Hello everyone and welcome to this Tuesday Lunchtime Institute for Government webinar, which we have hastily brought together to try and make sense of a tumultuous few days in government.

Now the problem for the Prime Minister, not for the first time, is Peter Mandelson, who it emerged last week was appointed as the UK's ambassador to the US despite reservations

being raised during the security vetting process. Q briefings, counter-briefings, calls for

resignations, big questions about accountability and, well, you get the idea. Yesterday, we saw

Kirstama make what some media outlets described as a Judgment Day statement in the House of Commons.

And just a few hours ago today, Sir Olly Robbins, the man Stama sacked as Foreign Office permanent secretary last Thursday night, gave his side of the story to MPs on the Foreign Affairs Committee.

So, what has the betting row shown about the way decisions

are made at the top of government? How should the vetting and appointments process be overhauled?

And what does this row mean for relations between civil servants and ministers? Joining me to

discuss all these questions and more, and any questions that you may have, please do send them in by

Slido, are an IFG trio who have been following this story very closely indeed.

From that senior fellow Jill Lutter, Hannah Keenan, who leads our civil service work programme,

and Tim Durant, who leads all our work on ministers.

So I'm going to dive in with some questions of my own. As I say,

I hope you will all send your questions through on Slido. If you like somebody else's question,

feel free to upvote it. You don't have to send a version of your own. And we will try to get through

as many of those as possible in the three quarters of an hour that we have. But first, Hannah,

I want to come to you. You were glued to the

view to view the Foreign Affairs Committee session with Olly Robbins this morning. What have we

learnt as a result of that appearance? I think the main takeaway from that appearance from Olly Robbins' testimony this morning is that

you know, while Robbins clearly made an error of judgment in not making sure that Starmann

knew about the nuance of the way that developed betting as granted, and that was certainly an error

...