Olly Robbins Summoned to Face the Foreign Affairs Committee — The Sacked Permanent Secretary, a £100,000 Compensation Package, and the Prospect That He Will Tell MPs on Oath That Starmer Knew

Sir Olly Robbins has been asked to appear before the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee over his role in overriding the Security Vetting team’s “no” on Peter Mandelson. The man sacked by Keir Starmer on Thursday night will appear voluntarily within days. He leaves the FCDO with a compensation package reported at £100,000. He also leaves with the only complete paper trail of who instructed whom to override a “no”. A Prime Minister who has already said three contradictory things about what he was told and when is about to discover that permanent secretaries keep copies.

The invitation

The committee wrote to Robbins on Friday morning. The chair, Dame Emily Thornberry, has cleared a slot on Tuesday. Robbins’ solicitors have not yet confirmed the date but have indicated in writing that he will attend voluntarily and will not be seeking a closed-session arrangement unless the committee requests one. In plain English this means Robbins intends to give public evidence on camera about why the FCDO overrode UK Security Vetting’s refusal to clear Peter Mandelson for sensitive US-facing access. The Commons library note circulated to the committee on Friday afternoon runs to fourteen pages. It is the sharpest procedural brief Parliament has produced in this scandal so far.

What Robbins actually knows

Robbins was the senior civil servant who signed the override. In Whitehall vetting cases, an override does not happen on a verbal. It requires a written submission from the department, a written recommendation from the permanent secretary, and a written authorisation from, in practice, either the Foreign Secretary or a Cabinet Office minister. Somewhere in the Foreign Office filing system there is a submission with Robbins’ signature, a recommendation with his signature, and an authorisation with somebody else’s. The somebody else matters. The Prime Minister has said he was not told. The Foreign Secretary has said the decision was properly made. Those two sentences are not obviously consistent with each other.

The £100,000 question

Robbins is leaving the civil service with a compensation package reported by GB News at roughly £100,000. This is modest by permanent secretary exit standards and unusual in that it appears to have been agreed inside forty-eight hours. A fast settlement usually indicates that the person leaving has agreed not to pursue unfair-dismissal action and has signed the standard non-disclosure provisions. But a standard NDA does not cover evidence given on oath to a parliamentary select committee. It cannot. Parliamentary privilege overrides it. Robbins’ lawyers know this. Downing Street knows it too.

Why Starmer is in worse trouble than he thinks

The Prime Minister has publicly said: that he did not know Mandelson had failed vetting; that the FCDO followed due process; that he has sacked the official responsible; and that the Foreign Secretary retains his full confidence. Any two of these statements survive daylight. All four do not. Kemi Badenoch has already asked the Privileges Committee whether the Prime Minister misled the House. Sir Ed Davey has called for an independent investigation by the Committee on Standards. The SNP, Greens and Reform have called for the Prime Minister’s resignation. The Chief Whip has not visibly disagreed with any of them in private with Labour MPs.

What the PLP is doing

Labour MPs spent Friday running their own parallel investigation inside WhatsApp groups. The key question being asked is not whether Starmer survives, which most Labour MPs now expect him to do until the Mayan elections deliver the bill. The key question is which of his Cabinet is positioned to replace him if he does not. Angela Rayner’s camp is circulating a line that “she is the loyal option.” Wes Streeting’s camp is circulating a line that “he did not write the texts that are about to leak.” Ed Miliband’s camp, which nobody had been taking seriously, is quietly circulating a line that “Ed has been in the Cabinet since the beginning and has never texted Peter Mandelson.”

The recess math

The parliamentary recess ends next Thursday. Robbins is expected to give evidence on Tuesday. The Epstein-Mandelson papers are due on Monday. The local elections are on May 7. That is a lot of weight for one man to carry into recess. A Prime Minister with a ninety-seat majority would barely notice it. A Prime Minister with a net approval rating of minus sixty-six, a Chancellor preparing to defenestrate him, a Deputy who has just fired her starting gun, and a Foreign Secretary on manoeuvres, probably will.