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Prime Minister Keir Starmer denies there was pressure from No 10 over Lord Mandelson clearing security vetting before his appointment as US ambassador
It comes after sacked Foreign Office chief Olly Robbins told MPs No 10 had a "dismissive attitude" to vetting - watch the key moments
At PMQs, Tory leader Kemi Badenoch asks whether the PM stands by a Parliament statement that due process was followed in Mandelson's appointment - he responds: "Yes, I do"
The fact that Robbins did not tell Starmer that Mandelson had been cleared despite security vetting officials recommending against it "puts to bed all the allegations levelled at me", the PM says
Badenoch also presses Starmer on whether Downing Street considered giving a diplomatic job to his ex-aide Matthew Doyle - he says there are often conversations when people leave roles
Meanwhile, MPs will question the PM's former chief aide next week over his role in Mandelson's appointment - Morgan McSweeney had previously taken "full responsibility" for advising Starmer over the decision
Nick Eardley
Political correspondent
It seems Olly Robbins was right - that the prime minister’s communications chief, Matthew Doyle, was discussed as a possible candidate for an ambassador role.
The PM says there are often conversations when people leave - but nothing came of this one.
Conservative MP Mike Wood asks the prime minister if he can deny Olly Robbins's claim that Downing Street considered appointing Starmer's aide Matthew Doyle to a diplomatic position.
Starmer says Doyle held a number of positions in government, both for him and other ministers.
He says when people leave roles in organisations, there are often conversations about other roles they want to apply for, but nothing came of this.
The prime minister begins by delivering a statement to the House of Commons.
He says: "We will do everything in our power to keep British Jews safe", after a series of of "despicable" antisemitic arson attacks in recent days.
Image source, House of CommonsKeir Starmer is on his feet, which marks the start of this week's Prime Minister's Questions.
You can watch live at the top of this page, and we'll bring you the key lines and analysis here.
Nick Eardley
Political correspondent
The prime minister has just arrived in the Commons to fairly enthusiastic cheers.
There is a strong showing of cabinet ministers on the front bench.
The chancellor, home secretary, foreign secretary and deputy PM are all here - as are figures often touted as possible replacement leaders, like Health Secretary Wes Streeting.
Nick Eardley
Political correspondent
PMQs is due to get under way shortly - you can watch live at the top of the page from 12:00 BST.
We’re now onto day seven of this chapter of the row over Lord Mandelson’s appointment. But there are still plenty of questions that remain either partially answered or unanswered.
It seems highly likely the prime minister will face more questions about Lord Mandelson’s vetting. Was there pressure on the Foreign Office? Were No 10 trying to rush the appointment through? Was the message from the top that this appointment was happening and needed to be processed quickly?
Then there’s the treatment of Sir Olly Robbins. Was Keir Starmer wrong to sack a distinguished civil servant? A string of former senior civil servants have said so in public.
Does that damage the PM’s reputation as 'Mr Rules'? Who in No 10 wanted to give former communications chief Lord Doyle a role as an ambassador, despite his lack of diplomatic experience?
Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch has already gone in hard on the prime minister - calling him a liar and saying he should resign. Some of her own MPs think she actually went too hard, too soon. But you can expect her to keep up the pressure.
The bigger question might be what Labour MPs do.
Do any stand up and ask awkward questions? Who will turn up? And will there be much vocal support for the prime minister? That appeared to be lacking on Monday when Sir Keir was last in the Commons.
Image source, ReutersStarmer pictured with Mandelson in Washington DC, shortly after the latter started his job as the UK's ambassador
It all goes back to the announcement of Lord Mandelson's appointment as the UK's ambassador to the US on 20 December 2024.
It's a role he formally took up on 10 February 2025, following the completion of the security vetting process.
But later that year - on 11 September - he was sacked, after emails released by the US Department of Justice revealed new information about the extent of his friendship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
On 11 March 2026, government documents were released revealing details about Mandelson's initial appointment - a process that one senior adviser said had been "weirdly rushed".
Then on 16 April 2026, the Guardian reported that the Foreign Office went against recommendations from vetting officials that Mandelson should not be given security clearance to take up the role.
The same day, the top civil servant at the department, Olly Robbins, was sacked. The prime minister said he hadn't been told about the vetting recommendation, something he has said was a "deliberate decision".
Speaking yesterday, Robbins said Downing Street took a "dismissive" approach to the vetting process, and that there was "a very, very strong expectation" from No 10 that Mandelson "needed to be in post" as quickly as possible.
Henry Zeffman
Chief political correspondent
Are cabinet ministers abandoning Keir Starmer over the latest chapter of the Peter Mandelson saga?
No, that feels overblown.
There are interesting elements to how different ministers have answered questions this week, though.
On Tuesday morning the Energy Secretary, Ed Miliband - who banished Mandelson from frontline Labour politics when he became Labour leader 16 years ago - was remarkably forthright about the concerns he had had about Mandelson’s appointment as ambassador.
