Peter Mandelson: Government Appointment
(1 day, 6 hours ago)
Commons ChamberRead Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Speaker
Before we come to today’s emergency debate, I remind the House, as I did yesterday, of the rules relating to accusations against individual Members. While certain criticisms may be made about the Government collectively, paragraph 21.24 of “Erskine May” makes it clear that any accusations against individual Members about lying or misleading the House may be made only on a substantive motion drawn in the proper terms. Today’s debate is on a neutral motion: that the House has considered the specific matter. It is not a substantive motion. I encourage all Members to engage in respectful debate, as our constituents would expect. I call the Leader of the Opposition.
Mrs Kemi Badenoch (North West Essex) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the Government’s accountability to the House in connection to the appointment of Peter Mandelson as Ambassador to the United States of America.
Thank you, Mr Speaker, for granting this important debate.
The Prime Minister personally decided to appoint a serious, known national security risk to our most sensitive diplomatic post. Peter Mandelson was not just a man who had already been sacked twice from Government for lying and not just a man who had a public relationship with a convicted paedophile, but a man with links to the Kremlin and China—links so close that they were raised as red flags with the Prime Minister before his appointment.
Yesterday, the Prime Minister did not deny that he knew about those links before he appointed Mandelson. He could not deny that because by his own admission he had seen the documents that proved the links. I cannot overstate how serious a matter this is. The Prime Minister sent a known security risk to Washington, to a position where he would see our most important ally’s top secret intelligence. What if he had seen something and leaked it to one of our enemies? How much would that have damaged our security partnership? We cannot even be sure that that did not happen.
What is most extraordinary is that the Prime Minister appointed Peter Mandelson before vetting was complete. He did that despite a letter from the then Cabinet Secretary, Lord Case, clearly expressing to the Prime Minister that the process required security vetting to be done before the appointment. So how can he then have claimed on the Floor of the House that the process was followed, when he knew that it had not been? The Prime Minister mentioned the word “process” more than 100 times in Parliament yesterday, but he was the one who did not follow that process.
This morning, we have heard the bombshell testimony of the former permanent secretary of the Foreign Office, Sir Olly Robbins. Sir Olly Robbins had a long and distinguished career serving Ministers. He is not the sort of person to give us a frank personal account of how things played out last January. So when he told us today that Downing Street put the Foreign Office under “constant pressure” to clear Peter Mandelson, that No. 10 showed a “dismissive approach” to Mandelson’s vetting process, that it would have been “very difficult indeed” to deny clearance and that doing so would have “damaged US-UK relationships”, we know he is giving us only the slightest indication of how bad things were. And that there was actually an overwhelming drive from the Prime Minister’s office to ensure Peter Mandelson was installed as ambassador.
Sir Olly Robbins has told us that No. 10 showed no interest in the vetting—no desire to wait and ensure that due process was followed. In fact, the Cabinet Office even questioned the need for Peter Mandelson to be vetted at all: the same Cabinet Office that had discovered Mandelson’s links to Epstein, China and Russia in its due diligence—the Cabinet Office that the Minister is in charge of right now. Instead, according to Robbins,
“The focus was on getting Mandelson out to Washington quickly”,
and before the vetting even started Peter Mandelson had already been granted access to
“highly classified briefing on a case-by-case basis”.
This is what the Prime Minister calls full due process.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)
Did my right hon. Friend not find it astonishing that in the testimony today the ex-leader of the Foreign Office said that he was made to understand that before they had completed their clearances, Mandelson already had STRAP clearance, which gave him access to the most secure and most dangerous information held by Government?
Mrs Badenoch
I thank my right hon. Friend for that intervention. He is absolutely right: it is extraordinary and it is shocking.
The Prime Minister might have refused to answer my question around his knowledge of Mandelson’s links to the Russian defence company Sistema yesterday, but that is only because he knows that we know the answer. It was there in the due diligence: his choice of ambassador retaining an interest in a Russian company linked to Vladimir Putin after the invasion of Crimea. And the Prime Minister’s response to seeing that information? According to Robbins, “constant pressure” on the Foreign Office to get the appointment done.
