Keir Starmer was wrong to sack Olly Robbins | Brief letters

Perhaps the most damaging consequence of the Mandelson affair is not the fate of the prime minister (Report, 22 April) but the breakdown in the relationship between the government and the civil service. This relationship is crucial for good government. The removal of a distinguished civil servant for trying to navigate the competing pressures on him when landed with the Mandelson problem sets a dangerous precedent. It was the wrong decision, and should be reversed before lasting damage is done.Tony WrightFormer Labour MP and chair of the public administration committee This is such a Westminster bubble story

Global Counsel, lobbying firm set up by Mandelson, went bust owing £4.5m just before his arrest – as it happened

The lobbying firm co-founded by Peter Mandelson collapsed owing £4.5m to creditors including over half a million pounds to HM Revenue and Customs, the Press Association reports. PA says:double quotation markGlobal Counsel went into administration in February amid the fallout from the scandal surrounding Mandelson’s historical links to paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein.Figures filed on Companies House showed the firm owed £4.54m when it went bust – with only £2

Mandelson’s lobbying firm Global Counsel went bust owing £4.6m, report says

Peter Mandelson’s former consultancy firm Global Counsel went bust owing £4.6m – including more than £600,000 to the taxman – a report by the group’s administrators has revealed.The company, which provided advice to high-profile clients including Chinese-owned TikTok, US tech firm Palantir and UK pharmaceutical firm GSK, collapsed in February, after it lost a series of accounts over the peer’s relationship with the convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.Mandelson, who denies any wrongdoing, had resigned from the board in 2024 but continued to hold shares in the company.Global Counsel’s client list received fresh scrutiny this month after it emerged Mandelson failed the UK government’s enhanced vetting process before he was appointed as UK ambassador to Washington, with speculation about security concerns around his links to foreign states, including China

Olly Robbins refused to give Mandelson vetting summary to Cabinet Office, says Cat Little

The Foreign Office refused to hand over a summary of Peter Mandelson’s security vetting to the civil servant tasked with compiling documents detailing his appointment as ambassador to the US, she has told a Commons committee.Cat Little, the lead official in the Cabinet Office, had to instead get the document directly from UK Security Vetting (UKSV) after Olly Robbins, the subsequently-sacked Foreign Office head, refused to provide it.Giving evidence to the foreign affairs committee, Little also said she had not yet been able to track down a formal record of Keir Starmer approving Mandelson’s appointment as part of her department’s response to a Commons motion forcing the release of documents linked to the process. She said such a document would normally exist.But she supported the prime minister’s insistence that normal processes were followed in the appointment, despite UKSV initially refusing clearance for vetting, which was overruled by Robbins, who gave evidence to the same committee on Tuesday

Cat Little’s evidence to MPs is destined for civil service textbooks | John Crace

Here we go again. Some of the public may have had enough of the Peter Mandelson scandal by now, and would rather the focus returned to things such as the Iran war and the cost of living crisis. But Westminster has barely started on Mandy. Can’t get enough of him. This one will run and run

Former Labour MP calls for Starmer to face Commons committee over Mandelson vetting

A former Labour MP has joined opposition parties calling for Keir Starmer to face a Commons committee to examine whether the prime minister misled parliament as the government’s crisis surrounding the appointment of Peter Mandelson as ambassador to Washington continues.Karl Turner, who lost the Labour whip last month after making a series of interventions criticising Starmer and No 10, has written to the speaker of the Commons urging him to refer Starmer to the privileges committee, the same body that found Boris Johnson had lied in the Commons over the lockdown parties scandal.In a letter to the speaker posted on X, which has since been deleted, he wrote that he was raising a “matter of serious concern regarding the conduct” of Starmer during prime minister’s questions on Wednesday.Turner, who now sits as an independent MP, said it was “clear that the prime minister’s characterisation of that evidence is, at best, inaccurate and, at worst, misleading to the House”.In the X post accompanying the letter, Turner said: “Let me be clear, I’m not accusing the PM of deliberately misleading the House of Commons