I've been a civil servant for a quarter of a century. I could recite the code to you,

and I believe it, you know, along with probably the book of common prayer, it's one of the two things I kind of can hold in my memory, and I've abided by it.

And you will find, when the records are finally opened, you will find record of the decision

it is clear.

What I am saying to you is that whilst there was an atmosphere of pressure, the department

rigorously followed the process.

So we've just heard the former top official at the foreign office,

Sir Olly Robbins, give evidence to MPs after he was sacked over the Lord Mandelson vetting row.

He was sacked last Thursday after the PM discovered he'd not been told by Robbins

that Mandelson had failed his vetting process to be the US ambassador.

I think substantively, Kirstarmer's version of

events, events at least, is not disputed. Robbins did not tell the PM that the vetting body

had recommended Mandelson shouldn't get clearance. What he disputes is whether that recommendation

could and should have been shared with the Prime Minister. However, it's a lot more complicated

than that, and Kirstarmer will not have loved to hearing quite a lot of what we just heard. It seems to me at least four things are damaging for the government. First, number 10, via the Cabinet Office, didn't want there to be vetting in the first place. The Foreign Office had to have a fight about that, which they won. Second, number 10 pressured him with almost daily phone calls to get the process done. thirdly he said there would have been a huge fuss if he had vetoed Manlston at the stage of which things had already got to. And fourth, he said he was also pressured to find a job for Matthew Doyle, formerly of Downing Street communications, which he resisted. Times Radio's newsroom reporter, Olly Cole is with me in the studio. Hello, Olli. Hello, Hugo. What did you make of all that?

Give me your top lines. Well, I mean, as you just said there, I mean, what became clear very early on and what felt quite damning pretty early on in the first half hour of evidence from Olly Robbins there was the fact that in coming into the job, you remember that Odie Robbins was only 10 days into the job when this all happened.

He had felt that there was an atmosphere from number 10 from the cabinet office that actually security vetting wasn't even needed for Peter Mendelsohn.

Then the foreign office actually had to insist on that happening.

So that is an incredible thing, number one.

Can I just tell you a quote about that?

He said there was an atmosphere of constant chasing. He said there was never any interest in weather, only in an interest in when. Exactly. And he wouldn't say there were sort of phone calls every day, but he said pretty constant from the number 10 private office to the foreign office. And he also said that his feeling was that that didn't come from civil servants in number 10. and that came from people behind the number 10 operation, which MPs in that committee sort of heavily hinted

might be Morgan McSweeney or someone similar. What's interesting is sort of, I think that number

...