The Prime Minister, as my right hon. Friend has just mentioned, placed top secret intelligence in the hands of a man he knew to be a national security risk. He did so before the official security vetting not just knowingly but deliberately, and to an extent that left a senior civil servant with a distinguished career under the clear and obvious impression that the vetting must return only one possible outcome: that Peter Mandelson should be appointed. None of that was following full due process by the letter or the spirit of that phrase. This is no longer just about what the Prime Minister was or was not told; this is about what he did before the vetting process had even started.
And we now know that Mandelson was not a one-off. According to Sir Olly Robbins, No. 10 also asked for the disgraced Matthew Doyle, the Prime Minister’s then director of communications, to be made an ambassador. Astonishingly, the Prime Minister’s office even told Robbins to keep the request a secret from the Foreign Secretary. The idea that it is No. 10 who are the victims of others not following due process is, quite frankly, laughable.
The Prime Minister told Parliament yesterday that it was “staggering” that Olly Robbins had not shared the recommendations of UK Security Vetting with the then Cabinet Secretary, Chris Wormald. But today we learned from Robbins that he had never seen the original vetting file. If the Prime Minister is furious that Sir Olly Robbins did not share the vetting details with him or the former Cabinet Secretary, why is he not furious with the Cabinet Office for not sharing it? Put simply, why exactly did he sack Olly Robbins?
It is no surprise that the Prime Minister is not here today. These are difficult questions. He cannot claim not to have known about the risk that Mandelson posed, because, as he said yesterday, he saw the due diligence that disclosed it. I still find it inconceivable that, despite that failure of vetting being a front-page news story, no one in No. 10 was aware of it. He cannot deny that his decision put Britain at risk. The British public deserve to know how this failure happened and they deserve to hear it from the Prime Minister himself.
Yesterday, the Prime Minister had the chance to set the record straight, but Members on all sides—and no doubt the public—were left wholly unsatisfied with the answers he gave. I am sure they will share my deep disappointment that the Prime Minister has chosen not to be here today. There remain serious questions about the decisions that he took over the appointment of Peter Mandelson, but the Prime Minister does not want to answer any more questions today, so, in typical fashion, he has thrown someone else under the bus. I feel for the Minister sent out as a human shield for the Prime Minister. It is not this Minister who made the Mandelson appointment; that was above his pay grade. He cannot tell us what the Prime Minister was thinking when he made those decisions and he will not be able to provide this House with the answers that it deserves to hear.
This is simply what the Prime Minister does. Sue Gray, Matthew Doyle, Morgan McSweeney, Chris Wormald, Olly Robbins, Peter Mandelson—those appointments were the Prime Minister’s decision, people the Prime Minister chose to appoint and all people he then chose to sack. Are we meant to believe that all these people are the problem, rather than the Prime Minister’s judgment?
As usual, the Prime Minister’s explanations yesterday left us with even more questions than answers. He says that he was justified in appointing Mandelson before vetting because of advice he received from the then Cabinet Secretary, Chris Wormald. But how can that make sense, when that advice only came after the scandal had erupted? Post hoc advice is pointless. Soon after that, he then sacked Chris Wormald. Why is the Prime Minister now relying on the evidence of the very man he told us was doing so badly in the job that he sacked him?
Let us move on to the Prime Minister’s claim that no one in No. 10 was aware that Mandelson had failed his vetting. Enough people in Whitehall knew. Enough people knew for journalists from The Independent, the Mail and Sky News to find out. Journalists have released texts with the Prime Minister’s director of communications, where they made No. 10 aware of this fact. He did not deny that the story was true. Why not? Something simply does not add up. Despite this, the Prime Minister went on to assure the House and the public that Mandelson’s appointment was down to a failure of vetting. I cannot fathom how the Prime Minister can still claim not to have misled the House on this point.
