Speeches by Whittingdale.

“You say the Prime Minister had been made aware of the risks, but he had not, because the developed vetting had not been carried out, so all that had taken place was the due diligence. Did you ask whether or not developed vetting had taken place?”

“Coming back to the answer you gave the Chair about you leaving your post, you said that David Lammy told you that he wanted to make a change because of the transformation programme. Do you believe that your concerns about the way in which Peter Mandelson was appointed had any influence on the decision to ask you to lea…”

“I will follow up on one or two of the questions from the Chair. You said that the process had been under way for an internal competition but come the general election it was frozen. Once the new Government had been elected, was the process not then recommenced?”

“Well, that is the alternative: that he did not indicate in writing, but said, “I would like to have a meeting to discuss this.” But if such a meeting took place, there would be a record of it, and no record has been released.”

“Could you just clarify the summary document and the template that has now been published by the Government, setting out the process? Can you just say what the two red boxes are, and whether they were the ones ticked?”

“No, but the Government did take the decision to publish the template.”

“So you are continuing to push.”

“Before moving on to my final area, can I confirm that the Foreign Office has the 10-page summary, but Sir Olly Robbins did not see the 10-page summary? He was briefed on its contents by the director of security, and therefore, in seeking to try to explain the two different views, is it possible that it was simply a fai…”

“Wouldn’t you expect to see further information around this?”

“Just as a quick follow-up to the questions that Fleur has been asking, you have said that all the documentation around the appointment itself has now been included in the first batch of published documents, and that you have been very rigorous to make sure that it covers that. Why is there no formal record of the actua…”

“It took three weeks.”

“It is about the actual minute of the meeting at which the Prime Minister said, “Right, here’s the due diligence,” and he is advised about all the various other aspects, and he said, “Yes, I want it to be Peter Mandelson. Set that in motion.””

“But there isn’t one of this.”

“Which is the one that I put to Sir Olly and he said that even until the moment of publication he had not been aware of it. Does that surprise you?”

“I want to look at three aspects. First, we now know that the then Cabinet Secretary sent a note saying that Peter Mandelson should complete his developed vetting procedure before an announcement was made. We also know that Philip Barton essentially expressed the same view and Sir Olly Robbins also told us that it was s…”

“So why was there such a long gap between you and the Cabinet Secretary discovering this, and your going to tell the Prime Minister?”

“On 25 March. And when did you discuss it with the Cabinet Secretary?”

“We will wait and see. Can I finally move on to one other part of this process? When exactly did the Cabinet Office and yourself discover that the UKSV recommendation had not been complied with by the Foreign Office?”

“And the former permanent secretary’s view.”

“Okay. Is that part of what you are examining?”