While watching Olly Robbins give evidence at the Commons foreign affairs committee (Olly Robbins’ account of Mandelson vetting piles pressure on Keir Starmer, 21 April), what I heard was that Robbins – who boasted of his quarter century as a civil servant and who had been appointed to one of the highest positions in government – felt unable to resist the pressure of an unspecified source he called “Downing Street” regarding perhaps the most important and far-reaching foreign post of all.

Robbins showed little will to discover the detail of Peter Mandelson’s failure to gain clearance and, incredibly and most unlike a civil servant, he decided not to keep a record of what he described as a “crucial” meeting. He also appeared to not distinguish between reporting the fact that there had been an issue with Mandelson’s clearance and explaining the details of the issue, which he correctly said should have remained confidential. But he then broke that principle by disclosing a specific element in the vetting, that the reservations about Mandelson did not involve links with Jeffrey Epstein.

“I was new to the job” and it would have been “very difficult” to deny Mandelson clearance do not wash – he’s paid to do this kind of thing. Could you trust this man to speak truth to power, to preserve constitutional values against pressure from elected officials? Or would you expect him just to go along with what was asked for?
Paul Griseri
London

The controversy surrounding Peter Mandelson’s appointment is being framed as a matter of error and miscommunication. The evidence suggests something more serious. Olly Robbins’ testimony points to sustained pressure to secure the appointment, with little tolerance for delay. That is not a system reaching a conclusion; it is a conclusion being driven through a system.

Keir Starmer’s case rests on a technocratic claim: trust the process. But that depends on the process being free to operate before decisions are fixed. Here, the appointment was announced before security vetting had concluded, and the atmosphere described by Olly Robbins made refusal “very difficult indeed”.

The prime minister says he was not informed of the adverse recommendation. That may be so. But if an appointment was sufficiently prioritised to be driven through the system, it is difficult to see how it was not equally central at the point where responsibility ultimately sits. A system commands confidence only if it can contradict the decisions made in its name. If priority flows through it, but critical observation does not return, it ceases to safeguard and instead confirms. The question is not whether the system failed, but whether it was ever permitted to succeed in its most important function – to stop a decision.
Dr Simon Nieder
Chesterfield, Derbyshire

The vetting row (Robbins response to ‘cover-up’ question reveals debate over Mandelson vetting file, 22 April) reminds me of a Home Office term I learned while seconded there in the 2000s: the “whim of iron”. It described how a minister’s casual remark could solidify into an apparently immovable instruction by the time it reached frontline staff.

We were ordered to pilot an initiative on an estate hit by a high‑profile murder. Local commanders said that it was the wrong place and proposed a better one. Civil servants insisted the location was fixed. Only when my boss met the minister did it emerge that it had been no more than an offhand thought and he was happy for us to listen to local concerns and change it. It’s a reminder of how easily a passing notion can harden into policy once it enters the system.
Terry O’Hara
Maghull, Merseyside

If we adapt Churchill’s famous comment about democracy, we can say that one thing worse than politicians running the country is people who are not politicians running the country (It’s a nightmare on Downing Street: Starmer has no one left to blame for this Mandelson horror show, 21 April).
Geoff Reid
Worsbrough, South Yorkshire