Mandelson was announced as the government’s choice to be US ambassador in December 2024, with developed vetting beginning the same day.<\/p>\n
He formally took up the post in February 2025, before being removed last September when further details about his past ties with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein came to light. <\/p>\n
Sir Olly had been the most senior civil servant at the Foreign Office for two weeks when it was announced Mandelson had been picked for the Washington role.<\/p>\n
Dame Emily Thornberry wrote to Sir Olly on Friday requesting that he appears before the Foreign Affairs Committee she chairs to answers questions.<\/p>\n
BBC News understands he has not formally accepted the committee’s invitation, but friends of his said he was preparing to appear on Tuesday. <\/p>\n
They also cast doubt on whether Sir Olly ever actually saw the recommendation to the Foreign Office not to approve Lord Mandelson’s vetting.<\/p>\n
Allies said it was unlikely he was given the full report and may only have seen more specific risks thrown up during the process.<\/p>\n
BBC News understands the vetting report returned a “no” verdict on whether a security clearance granting access to sensitive government material should be given to Mandelson. <\/p>\n
Vetting of government employees and appointees is carried out by a government agency overseen by the Cabinet Office, which reports back to hiring departments with recommendations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mandelson was announced as the government’s choice to be US ambassador in December 2024, with developed vetting beginning…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":537419,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-537418","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-kingdom","8":"tag-gb","9":"tag-great-britain","10":"tag-greatbritain","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=537418"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537418\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/537419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=537418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=537418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=537418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}