{"id":550564,"date":"2026-04-25T20:39:15","date_gmt":"2026-04-25T20:39:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/550564\/"},"modified":"2026-04-25T20:39:15","modified_gmt":"2026-04-25T20:39:15","slug":"key-figure-in-mandelson-vetting-row-will-not-give-evidence-in-front-of-mps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/550564\/","title":{"rendered":"Key figure in Mandelson vetting row will not give evidence in front of MPs"},"content":{"rendered":"

“If we have further questions, we will consider at that point whether we need to ask him to give evidence orally, or whether a further written statement is sufficient”.<\/p>\n

Collard was the official who briefed the then-Foreign Office boss Sir Olly Robbins about UK Security Vetting’s (UKSV) recommendation not to give clearance to Mandelson.<\/p>\n

Sir Olly was sacked last week<\/a> after it emerged that he had granted clearance against the recommendation and had not informed No 10.<\/p>\n

The government says UKSV gave an explicit recommendation to the Foreign Office not to approve vetting for Lord Mandelson ahead of his confirmation as ambassador to the US.<\/p>\n

But speaking to MPs on Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee this week, Sir Olly said<\/a> he had never seen that explicit recommendation and only received a verbal briefing which described UKSV’s view as “borderline” and “leaning towards recommending that clearance be denied”.<\/p>\n

The government is investigating whether Sir Olly was given the correct information before he approved security clearance for the peer.<\/p>\n

Sir Adrian Fulford, a retired judge, is conducting a review into the process and it is understood he will look at whether the briefing given by Collard correctly summed up the vetting team’s view.<\/p>\n

That information could be crucial to determine whether Sir Keir Starmer was right to sack Sir Olly last week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"“If we have further questions, we will consider at that point whether we need to ask him to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":550565,"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-550564","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\/550564","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=550564"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550564\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/550565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=550564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=550564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=550564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}