Officials deliberately withheld Mandelson vetting result from me, Starmer says

Officials deliberately withheld Mandelson vetting result from me, Starmer says8 minutes agoShareSaveAdd as preferred on GoogleBecky MortonPolitical reporter'I should not have appointed Peter Mandelson' - Starmer faces MPs as vetting row drags onSir Keir Starmer has accused officials in the Foreign Office of deliberately and repeatedly withholding the fact Lord Mandelson initially failed security vetting for the role of US ambassador.Giving a statement to MPs, the prime minister said if he had known, he would not have gone ahead with the appointment.Sir Keir found out last Tuesday the Foreign Office had gone against the recommendation of the security vetting agency and cleared Lord Mandelson for the job.Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has called for the PM to resign, saying he had "thrown his staff and officials under the bus" rather than "taking responsibility".She accused Sir Keir of misleading the House of Commons when he previously told MPs "full due process" was followed during the appointment and said he should have corrected the record last week "at the earliest opportunity".The PM insisted he did not mislead the Commons.The Ministerial Code states that ministers who knowingly mislead Parliament are expected to resign, while any inadvertent error should be corrected "at the earliest opportunity".Follow live updates and reaction to Starmer's statementKey points from Starmer's Mandelson statementWho is Peter Mandelson?The decision to appoint Lord Mandelson to the key diplomatic role has dogged Sir Keir for months and the PM's statement does not appear to have drawn a line under the issue. Lord Mandelson was announced as the UK's ambassador to the US in December 2024, before in-depth vetting had been carried out. He formally took up the role on 10 February 2025 but was sacked just seven months later over his ties to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.UK Security Vetting...