Paul Lewis

Yeah, taking the hit or was either did it voluntarily or was forced to take the hit.

So Starmer and his chief secretary, Darren Jones, said slightly different things.

Starmer, he's furious.

He says, you know, how on earth could it be that I wasn't informed of this?

And I think lots of people in the country would be asking the same thing.

You know, this is the prime minister.

It's his pick for Washington.

You know, if you're ambassador to Washington, you have to.

handle highly sensitive matters.

You look at top secret documents from GCHQ, the national security agency in the US.

How could it be that failing vetting is not something that is mentioned?

The failure of vetting is not mentioned to the prime minister.

Darren Jones was on the radio this morning and he actually shot down our reporting.

about officials, or sought to refute or deny our reporting, that officials had been considering withholding this information from Parliament.

He said, quote, that's not true.

We're very confident it is true.

And I guess we'll see how that plays out.

Yeah, but can I just say on that, a dose of scepticism.

Keir Starmer says he found out about this on Tuesday.

He has an obligation as a minister to correct the record to Parliament as soon as he can.