Ambassadorial appointments should be subject to veto by MPs, committee recommends | UK news

A parliamentary committee has suggested political choices for ambassadorial posts should be subject to a veto from MPs as Peter Mandelson made harsh criticisms of how he became Britain’s top diplomat in Washington.

The Foreign Affairs select committee concluded that Mandelson’s appointment was “nothing short of disastrous”, “hugely damaging” to the British government and “painful and offensive to the victims of Jeffrey Epstein”.

Keir Starmer’s unusual decision to make a political appointment to the UK’s most high-profile ambassadorial post has come under increasing pressure from September 2025, when Mandelson, a long-standing Labor figure, was sacked by the US Department of Justice following the publication of email exchanges with Epstein. Ambassadors are generally selected from the UK’s diplomatic service, which consists of career civil servants.

The cross-party group of MPs who review the work of the State Department was denied the opportunity to question Mandelson before he was appointed or took office. Given the disastrous nature of the appointment, the committee argued that all political figures appointed to diplomatic posts should be preempted and subject to veto.

The committee, chaired by Labor MP Emily Thornberry, said Mandelson’s initial questions after his withdrawal from Washington had led to “partial truths” rather than “full answers” from the government. But months later, in April 2026, the committee heard more evidence over several days from some of the key officials involved in Mandelson’s appointment.

His statements followed revelations by the Guardian that the Foreign Office had overridden the advice of the UK’s security investigation agency, which concluded in late January 2025 that Mandelson should not be given the high-level security clearance required for almost all roles in the ministry. According to sources, the investigating agency’s concerns included his relationships with senior figures in China, Russia and Israel, as well as a £1 million loan.

But while senior officials at the Foreign Office were reviewing the investigative body’s findings, Mandelson was announced by Starmer as the next US ambassador. The role was approved by the US government and King Charles.

The committee recommended that public appointments not be announced until security clearance is granted.

Starmer’s government was forced to release hundreds of pages of documents about Mandelson’s appointment, but despite this unprecedented announcement the committee felt there were still “unanswered questions”.

They criticized “appalling” record-keeping by the Foreign Office and Downing Street, which left MPs with uncertainty about whether evidence documenting key decisions regarding Mandelson’s appointment existed, was lost or was passed on to the Metropolitan police, which retained some documents that may be relevant to ongoing investigations.

However, the available documents include extensive correspondence between senior officials around the time Mandelson’s appointment was announced by the prime minister in December 2024. They were discussing whether Mandelson needed security clearance because he was a member of the House of Lords and the privy council, a group of centuries-old advisers to the monarch.

The committee said it was “extraordinary” that more time was spent on the question as to whether the review process would “reveal issues that should stand in the way of his appointment”.

Starmer, who apologized for appointing Mandelson, faced further criticism over his decision to sack Foreign Office chief Olly Robbins. Robbins was one of the senior officers who decided to grant Mandelson security clearance with “mitigations” that investigators said were a “borderline” finding; but no evidence has been published to justify these mitigations or the “borderline” designation.

Starmer said he lost trust in Robbins because he did not tell him that Mandelson had failed the review. The committee said it believed Robbins “achieved the desired outcome” and concluded that his dismissal “appears to have been carried out without full due process and without establishing the facts.”

Robbins may have the last laugh. As Starmer, a former highly-placed civil servant, prepares to leave Downing Street, there are some suggestions that his successor Andy Burnham could bring Robbins back into government as national security adviser.