And I mean, that was that’s really the nub of this is how on earth did this happen? the the things that you might say are interesting.
Sorry I can’t quite shake 20 years in white hall. The things you might say are interesting chair I mean I I would contend that those were very very well known and they were very well known at the point at which the cabinet office produced um pre-appoint due diligence work for the prime minister. The prime minister settled on his nominee. He recommended it to the king.
He announced it to the public and then he asked the US government for Agrial to his nominee as ambassador to Washington. So I I I could agree with you but I don’t think there is uh there’s not a sort of big surprise in the fact that Peter Manson had an interesting life. Um what I say to you still is that DV is for a different purpose.
It’s to establish vulnerabilities that lead to an unmanageable risk to UK national security. That’s the process I hope that we undertook in good faith. >> But you see, this doesn’t stack up, does it? Because in the end, he lost his job because he was a threat. >> And that should have been revealed with the DV.
He was leaking secrets from the British state to a foreign bank. That’s pretty serious. >> During a time of an economic crash, somebody must have known about that. Somebody, some spook somewhere knew that. That’s what DV is supposed to be about, isn’t it? >> That was not known at the time of his withdrawal. Um, to my knowledge, certainly it wasn’t publicly known.
It wasn’t known in records available to me or to others in the foreign office. What was known was that the basis on which the prime minister thought he had received assurances from Mandlesson about those connections from his past life with Epstein. Uh you know the prime minister can speak for himself but I remember him visibly angry that in his view he’d been deceived about those connections.
That was the point at which he required of me to withdraw Manism from Washington. And it’s, you know, it was a very difficult day of my professional life, but I think the prime minister did the right thing. >> So Oliver, you said you were proud you didn’t bow to pressure, but of course you were our chief Brexit negotiator and you’re very used to high pressured situations, which is partly why you find yourself in uh one of the top civil service roles in the country.
In one of your earlier answers, you were referred to um that you were told not to tell the foreign secretary about something. Would you not have exercised your judgment as a very senior civil servant that perhaps there’s a time sometimes where you should be telling the foreign secretary or the prime minister something that is of concern perhaps to do with matters of national security? >> Absolutely.
Uh I was principal product secretary to Tony Blair. I ran Gordon Brown’s office. I was deputy national security adviser for David Cameron. I was Brexit negotiator. As you rightly remind me though I don’t have a doctor’s note today to allow me to talk about Brexit uh for Theresa May I have worked with the people who have the hardest jobs in the land for most of my career and of course you’re absolutely right you make in those sorts of jobs and as P US at the foreign office you make fine judgments every day about what to take upon yourself and what burdens to share
with the secretary of state that actually and one of the things I will deeply miss about this job if I may say so is the foreign office is slightly unusual in that given the risks to foreign office personnel around the world, rather more of that burden rests culturally on the permanent under secretary than in other departments I’ve worked in.
You know, I felt deeply deeply responsible for the safety of my team in Tehran. Um, I would check in with them twice a day. I would ask for advice on how they were doing. I am still deeply concerned about the brave, amazing Iranian colleagues we have left behind in Tehran who work for the British embassy there. And I can’t shake that off as you can tell.
But you know those responsibilities weigh very very heavily on me. Um and uh of course where it’s appropriate I bring the secretary of state into the circle of knowledge about how I’m tackling those responsibilities and what I think is the right thing to do about them. You know safety of staff overseas is a good example if you don’t mind the slight digression.
I hope if the foreign secretary were here she would say we operated this system absolutely strictly. The decisions about whether to bring people home were for me. I was the employer. I would have to defend myself in court if I made those decisions wrong and agreved families wanted to take the foreign office to court. But it was absolutely right for me to let the foreign secretary know that we were going to be temporarily drawing down staff from ex place or yplace.
She needed to defend it in parliament and I understood that this is different. The vetting system explicitly in Hansard in guidance is different. I’ve always understood it that way and I think it’s for very very good practical reasons that keep the people of this country safe. >> Did the intelligence services at any point share any concerns about Peter Mandlesson being the appointment as the US ambassador? >> Um I can only speak to my tenure.
Um and the answer to that would be no. Um, knowing what we do now about Mandlesson’s leaking of sensitive government information during his role as a cabinet minister, what steps did you take as the um, P US to ensure that when that became public um, there was no further risk to the FCDO? Well, that could be mitigated.
Um well to obviously pardon me but to get the chronology straight that uh allegation about uh Manson which again like all of us I should probably be careful about given there’s a live Metropolitan Police investigation uh was only made months after he was withdrawn as ambassador. Um and um so as I’ve already explained to the committee, we took uh all the usual precautions of shutting down access to sensitive material at the point he was withdrawn.
And that’s probably the best answer I can give you. >> And and what actions I mean he’s he’s obviously had access to all that information for many months. Um what steps is the department or government generally taking to ensure none of that is in the future passed on? >> Um I mean I don’t think I’m here to speak for the foreign secretary, but if I my reading of the newspapers is right, she’s looking at that issue herself.
So maybe best for her to um give you evidence on that. I all I can say is that obviously in the aftermath of his withdrawal and particularly in the aftermath of this parliament’s humble address um all of those all of those communications have been looked at in depth and one one final um question um you were P US when the press first became aware um that Peter Mandlesson in their words had failed his security vetting.
How do you think it um that was leaked? Um, and what do you think that says about the integrity of the UKSV um, process? >> I’m I’m deeply concerned about it, honestly. Um, I mean, it probably flows from the rest of the evidence I’ve been giving you this morning. I think this system does not work if candidates for it don’t understand that this is an entirely different category of protection and and and losing that conflict.
You you know, I know it’s a cliche, but that trust once gone cannot be got back. Thousands of people go through this process. Thousands and thousands of documents and sensitive issues and operations depend upon it. And I am I am struck and saddened that within I think days probably only a small number of days of the Cabinet Office for their own reasons deciding to open that up to share what they thought they’d found and their perceptions of it uh internally with number 10.
I’m not making accusations at anybody. It’s not my business to do so. I hope they’re being very rigorously investigated and the prosecutions will result because this is a grievous breach of national security. >> Do you have concerns about the amount of information we’ve now shared about our developed vetting system in relation to what our adversaries know about us? >> Yes, I am.
I think that the it may sound uh paranoid but I think the even the level of disclosure um that the government has uh offered over the last few days you know British national security does not benefit from this so we have to ask who’s does >> um I may be paraphrasing Afra’s question but you have been at the center of government for many years and spent many years of your career promoting defending our country’s national security with the benefit of hindsight when you hear the committee’s questions today on notes on seeking advice uh um on uh uh how the
Foreign Office took this decision and ending up putting someone who leaked some of the most who had in their past leaked some of the most sensitive secrets this country has with the benefit of hindsight. Would you have done anything different in relation to the appointment of Peter Mandlesson? >> Um anything different? Um that’s very sweeping. Mr.
I clearly I’ve tried to be open. There are various aspects of this system I think could be improved and maybe I I wish I’d had the time to offer that as a general view about the way we operate the system at various points in my tenure. But I think in the way you generously ask the question, what I reflect on most is that um the British state is dissecting itself uh to some extent in public over this.
I understand why and to this morning I’ve tried now as a private citizen to support that process. I do reflect honestly on, you know, my my wonderful colleagues who are sat in the British embassy in Moscow or the British embassy in Beijing and are subjected to incredible pressure and uh the way I try to lead them and support them during my time as P US and of course I find myself wondering who this helps.