It is telling that when given the opportunity yesterday to apologise for misleading the House, even inadvertently, by my hon. Friend the Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont), the Prime Minister chose not to. I suspect that he chose not to do so because he knows that if he did, he would be bound by his own words and by the standards to which he held previous Prime Ministers from this very Dispatch Box. In 2022, he said that if the Prime Minister misleads the House, he must resign—either the Prime Minister is a man of his word, or he thinks there is one rule for him and another for everyone else.
Unbelievably, half the permanent secretaries who were in post when Labour took office less than two years ago have now gone. The sacking of senior civil servants to carry the can for the Prime Minister’s failures has already cost taxpayers more than £1.5 million in payouts—that is before the sacking of Sir Olly Robbins. It is quite something for the former Cabinet Secretary Lord O’Donnell to warn that the Prime Minister has created
“one of the worst crises in relations between ministers and mandarins of modern times”,
adding that the sacking of Sir Olly Robbins
“risks having a serious and sustained chilling effect on serving and prospective civil servants”.
Another former Cabinet Secretary, Lord Butler, has said that the Prime Minister put Sir Olly in an “impossible” position. These are serious people who are calling out the Prime Minister’s behaviour. The former head of propriety and ethics and deputy Cabinet Secretary, Helen MacNamara, has called the decision to sack Robbins “unacceptable”. She said that if the Government had published the papers that Parliament demanded back in February, this argument would be so much easier for everyone because we would all be operating on the basis of the same facts, and she is right.
The delay in publishing the information required by the Humble Address is shocking. Where are the key annotations, decisions and meeting records—the box returns, as they are called in Downing Street? Why are crucial forms left blank? These missing documents add to the mystery. Why are the Government still trying to cover this up?
Paul Holmes (Hamble Valley) (Con)
My right hon. Friend will remember that I asked the Prime Minister yesterday about the box note of 11 November 2024, in which Simon Case recommended that vetting be gone through before the appointment was made. The Prime Minister’s decision note did not include the Prime Minister’s decision, which has been redacted from the conditions of the Humble Address. Does my right hon. Friend think that the redacted information would show what the Prime Minister was trying to achieve by appointing Peter Mandelson without the appropriate vetting?
Mrs Badenoch
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Why were the Prime Minister’s words redacted? These key pieces of information would help to solve this mystery—they would be much easier for us to understand than the words he gave at the Dispatch Box. I note that no Labour MPs have intervened on me, which is very unusual; when I am speaking in a debate, they are normally bobbing left, right and centre.
I am raising these concerns because of the seriousness of the situation the country is now in. With war in Europe, war in the middle east, a cost of living crisis and a global energy shock, we need a Prime Minister who has a grip on national security. Yet last week, the former Labour Defence Secretary and NATO Secretary-General, Lord Robertson, warned that the Prime Minister has shown “corrosive complacency” when it comes to defence. The same man who wrote the Prime Minister’s strategic defence review is now ringing the alarm bell to warn us of the grave consequences of the Government refusing to take the tough choices needed to increase defence spending.
This matters, because if we cannot trust our Prime Minister to tell the whole, full truth about this ambassadorial appointment—a key appointment in Britain’s national security architecture—it calls into question the assurances he gives us on everything else. It calls into question his promises to control taxes, which he has broken, his promises not to raise borrowing, which he has broken, and his promises to back business, protect our veterans, defend our farmers and prioritise growth, all of which he has broken. He has broken them because at his core, he is a man with no idea what he believes. Worse still, he appears to have no interest in doing the job of Prime Minister—just in being the Prime Minister. Curiosity is what drives serious leadership; without curiosity, problems are neither fully understood nor solved.
This whole affair just goes to show why this country is heading in such a woeful direction under the Prime Minister’s incurious regime. His defence yesterday summed it up: he said that no one told him and that he never thought to ask. This is, in his own words, incredible. However, even if we take the Prime Minister at his word—even if we believe the unbelievable—it is no better. He appointed Mandelson despite knowing that he was a threat to our national security; he said that due process was followed, having failed to follow that process himself; and he pressured the Foreign Office into signing off on this appointment. In 2022, the Prime Minister said:
“I believe that if you’re the leader, the buck stops with you. I will always stand up for my team, but I will also take responsibility for everything they do. That is what leadership is.”
