Foreign Office official to give written evidence on Mandelson vetting row

A senior Foreign Office official will not face MPs in person over the Mandelson vetting row, forcing the Foreign Affairs Committee to rely on written answers in a dispute that has already cost the department its top official.

Ian Collard, the Foreign Office’s chief property and security officer and a former ambassador to Lebanon and Panama, had been asked by Dame Emily Thornberry to appear before the committee on Tuesday. Instead, the Foreign Office said he will submit written replies by 5pm on Monday, keeping him out of the room as MPs probe how Lord Mandelson’s security clearance was handled.

Thornberry wants Collard’s account of a meeting in which Sir Olly Robbins said Collard briefed him on vetting findings that made Mandelson a borderline case and leaned toward denying clearance. The committee chair has also asked whether Collard felt pressure to help secure Mandelson’s clearance, whether he saw the UK Security Vetting cover form said to carry two red boxes marking “high concern” and recommending “clearance denied or withdrawn”, and whether anyone in the Foreign Office, Downing Street or the Cabinet Office asked if Mandelson needed vetting at all because he sits in the House of Lords.

The questions go to the heart of a row that has already engulfed both the Foreign Office and Downing Street. Robbins told MPs that there had been an “atmosphere of pressure” to get Mandelson to Washington “as soon as humanly possible”, while Keir Starmer has said he would not have appointed Mandelson if he had known about the adverse vetting advice. Starmer has blamed officials for withholding the information, but the inquiry has sharpened pressure on how much ministers were told and when.

Robbins, who was sacked as the Foreign Office’s top official after the row, has said he was never shown the form containing the “high concerns” warning and was only told the decision was “borderline”. Mandelson was formally appointed as UK ambassador to Washington in February 2025, but the security clearance process was reportedly still unresolved when he began receiving access to highly classified briefings on a case-by-case basis.

The committee has already heard from Robbins and Cat Little, the Cabinet Office permanent secretary. Morgan McSweeney, Starmer’s former chief of staff, is due to appear on Tuesday, adding another central figure to an inquiry that now tests not just procedure, but whether sensitive security judgments were softened under political pressure.