Ambassadorial appointments should be subject to veto by MPs, committee recommends

The UK’s security vetting agency recommended that Peter Mandelson should not be awarded the high-level clearance required to be US ambassador. Photograph: Carl Court/Pool Getty Images/AP View image in fullscreen The UK’s security vetting agency recommended that Peter Mandelson should not be awarded the high-level clearance required to be US ambassador. Photograph: Carl Court/Pool Getty Images/AP Ambassadorial appointments should be subject to veto by MPs, committee recommends Foreign affairs select committee says Peter Mandelson episode was ‘nothing short of disastrous’ for government Political selections for ambassador posts should be subject to a veto by MPs, a parliamentary committee has recommended, as it made damning criticisms of how Peter Mandelson became Britain’s top diplomat in Washington. The foreign affairs select committee concluded that Mandelson’s appointment was “nothing short of disastrous”, “highly damaging” for the British government and “painful and offensive to the victims of Jeffrey Epstein”. Keir Starmer’s unusual decision to make a political appointment to the UK’s most high-profile ambassadorial role came under growing pressure from September 2025, when Mandelson, a longstanding figure of the Labour party, was sacked after the emergence of email exchanges with Epstein published by the US Department of Justice. Ambassadors are typically drawn from the UK’s diplomatic service of career civil servants. The cross-party group of MPs, which scrutinises the work of the Foreign Office, were denied the opportunity to question Mandelson before he was appointed or took up his posting. Given the disastrous way the appointment unravelled, the committee has argued all political appointees to diplomatic posts should have to appear before them and be subject to a veto. The committee, chaired by the Labour MP Emily Thornberry, said its initial queries after Mandelson’s withdrawal from Washington did not lead to “full answers” from the government, but rather “partial truths”. But months later, in April 2026, the committee heard further evidence over several days from some of the key officials who played a part in Mandelson’s appointment. Their testimony came in the wake of revelations from the Guardian that the Foreign Office had overruled the recommendation of the UK’s security vetting agency , which had concluded in late January 2025 that Mandelson should not be awarded the high-level security clearance necessary for nearly all roles in the department. Among the vetting agency’s concerns, according to sources, were his associations with senior figures in China, Russia, and Israel , as well as a £1m loan. But by the time senior civil servants in the Foreign Office were reviewing the vetting agency’s findings, Mandelson had been announced by Starmer as the next ambassador to the United States. The role had been approved by the US government and King Charles. The committee has recommended public appointments should not be announced until se