How has he taken responsibility?
It is clear that the Prime Minister has no intention of facing up to his mistakes. It is clear now that he is not a leader and that he has no intention of doing the honourable thing.
Stephen Flynn (Aberdeen South) (SNP)
I congratulate the right hon. Lady on securing this debate, and indeed on eviscerating the Prime Minister in her speech. Does she not believe that the sorry souls on the Government Benches should have to put their money with their mouth is, and that there should be a vote of no confidence in this Prime Minister in due course?
Mrs Badenoch
The right hon. Gentleman makes a very good point. I think he is right, because I do not believe the Prime Minister has the intention of doing the honourable thing himself, even though that is the standard to which he held everyone else.
The decision as to whether the Prime Minister will ultimately take responsibility for his actions is now up to Labour MPs. We heard many powerful statements from the Government Members yesterday. Labour MPs know that the Prime Minister has let the country down, let Parliament down and let the Labour party down. It is clear to everyone except the Prime Minister himself that he has failed on his own terms. It is clear to the public that he is failing at the job, it is clear to civil servants that he is throwing them under the bus, and it is clear to Members across the House that he is not fit to lead. This cannot go on. This House deserves better. The country deserves better. The Prime Minister is not fit for office. The first duty of any Prime Minister is to keep this country safe. This Prime Minister has put the country’s national security at risk, and he must take responsibility. It is time for him to go.
Jon Trickett (Normanton and Hemsworth) (Lab)
There are many ways of developing a culture for how to run the Government in No. 10. I was a witness to that in the years from the financial crash through to the defeat of the Labour Government—between 2008 and 2010—when I saw a Prime Minister who would never have said in Parliament or privately that there were facts of which he was unaware, because he was a man of detail. He was a man of large vision and a man who drove the state forward.
Members may disagree, as I do personally, with some of the decisions that that Prime Minister took. However, that was a different culture from those under two previous Prime Ministers—Truss, and our friend with his blond hair, who created a culture in No. 10 of the exotic. We went from the exotic to the toxic. The fact of the matter is that I did not hear Conservative Members, who are here today in great numbers, asking questions about the culture of those two Prime Ministers. They contributed to the mess that this country—[Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. Mr Turner, the man is speaking, and you’ve just walked right in front of him.
Jon Trickett
Those two Prime Ministers in particular—the chaotic and the exotic—left this country in a disastrous situation. I do think that a Prime Minister who comes to the House and implies that he relies on a culture simply of process is mistaken. The Gordon Brown model, flawed as it was, will turn out to be far better than the one we have heard from this Prime Minister. I am sorry to say that, because I want to support a Labour Government who are effective, but that is the case. I saw it with my own eyes back then—I saw the vetting, the decisions, the pressure, and the tumult. I saw a Prime Minister struggling with their party to deliver a different kind of society and economy.
Let me turn to the present events and what we learned from Sir Olly today. There are a few things that matter. First, the security department tended towards refusing the vetting of Mandelson when Sir Olly first arrived, while others thought that he did not need vetting of any kind. Then, while the vetting process was going on, the Government appeared to proceed with the appointment of Mandelson, and even the King and the United States Administration were told that he would be the ambassador.
The British state then conspired to deliver a positive vetting outcome, because that is what they believed the Government wanted. It was expressed in repeated phone calls from the private office in No. 10, which I was very familiar with in the years I served in government, to Sir Olly’s private office. The witness we saw this morning looked credible and made a very serious case that he was under pressure to proceed.
Jon Trickett
No, I will make progress; there are many Members on both sides wanting to speak. The hon. Member may well be pleased with some of the things I am going to say. I am developing an argument, and I want to proceed with it.