He even suggested that the then-Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, had held similar concerns.
Later on Tuesday, after Olly Robbins had spent two-and-a-half hours in front of the Foreign Affairs Committee, the Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said that Robbins’s claim that No 10 had sought to make Starmer’s then-director of communications an ambassador without telling Lammy was “extremely concerning”.
And then in various interviews this morning Pat McFadden, the work and pensions secretary who is typically seen as a firm ally of the prime minister, repeatedly resisted saying that Starmer’s decision to sack Robbins was fair.
He did eventually say that he believed Robbins had been treated fairly, but appeared to argue this on the narrow basis that if a prime minister has lost confidence in the head of the Foreign Office, then the fair thing to do is to sack him.
One influential Labour figure interpreted these interviews as a sign that “serious cabinet ministers are not prepared to defend [Starmer] or sully themselves”.
Image source, ReutersPrime Minister Keir Starmer has just left No 10, as he begins the short journey to the House of Commons for this week's Prime Minister's Questions.
You'll be able to watch live at the top of this page at 12:00 BST.
Image source, PA MediaLast week, it emerged that Lord Mandelson was appointed as the UK's ambassador to the US despite failing the security vetting process.
Olly Robbins was effectively sacked from his role as the top civil servant at the Foreign Office over it - a move that has faced criticism from those close to the civil service.
What the government has said
What Robbins, and civil servants, have said
What the opposition have said
Nick Eardley
Political correspondent
The story around Westminster today is a familiar one.
Keir Starmer is struggling to get away from rows about the appointment of Lord Mandelson. Labour MPs are frustrated. Some ponder whether the prime minister can continue.
But there isn’t a groundswell of pressure, no obvious alternative. And there are still some Labour MPs who are quietly loyal - and want nothing less than the distraction of more leadership chat.
So far, a familiar tale. So what now?
Before the latest Mandelson row blew up last week, it felt like pressure on the prime minister was calming a bit. Talk of a potential leadership challenge in May - after elections in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland - had calmed.
But a May challenge is being discussed again. The prime minister’s future is on the minds of some of his MPs - and it may well be on the minds of more if the elections are as bad as some predict.
But then, there are the caveats we’ve got used to.
There’s no easy and obvious mechanism to remove a Labour leader. There’s no obvious successor. Some are nervous about a leadership focus while the world remains unstable.
Let’s see what happens later at PMQs, in the next few days and indeed in May. But the conversations just now feel quite familiar; frustrated Labour MPs, who don’t really know what to do next.
Image source, PA MediaThe fallout from the sacking of Olly Robbins last week has led to harsh criticism from a number of people close to the civil service.
This includes a call from one former head for Robbins to be reinstated, and accusations from a union boss that Keir Starmer is "losing the ability to work with the civil service".
But what exactly is the relationship between the civil service and the government?
Robbins was the permanent secretary at the Foreign Office - the most senior civil servant in that government department.
Civil servants' jobs are to serve the current government, by helping to develop and implement its policies and agenda. They operate within government departments and bodies, but aren't political appointees - and are meant to politically impartial.
Civil servants are technically managed by the prime minister, with politically-appointed ministers heading up departments.
They tend to stay in their jobs regardless of which political party is currently in power. Many work under governments of different parties and leaders, and can move between different departments too.
Robbins, for example, has worked in previous Conservative governments. He has also held jobs in the Home Office, the Cabinet Office and has served as the government's chief Brexit negotiator.
Olly Robbins has been "treated shamefully", according to a former senior civil servant.
Simon Gass, a former political director at the Foreign Office, tells BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "There is a public servant who is extraordinarily capable... and who absolutely believed that he was following the correct procedure."
He describes Robbins's dismissal from the Foreign Office as "unjust, but also I think it is a big mistake".
Gass adds: "The government appears to be asking us to believe that if they had been told that vetting had been difficult but a workaround had been found... they still might have stopped [Mandelson's] appointment to Washington.
"I don't think that that is credible."
Pat McFadden says it would not have been appropriate for Lord Matthew Doyle - a former head of communications in No 10 - to have been given a diplomatic position.
It comes after Olly Robbins said during his evidence to MPs yesterday that there had been enquiries from Downing Street about a diplomatic role for Doyle, a Starmer aide - read more about that here.
The ex-communications chief was made a Labour peer after leaving Downing Street in March 2025, but was suspended from the parliamentary party this February over his links with a convicted sex offender - which he has apologised for.
Work and Pensions Secretary McFadden tells the Today programme he agrees that such an appointment would not have been appropriate, saying of Doyle "I don't think he would have had the qualifications to do that".
Asked whether it was Starmer probing about a prospective job, McFadden says: "I can't tell you the details of this because I only heard about them yesterday through Olly Robbins's evidence, but I do agree with the foreign secretary when she says this would not have been appropriate."
He adds: "Matthew Doyle himself has said that he knew nothing about this."
More now from Work and Pensions Secretary Pat McFadden.
