Downing Street pushed the Foreign Office to find a diplomatic role for Keir Starmer’s communications chief over the head of the then foreign secretary, the former head of the department has revealed.
Testifying to MPs at parliament’s foreign affairs select committee on Tuesday, Olly Robbins said he had several conversations with No 10 about finding a role for Matthew Doyle, who was later suspended as a Labour peer after it emerged he had campaigned for a friend charged with possessing indecent images of children.
Robbins said he had been asked not to mention the idea to David Lammy, who was foreign secretary at the time.
Robbins described the conversations as part of more general pressure from people at the top of the government to place senior political figures in senior diplomatic posts. He made the revelation while testifying to the committee about the appointment of Peter Mandelson as Washington ambassador.
“There were several discussions initiated by No 10 with me about potentially finding a head of mission opportunity for Matthew Doyle, who was then the prime minister’s director of communications,” he said. “I was under strict instruction not to discuss that with the then foreign secretary.”
He added: “It was, to be honest, hard to find something that I thought might be suitable. But I also felt quite uncomfortable about it and I kept giving advice that I thought this would be very hard for the Foreign Office, and hard for me personally, to defend.”
Doyle himself was part of Mandelson’s vetting process, telling the prime minister he was “satisfied” with the former Labour peer’s responses about his relationship with the child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Robbins added that No 10 had later asked Mandelson to find Doyle a role in the US network instead.
Doyle said on Tuesday afternoon he had not been aware of attempts to secure him a diplomatic role.
“I have never sought any head of mission, ambassador or any equivalent leadership-type posting. I was never aware of anyone speaking to the FCDO [Foreign Office] about such a role for me,” he said in a statement. “My desire after leaving No 10 was to stay in UK politics.”
Speaking to MPs on Tuesday afternoon, the foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper, said she thought it had been wrong to put pressure on Robbins without telling Lammy, and that it would have been wrong to appoint Doyle to a diplomatic role at all.
“I am, of course, extremely concerned at any suggestion that the permanent secretary or permanent under-secretary of the Foreign Office would be told not to inform the foreign secretary,” she said. “I can also confirm that the case that he raised, it would not have been an appropriate appointment.”
Robbins told the committee he felt the attempt to appoint Doyle had been part of “a creep of senior diplomatic roles going to non-career diplomats”.
He added: “It was difficult for me, personally, honestly, as a leader, to explain why very talented and experienced diplomats were having to leave the organisation, and people who would be widely considered to have rather fewer credentials would be input in these important jobs.”
Robbins said the conversations happened in March 2025, shortly before Doyle quit Downing Street.
He was then given a seat in the House of Lords, but was suspended from the Labour whip this February after it was reported that he campaigned in 2016 in a local election on behalf of Sean Morton. Morton is a former Labour councillor in Scotland who had been charged with possessing indecent images, and was convicted two years later.
Downing Street on Tuesday refused to comment on Robbins’ accusations, saying: “We wouldn’t get into personnel issues.”
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