The question I have not heard answered is why a group of people in No. 10—possibly the Prime Minister as well—felt that that level of pressure should be placed on the Foreign Office in favour of appointing Mandelson. There are two possible answers, but I will focus on one. The political unit in No. 10, possibly the Prime Minister too, wanted Mandelson because he was their close political ally and because he was plugged into a vast international network of what we might call the billionaire class. The truth is that much of the nexus of wealth that Mandelson was plugged into—so was the US President, by the way—was centred around Epstein. Let me pause for a second to say that none of these facts would have emerged were it not for the courage, bravery and resistance of the women who were treated so appallingly on Epstein island.
Getting Mandelson into Washington as part of that network—a political network of billionaires—was of the highest priority. All this leaves a bad taste. The Government promised the people change, but the change that they sought was to further accelerate the integration of the British state and Government into the networks of the richest people. People in our country—certainly those in my constituency—did not vote for that. They wanted change in their ordinary lives: a better NHS, improvements to the cost of living and so on. We have a long way to go to deliver that. What we have delivered is a disaster with the appointment of Mandelson.
I have raised the question of unemployment four times in recent months. There is growing unemployment in our area. It is hard to see how the time that the Government spent ingratiating themselves to Washington helped the unemployed and poor.
Just think about Mandelson’s involvement with Russian and Chinese business. So obnoxious is China supposed to be that this place has banned all Chinese-based networks, as though they were the agencies of an enemy state. How can it be that Mandelson’s links were seen to be of such low risk? This House has spent literally hours discussing the appalling behaviour of Putin and Russia in relation to eastern Europe. All these things should have counted against Mandelson, but when they were weighed in the balance, they counted less than the opportunity that Mandelson offered of access to a network of people, which included the US President.
I will make one final point. Mandelson played a key role in a faction that sought to change the strategic direction of the Labour party and the Government. The truth is that they wanted to change the Labour party into something it never was.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Ind)
The hon. Member is making an excellent and important speech. Is he aware that most of Labour Together’s supporters and, as I understand it, bankrollers had nothing whatsoever to do with the traditions of the Labour movement and that the organisation was merely using a name in order to try to change the nature of the Labour party away from its traditional socialist objectives?
Jon Trickett
I have spoken in a previous debate about Labour Together, so I will let the right hon. Member’s comments stand for themselves.
This was a faction that sought to change the Labour party into something that it never was. If we continue down the path that has been chosen, I fear that we will be in a downward spiral from which we will not escape.
Ed Davey (Kingston and Surbiton) (LD)
May I start by reflecting on something that I feel, along with many Members across the House and, certainly, our constituents? That is how utterly depressing it is that we are having to have this debate at all. Just a few years after we went through all this under Boris Johnson and the Conservatives, and less than two years after the British people voted them out of office for indulging in this sort of chaos and distraction, here we are again.
Vladimir Putin is waging war on our continent. Donald Trump is waging war with Iran. We desperately need to strengthen our own national defences. Families and businesses are struggling against a cost of living crisis. Petrol prices have soared, and people are really worried about what Trump’s war will mean for their holidays this summer and their energy and food bills this winter. Our NHS is still in crisis. We all have constituents who are waiting weeks to see a GP, people who are dying on corridors in our hospitals, and loved ones who are not getting the care they need. We should be talking about them today. Theirs are the problems that the Government should be focused on every single day.
That is what Labour promised, after all. In their manifesto, they said that the problems in our country are a
“direct result of a governing party that, time and again, puts its own interests and obsessions above the issues that affect families.”
They promised to change that, but here we are again. Instead of fixing the NHS and social care, instead of properly funding our defence, and instead of cutting prices at the pump, here we are, having to ask why the Prime Minister appointed the close friend of a notorious paedophile sex trafficker to one of the most important and sensitive jobs in his Government.
Peter Mandelson’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein had been well reported and highlighted to the Prime Minister. He had already been forced to resign in disgrace twice from the previous Labour Government, and we now know that he was deemed a national security risk by the Government’s vetting agency. So we do, sadly, have to ask: why did the Prime Minister appoint Mandelson? Why did he announce the appointment before the national security vetting had been done, despite the then Cabinet Secretary Simon Case having told him that that should happen first? And why was he so determined to get Mandelson in post that he created, as Olly Robbins described it this morning, “an atmosphere of pressure” and a certain dismissiveness about the developed vetting process—a vetting process that the Prime Minister has since blamed for his mistakes?
