Speeches by Kumaran.

“I put on the record that, over the past decade, I have worked twice with the witness—he is used to robust conversations with me. Hello, Morgan. Both Sir Philip Barton and Sir Olly Robbins have said that it was No. 10’s decision to announce the appointment of Peter Mandelson before the vetting process. Did you or did an…”

“Would you have expected senior civil servants to intervene to flag any issues, to say, “Actually, this is not how the process happens. The vetting should happen first,” because Sir Philip Barton said that vetting should happen first. We are not from the civil service and we are not to be expected to know this. Would yo…”

“You said that you made clear to the Prime Minister the pros and cons of this appointment, and that you would not have put Peter Mandelson forward had Kamala Harris won the presidency. Do you think the politics of the day were weighing more heavily, rather than the trade deal, or were they hand in hand?”

“Did you warn of any risk of proceeding this way? Did you speak to the Foreign Secretary, anyone at No. 10 or anyone else in the Department?”

“Okay. I asked Cat Little if the developed vetting would have brought up the information that Bloomberg had in their leaks—really grave issues of Peter Mandelson sharing information about market-sensitive matters when he was then in government, which is huge and a betrayal of this country. If that had been put to you, w…”

“Did you raise any of your concerns with the Foreign Secretary, for him to make a judgment to pass them on, or anything like that? Was there any conversation about the worries that you both seem to have had?”

“Was the Prime Minister led to believe that Peter Mandelson’s risks—the cons, as you have set out—were manageable? Did you have that conversation with him? Did anyone have that conversation with him?”

“Without disclosing what may or may not have been in the report, the leaked document to Bloomberg at the time contained information that Peter Mandelson had passed on market-sensitive information about high-level discussions happening at Cabinet at a time of grave crisis in Britain. Would information of that nature come…”

“Thank you.”

“This entire conversation, our inquiry and the way this has been playing out in public, is mostly down to a series of very high-level leaks to very well-known news outlets. We have all talked about the security of the vetting process—the sanctity of the vetting process. Here in Parliament, we have tried our very best to…”

“Would you expect, as part of the procedures of how the civil service operates, that there would be a meeting note of these decisions, or how these decisions are verbally briefed, without disclosing the contents of the security vetting?”

“That is the questions I have on judgment, to follow up.”

“That is okay.”

“Returning to the UKSV security vetting system, and respecting your comments on the sanctity of the system, just to be clear, have you ever seen any UKSV form—this type of form, or of any nature—prior to this process?”

“Would it be right to say that, broadly, most senior civil servants never, ever see a form of this nature?”

“Is it also right to say that information about UKSV is only verbally communicated Department to Department?”

“I would like to go on to the judgment point, because a lot seems to rest on judgment, when there seem to be clear processes. Where this is not quite matching the version of events we are hearing from multiple people is where the judgment part comes in.”

“In this case, for this particular appointment, this body is the FCDO.”

“Sir Olly, as we heard in his evidence, told us that he had “never seen” this form until it was leaked or published. He says that the recommendation that was verbally briefed to him—we cannot see any notes of that meeting—was briefed to him as “leaning” to or “borderline”. I showed him said document, and I understand th…”

“Thank you. This is my final question. Looking at the civil service code of conduct, which we went through as a Committee recently, do you think the Prime Minister was adequately served by either the permanent secretary of the FCDO or indeed the FCDO by being kept in the dark even when those Bloomberg emails came to lig…”