Emily Thornberry has challenged Sir Olly Robbins on the appointment of Lord Peter Mandelson, declaring it “doesn’t stack up”.
In a grilling by the Foreign Affairs Committee, Ms Thornberry pressed Sir Olly: “Really the nub of this is how on earth did this happen? This doesn’t stack up, does it?
“Because in the end, he lost his job because he was a threat, and that should have been revealed with the Developed Vetting. He was leaking secrets from the British state to a foreign bank, that’s pretty serious.”
Sir Olly responded: “That was not known at the time of his withdrawal, to my knowledge, certainly it wasn’t publicly known. It wasn’t known in records available to me or to others in the Foreign Office. What was known was that the basis on which the Prime Minister thought he had received assurances from Mandelson about those connections from his past life with Epstein.
“The Prime Minister can speak for himself, but I remember him visibly angry that, in his view, he’d been deceived about those connections. That was the point at which he required of me to withdraw Mandelson from Washington.
“And it was a very difficult day of my professional life, but I think the Prime Minister did the right thing.”
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