Asked on BBC Radio 4's Today programme about the sacking of Olly Robbins, he says that Starmer has "acted fairly in these circumstances".
He says this is because the prime minister should have been given information related to Mandelson's vetting.
The minister says the "rationale" behind Mandelson's initial appointment as US ambassador was that the UK was "dealing with a highly political US administration of a different character from previous administrations" - where "trade would be at the heart of the relationship".
McFadden says Mandelson "wasn't plucked from obscurity or disgrace" but rather appointed because he was a "political operator and someone with trade experience".
He adds that Starmer "isn't someone who knew Peter Mandelson well", which is "all the more reason" to share details of the vetting process with the prime minister. "This wasn't some deep relationship."
Image source, PA MediaOlly Robbins, the former top civil servant at the Foreign Office, "unilaterally decided to disregard red flags" around Mandelson's appointment as US ambassador "and didn't tell a soul about it", according to a former communications director at No 10.
James Lyons - who served in the role under Keir Starmer for seven months last year - tells BBC Radio 4's Today programme that during yesterday's hearing Robbins was "violently agreeing with the prime minister" and proving that claims that Starmer lied to parliament about the vetting are "completely untrue".
Nonetheless, Lyons says that the prime minister finds himself in a "very serious" situation over Mandelson: "The Prince of Darkness is haunting the prime minister and this administration."
He adds: "It's certainly true that the government have struggled to get ahead of the Peter Mandelson scandal."
Mandelson was sacked in September last year after new details emerged about the extent of his friendship with the late convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. He has since said he regretted ever having known Epstein. See the timeline below for more on what we know about their friendship.
Henry Zeffman
Chief political correspondent
Olly Robbins should be reinstated as permanent secretary of the Foreign Office, a former head of the civil service says.
Lord Sedwill, who served as the cabinet secretary from 2018 to 2020 and is also a former national security adviser, said that the prime minister should “retract his accusations” against Robbins.
In a letter to The Times newspaper, Sedwill wrote:
“In his evidence to the foreign affairs committee, Sir Olly Robbins displayed the calm integrity and intelligence which have characterised his distinguished career of public service.
“The prime minister appointed Peter Mandelson against official advice, announced that appointment without security vetting having been completed and claims that he would have changed his mind had he been told that the vetting process had raised the concerns about Mandelson’s previous conduct of which he was already well aware.
“As Robbins explained yesterday, the question for him was not whether to tell the prime minister what he already knew, but whether those issues could be mitigated enough to allow Mandelson access to the secret intelligence necessary to do his job. He made the professional judgment that they could. Unwisely as it turned out, he shouldered his responsibilities rather than shunting them.
“The prime minister should retract his accusations against Olly Robbins and reinstate him to the job the country needs him to do of getting the diplomatic service into shape for the second quarter of the 21st century.”
Olly Robbins "made the judgement" that he did not have to tell Keir Starmer about Lord Mandelson not clearing security vetting, says the work and pensions secretary.
Pat McFadden tells BBC Breakfast that while the call made by Robbins was likely "in good faith", it ultimately led to the prime minister losing confidence in him.
McFadden also told Breakfast that while he was the minister in charge of the Cabinet Office at the time Robbins said the department signalled there was no need to vet Mandelson, he had "no involvement in any such signal being sent".
Watch: PM accused of 'sending a real chill throughout the civil service'
The way Prime Minister Keir Starmer sacked Olly Robbins sends a "real chill throughout the civil service," says the boss of the the FDA trade union.
Dave Penman is the general secretary of the FDA trade union - which represents civil servants across the UK.
He told the BBC's Newsnight: "I think the prime minister is losing the ability to work with the civil service."
"Who in the civil service would now think they would be immune from when it is politically expedient to be dismissed?" Penman asked.
"That's not a place any government wants to be because it doesn't deliver for the people of the country," Penman added.
Chris Mason
Political editor
Image source, PA MediaThis is the seventh day in a row that the self-inflicted damage of the Lord Mandelson saga has rained down on Keir Starmer, and this element of it over the last week is but a chapter in the wider story.
The minutiae of the prime minister's most politically consequential decision in office are now being forensically dissected and, frequently, in public.
At the select committee, in the Commons and in the press.
The building blocks of a judgement call Starmer now acknowledges he got catastrophically wrong are being scrutinised daily.
So much for the grid of announcements and campaign events Labour folk in Scotland, Wales and in the areas of England with council elections would love to be focused on. Instead, there is incessant conversation about Lord Mandelson.
And Olly Robbins - who was dumped on by Downing Street from a prime ministerial height over the last few days - responded with a modestly expressed assault on its judgement, sense of fairness and proportion.
Granted, they have been gunning for his judgement too, in a circular firing squad about credibility.
With Prime Minister's Questions at lunchtime and the prospect in the coming weeks of the next deluge of documents relating to Lord Mandelson's appointment being published, this is a foul-up Starmer is struggling to escape.
You can read more analysis from our political editor here.