Taxpayers forced to foot £100,000 compensation for Sir Olly Robbins following sacking

Fintan Starkey
Sat, 18 Apr 2026 07:35:33 +0000

Taxpayers could be required to fund a compensation package worth more than £100,000 for Sir Olly Robbins, the former Foreign Office permanent secretary sacked by Sir Keir Starmer over the Lord Mandelson security vetting scandal.

Three Whitehall insiders confirmed that the payout, calculated based on his salary, would surpass six figures.

Those close to Sir Olly maintain he committed no wrongdoing by not alerting Downing Street to Lord Mandelson's failed vetting for the Washington ambassadorship.

The sacked secretary is scheduled to appear before the foreign affairs committee on Tuesday, where allies say he intends to present his account of events.

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His predecessor Sir Philip Barton received £260,000 upon departing the same role early last year.

Professor Ciaran Martin, formerly head of the National Cyber Security Centre and a friend of Sir Olly, has challenged the basis for his dismissal.

Speaking on BBC Radio, he stated: "As far as I can tell, from what little we know, there is no abuse of process, there's no failure of process."

Professor Martin argued that officials were actually prohibited from sharing vetting details, saying: "Not only is there no duty to disclose the details of a vetting case, there is a duty not to disclose them."

His defence stands in stark contrast to the Prime Minister's reaction in Paris on Friday, where a visibly furious Sir Keir declared: "That I wasn't told that Peter Mandelson had failed security vetting when he was appointed is staggering."

The Prime Minister added that being kept uninformed while telling Parliament due process had been followed was "unforgivable".

The scandal erupted on Thursday when The Guardian revealed that Lord Mandelson had been refused security clearance, only for Foreign Office officials to deploy exceptional powers to overturn the decision.

The UK Security Vetting Agency conducted the assessment on behalf of the Foreign Office, which bore responsibility for managing the process as Lord Mandelson's employer.

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Downing Street responded nearly three hours after the story emerged, attributing the decision to disregard the agency's recommendation to Foreign Office "officials".

By Thursday evening, Sir Olly had departed after Sir Keir and the Foreign Secretary concluded his position was untenable.

Sources indicated he was being positioned to shoulder blame for the affair before his exit.

Sir Olly reportedly informed friends he would refuse to serve as the "fall guy" for the scandal.

Sir Olly's earlier testimony to the foreign affairs committee is now facing scrutiny, with one committee member accusing him of attempting to "obfuscate the truth".

During a November 3 evidence session, he was questioned whether any element of the vetting process had been "skipped, removed or stripped entirely" and answered: "No".

The same MP told The Telegraph this response "looks like a deliberate attempt to obfuscate the truth", adding it was implausible Sir Olly would "make a decision as monumental as this unilaterally".

In that appearance, Sir Olly stated it was "clear that the Prime Minister wanted to make this appointment himself" by the time it reached his desk.

Documents released in March showed national security adviser Jonathan Powell had described the vetting process as "weirdly rushed".