Downing Street secretly pushed for one of Sir Keir Starmer’s key aides to be given a top diplomatic job, the former top civil servant at the Foreign Office has told MPs, in another embarrassing revelation for the Labour government.
The prime minister’s ex-communications chief, Matthew Doyle, who was promoted to the House of Lords in December last year, was stripped of the Labour whip earlier this year over his links to a convicted paedophile.
But Sir Olly Robbins told members of the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee on Tuesday that before Lord Doyle was made a peer, there was pressure from No 10 to find him an ambassadorship.
Sir Olly said he “felt quite uncomfortable” about the idea of finding such a role, which he said would be “very hard” for the government to defend.
He also revealed that he “was under strict instruction not to discuss that with the then-foreign secretary, which was uncomfortable”.
The current foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper, said she was “extremely concerned” at Sir Olly’s evidence that he had been instructed not to tell her predecessor, David Lammy, and said Lord Doyle would not have been an “appropriate” choice.
At Foreign Office questions, Ms Cooper said: “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. I can also confirm that the case that he raised, it would not have been an appropriate appointment.”
In February, Labour announced that it had suspended Lord Doyle after it emerged he had helped to campaign for his friend, convicted paedophile and former councillor Sean Morton.
The scandal emerged just months after Peter Mandelson was sacked as ambassador to the US because of further revelations about his long-term friendship with the convicted paedophile financier, Jeffrey Epstein.
In a bid to limit the damage, sources in Downing Street briefed that No 10 was unaware that Lord Doyle had campaigned for Morton at the time of his appointment to the Lords – despite media reports about their ties before he was sworn in as a Labour peer.
Lord Doyle, who worked for Sir Keir in opposition and entered Downing Street with him in 2024, campaigned for Morton when he ran as an independent in May 2017 – four months after Morton had appeared in court charged with possessing indecent images of children. Morton later admitted the offending.
Sir Olly said the proposal to find an ambassadorship came shortly after he took over running the Foreign Office in January 2025, at a time when top diplomats were at risk of losing their jobs as part of departmental restructuring.
Sir Olly said there were “several discussions initiated by No 10 with me” about potentially “finding a head of mission opportunity for Matthew Doyle”.
The former senior civil servant said he was unsure “who exactly was behind” the suggestion or “how serious it was”.
“I found it very hard to think how I would explain to the office what the credentials of Matthew were to be in an important head-of-mission role when I was in danger of making very senior, very experienced diplomats leave the office,” he said.
Lord Mandelson was also asked about the prospect of a role in Washington for Lord Doyle, Sir Olly suggested.
“I think subsequently, or maybe simultaneously, Mandelson was asked about whether there was a job that could be made available in the US network,” he told MPs.
“And so I think the fact that No 10 was interested in potential diplomatic options for Doyle was probably a bit more broadly known than I realised at the time.”
The peer has since apologised for backing Morton before the case against him had concluded, saying he believed the paedophile’s assertions of innocence at the time.
Lord Doyle stepped down as the PM’s communications chief last March, but the subsequent row over his friendship with Morton led to fresh questions about Sir Keir’s judgement in nominating him for a peerage.
Sir Keir said the former top aide “did not give a full account” of his ties to the paedophile councillor when he was elevated to the House of Lords.
Labour campaign group Mainstream said Tuesday’s revelations showed a “culture of centralisation and patronage” at the top of government was enabling “catastrophic mis-steps and undermining our relationship with the public”.
“An already difficult set of elections may now become even harder for the hardworking Labour members and candidates out canvassing tirelessly before May,” the group said in a statement.