Even after all this, even after yesterday’s statement, the Prime Minister still has not told us why he appointed Mandelson. He admitted that appointing Mandelson was a mistake and has apologised for it. He has tried to make the rest about process and officials, but he still has not answered the fundamental question: why?
I think we know a big part of the answer, do we not? It is Donald Trump. This all comes back to the way that the Prime Minister decided to approach his relationship with the President when he returned to office last year. Our party urged the Prime Minister to stand up to Trump, to stand together with our allies, and to approach him from a position of strength, not weakness. But he chose the opposite course. He decided to try to appease Trump, to flatter him, to stroke his ego, and to hope that he will be nice to us in return. Clearly, he thought that Peter Mandelson was the man for that job. So that is it: the decision to try to curry favour with Trump instead of standing up to him is the original sin that has landed the Prime Minister and his Government in the mess they are in today. Has it worked? Absolutely not.
Martin Wrigley (Newton Abbot) (LD)
Yesterday, I asked the Prime Minister about the security vetting condition that required Peter Mandelson to be accompanied when visiting previous clients. Does my right hon. Friend agree that we need to find out whether the lack of accompaniment when visiting Palantir in Washington with the Prime Minister was a one-off or simply Mandelson continuing business as usual?
Ed Davey
My hon. Friend was right to ask that question yesterday, and I thought the Prime Minister’s response, which was that those types of meetings had not been recorded, was totally inadequate.
Despite all the flattery, Trump has still caused enormous damage to our economy and to the livelihoods of the British people with his tariffs and his war with Iran. Trump still undermines NATO, makes threats against our country and our allies, and insults Britain’s armed forces. Just look at what Trump said last night: that Mandelson was a “really bad pick”. I will not dwell on the hypocrisy of those words from a man who was close friends with Epstein, who partied with him and has so far taken no responsibility for that—those words from a President who still has as his Commerce Secretary a neighbour of Epstein who visited Epstein’s island and who lied about his relationship with him. All that is for another debate.
But Trump’s post, hypocritical as it is, does show the futility of trying to appease him. It shows how pointless it is to make a decision like who to appoint as US ambassador based on what Trump would like most. It does not work—it has not worked. I hope that on top of everything else, the Prime Minister and the Labour party will reflect on that point. The approach to Trump has failed. It is time to change course, to stand up to him, and to stand with our European and Commonwealth allies in defence of our national interest.
This is a mess of the Government’s own making. It is a mess born out of a futile attempt to appease Donald Trump. It is a mess that just keeps getting worse with today’s revelation, uncovered by my hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Edward Morello), that the Prime Minister pushed for the appointment as ambassador of another Labour crony with ties to a sex offender. Those catastrophically bad judgments have created a mess that has distracted and consumed the Government and stopped them from focusing on what the British people actually need.
The people out there do not want more Westminster drama; they are thinking about the hospital appointment that keeps being pushed back, the mortgage payments that just seem to keep going up, the loved ones who need care but are stuck on a waiting list, and the threats to our national security from an ever more dangerous world. Those are the things that keep people up at night, and they deserve a Prime Minister and a Government who are focused on them.
Our party will never stop making that case. We will never stop holding the Government to account, not for the sake of political point scoring but on behalf of the British people, who deserve better than this. The last Conservative Government failed our country by getting stuck in a cycle of chaos and scandal and refusing to move on. The question for the Labour party is whether it will repeat that mistake or finally deliver the change that our country needs.
Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Ed Davey). On the point he made latterly about the economic situation we find ourselves in, I would say that the Prime Minister is absolutely focused on that, and has been from day one. There are these distractions—it would be great to move on from them, but of course we are entitled to the debate—but I do believe that the Prime Minister wanted to bring order to our trade arrangements, and that was why he was persuaded into appointing Peter Mandelson. I am not a big fan of Peter Mandelson—I assure the House of that—but just a short year ago many people in the House and around the world were fêting him for the deal that he had managed to strike with the United States.
