Keir Starmer says it is unforgivable he was not told Mandelson failed vetting

Keir Starmer has said it was “unforgivable” that he was not told that Peter Mandelson had failed his security vetting before taking up his role as ambassador to Washington.The prime minister said he was “furious” about what had happened, as he insisted he had not known that security officials had initially recommended that Mandelson be denied clearance.Speaking on Friday morning for the first time since the Guardian broke the story, Starmer said: “That I wasn’t told that Peter Mandelson had failed security vetting when he was appointed is staggering.“That I wasn’t told that he had failed security vetting when I was telling parliament that due process had been followed is unforgivable. Not only was I not told, no minister was told, and I’m absolutely furious about that.”The prime minister is under pressure to explain who knew what about Mandelson’s vetting, after the Guardian revealed on Thursday that the former peer had failed the checks.Mandelson was appointed to the post in late 2024, despite concerns among senior members of the government about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein even after the financier had been convicted of child trafficking.He was sacked by Starmer last year after emails were published by the US Department of Justice showing how close he had been to Epstein, to the extent that he had apparently shared sensitive government information with him while working for Gordon Brown. He denies any wrongdoing.Sources have told the Guardian that security officials initially recommended that Mandelson not be given security clearance for the role, but that they were overruled.It remains unclear who gave the order for the clearance to be granted. Starmer sacked Olly Robbins, the most senior civil servant in the Foreign Office, on Thursday night.The prime minister will appear before MPs on Monday to give a statement about what happened and what he knew. He said on Friday: “What I intend to do is to go to parliament on Monday to set out all the relevant facts in true transparency, so parliament has the full picture.”Starmer has been accused of misleading parliament, given that he repeatedly assured MPs that “full due process” had been followed before Mandelson was given the job.He also told reporters in February there had been “security vetting carried out independently by the security services, which is an intensive exercise that gave [Lord Mandelson] clearance for the role”.Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative leader, has led calls for the prime minister to resign over the controversy. She said on Friday: “It is completely preposterous for us to believe that civil servants would have cleared a political appointee who had failed security vetting.”Ed Davey, the Liberal Democrat leader, has called for Starmer to be investigated by the Commons privileges committee, the committee that prompted Boris Johnson to resign as an MP after it found he had deliberately and repeatedly misled parliament.