Olly Robbins, the former permanent undersecretary to the Foreign Office, told MPs on Tuesday that Starmer’s aides had ordered him to look into what “head of mission” roles could be given to Matthew Doyle – the former No 10 director of communications.
Robbins said he had been given “strict” orders not to tell the foreign secretary and this made him “uncomfortable”.
Doyle was handed a life peerage in the House of Lords in early 2026 despite his known links to the sex offender Sean Morton, a former Scottish Labour councillor for whom Doyle campaigned despite knowing he was facing paedophilia charges.
READ MORE: All the key dates in the paedo-pal peerage row engulfing Keir Starmer
On Tuesday, Robbins was giving evidence on the Labour administration’s decision to give Peter Mandelson the US ambassador role despite his long-standing friendship with the sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein even after his first paedophilia conviction, when he was asked if Starmer’s team had tried to make any other political appointments to diplomatic roles.
He said: “I think in my tenure as permanent undersecretary there was only ever one other serious proposal made, and I think that was in March 2025 [the same month Doyle left No 10].
“There were several discussions initiated by No 10 with me about potentially finding a head of mission opportunity for Matthew Doyle, who was then the Prime Minister’s director of communications.
“I was under strict instruction not to discuss that with the then-foreign secretary, which was uncomfortable.”
Matthew Doyle was made a Baron despite his links to a Scottish sex offender (Image: House of Lords)
Robbins said he had been looking at restructuring the Foreign Office at the time, which may have involved job losses among senior diplomats, making it “very hard to think how I would explain to the office what the credentials of Matthew were to be in an important head of mission role when I was in danger of making very senior, very experienced diplomats leave”.
He went on: “I did my duty. I looked at the forward-look of available jobs. I shared with No 10 what some of those might be.
“It was, to be honest, hard to find something that I thought might be suitable, but I also felt quite uncomfortable about it, and I kept giving advice that I thought this would be very hard for the office and was hard for me personally to defend.”
Robbins said that “after a day or two, the idea seemed to get dropped”.
Olly Robbins speaking to the Foreign Affairs Committee at Westminster on Tuesday (Image: ParliamentLive)
He was later pushed on who had ordered him to look into getting Doyle a position, and who had ordered him not to tell the foreign secretary (which at the time was David Lammy).
Robbins said: “I don’t know what the origin of the suggestion was, and I don’t know who exactly was behind it or how serious it was.
“It was serious enough for the No 10 private office to ring up the head of the diplomatic service and ask for a forward look of available head of mission jobs, and that’s the point at which I thought that I needed to lay down some markers.”
He added: “The No 10 private office were clear that this was so sensitive because it was about the Prime Minister’s own dispositions for his own senior staff, that I should keep that to myself for now.”
READ MORE: ‘Why didn’t you ask?’: Keir Starmer clings on amid mounting Mandelson-Epstein scandal
On Monday, Starmer was asked in the Commons if there had been any other pushes for political appointments to ambassador roles from his office. He said there “are very many appointments made to senior positions” and he would have to check.
Yvette Cooper, who is now Foreign Secretary, said that while she was “not involved” in the lobbying for a position for Doyle, she is “of course, extremely concerned at any suggestion that the permanent secretary or permanent undersecretary of the Foreign Office would be told not to inform the foreign secretary”.
“I can also confirm that the case that he raised, it would not have been an appropriate appointment,” Cooper added.
Doyle denied knowing anything about the incident, saying in a statement: “I have never sought any head of mission, ambassador, or any equivalent leadership-type posting. I was never aware of anyone speaking to the FCDO about such a role for me. My desire after leaving No 10 was to stay in UK politics.”
SNP Westminster leader Stephen Flynn said: “I wrote to Keir Starmer warning him not to appoint Matthew Doyle to the Lords due to his connection with a convicted paedophile. He ignored those warnings.
“And it now turns out he had even higher hopes for Doyle. Just extraordinary.”
Doyle was suspended from Labour on February 10, 2026 due to his connections to the paedophile Morton – a month after being given a life seat in the Lords
On the same day, Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar suspended his party MSP Pam Duncan-Glancy for her own links to Morton, after months of having resisted doing so.
Sarwar later denied having been instructed to suspend Duncan-Glancy by his UK Labour bosses.