Top civil servant reveals more details of vetting process and lack of paper trail for approval of appointment
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In more than 90 minutes of evidence to the foreign affairs select committee about the Peter Mandelson scandal, Cat Little, the head civil servant in the Cabinet Office, was low key and often cautious.
But she did reveal several pieces of new information – or at times information different from that given to the same committee by Olly Robbins, the former permanent undersecretary at the Foreign Office.
Little said her then Foreign Office counterpart had resisted sending her a summary of why Mandelson was initially refused vetting clearance, which she sought as part of her efforts to gather all relevant documents in line with a Commons “humble address” motion.
