The former head of the Foreign Office has told MPs he was not consulted about Lord Mandelson’s appointment as ambassador to the US. Sir Philip Barton is appearing before the foreign affairs committee in an evidence session set to pile pressure on Sir Keir Starmer. The permanent under-secretary in the Foreign Office at the time of Lord Mandelson’s appointment said he was not in the “tight and small circle of people” who knew about the disgraced peer. He told the committee it would have been “