Sir Keir Starmer made the decision to appoint Peter Mandelson as Ambassador to the United States and then ensured that a process was followed to fulfil his wish. The process came after the decision, not before. This much is clear from the cache of papers that has been released by the Cabinet Office in response to a demand for them by the House of Commons.
We also learn that the civil service was against Mandelson’s appointment, but that is not surprising. Although the 2010 Constitutional Reform and Governance Act allows for ambassadors to be political appointments, this rarely happens. From the perceived, if unfair, appearance of nepotism when Peter Jay was made Ambassador to the United States by Jim Callaghan, to the disaster of Mandelson, such appointments have not always gone well. Understandably, the Foreign Office also dislikes this type of appointment because it deprives them of the best jobs, which are the only ones ever handed out politically.
The civil service is also obsessed with process, both on the appointment and dismissal of Mandelson. This is evident from the papers that have been released. It is bureaucratic and long-winded. Even though the briefing note lists all Mandelson’s conflicts of interest, he was nonetheless asked to fill out a form listing them, and could have faced disciplinary measures from his line manager if in future he failed to send in even a nil return.
This is faintly absurd for a prime ministerial appointment, one that depends on maintaining the confidence of the prime minister rather than the line manager. And it is this type of bureaucracy that leads to the payoff to Mandelson once he was fired.
The Foreign Office failed to make any contractual change for a politician as opposed to a career diplomat. This meant that the issue of unfair dismissal arose, whereas the Prime Minister is free to sack any minister he chooses without this risk. Compensation is paid to ministers who are fired or who resign, but it is limited and there is no question of an industrial tribunal.
As the letter of engagement clearly states, the role of ambassador is a crown appointment and as such is not subject to a notice period. The contract could have been different. All ambassadors may be fired at will, and it would have been easy to adjust the terms for a politician so that he was employed on the same basis as a minister.
Failure to do so ended up being expensive. It cost the taxpayer tens of thousands of pounds when Mandelson was sacked, if not the whole £75,000, and was an irresponsible oversight. A different government may well have wanted to remove a political figure, especially one as controversial as Mandelson, and would have not wanted to bill the taxpayer for the privilege. The experience of recent years proves that you cannot just assume that a government will continue until the end of its five-year nominal term of office.