There are many questions about the deal struck by Peter Mandelson, but for the purpose of this debate I want to turn to some of the points made by the Leader of the Opposition. I did not intervene on her because I felt it was absolutely fine for her to continue, but yesterday she amply demonstrated that she was not capable of prosecuting an argument. She emphasised process, but if there is one thing I would say about this Prime Minister, it is that he is absolutely rock solid when it comes to process. [Laughter.] Conservative Members may laugh, but for those of them who backed Boris Johnson and accepted his lies in this place, or who accepted the word of Liz Truss and that catastrophic kamikaze budget, there is a question of judgment. On process, this Prime Minister is absolutely rock solid.
Secondly, the Prime Minister is a man of the utmost decency who would never, ever lie, because he knows that his credibility rests on that.
Sir Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)
Will the hon. Member give way?
Matt Western
In a moment—I am just beginning to make my speech. There is the point about some sort of conspiracy or cover-up at No. 10 on which I can disabuse the Leader of the Opposition. The point is to differentiate between the team around the Prime Minister and the Prime Minister himself.
Mike Wood (Kingswinford and South Staffordshire) (Con)
Will the hon. Member give way on that point?
Matt Western
I want to allow others in.
The Prime Minister clearly delegated responsibilities to his chief of staff. It may be that the Leader of Opposition missed the fact that the Prime Minister sacked that—[Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. Bernard, please, you are permanently standing in my line of vision. The hon. Member will give way when he wants to, not because you are standing up.
Matt Western
I will bring in the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin) shortly to ease your patience, Mr Speaker.
When the Prime Minister sacked Morgan McSweeney, it was because he realised that there were problems within his team at No. 10. The Leader of the Opposition may claim that somehow the No. 10 leadership was the worst in living memory. I am not sure how far back living memory goes for her, but as my hon. Friend the Member for Normanton and Hemsworth (Jon Trickett) said, we do not have to go back very far. I would say 2022, with a certain Liz Truss and her No. 10 operation, or that of Boris Johnson and the three years of his pathological lying that we endured in this place.
The Leader of the Opposition said that the biggest decision a Prime Minister can make is about the security of this country. Just a few short weeks ago, she was talking about how the United Kingdom should be drawn into the war in Iran, and in that she was proven absolutely wrong. I will give way to the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex.
Sir Bernard Jenkin
I am most grateful to the hon. Gentleman, whom I know as a friend across the House, as we have worked together positively on many things.
I served on the Privileges Committee that studied the Boris case and reached a conclusion upon it. If the hon. Gentleman wants to help the Prime Minister, I would be rather wary, if I were him, about drawing parallels between Boris Johnson and the present Prime Minister.
Matt Western
I thank the hon. Gentleman, my friend. I was simply addressing the point made by the Leader of the Opposition, who suggested that the operation at No. 10 was the worst in living memory. It is quite obvious that that is absolutely not the case. We have had two very recent examples, in 2019-22 and then 2022-23, under Johnson and Truss.
I want to make it quite clear that the way I see it, the mistake that may have been made by No. 10 is the clear delegation to the Prime Minister’s chief of staff, who was at the heart of an inner circle in No. 10 that no longer exists of Peter Mandelson, Morgan McSweeney and Matthew Doyle. As has come to light just this morning, Matthew Doyle was also part of the problem.
Paul Holmes
There must be a reshuffle coming, because no one would seriously make a speech like this at such serious times. The hon. Gentleman says that the Prime Minister was a stickler for process and claims that the Prime Minister somehow delegated responsibility for the appointment. Why did the former Cabinet Secretary—the chief adviser to the Prime Minister and chief civil servant—give that advice in the box note? Will the hon. Gentleman defend the Prime Minister’s decision not to follow that advice from the person who was making the decisions?
Matt Western
I am not close to those operations. I have never been a Minister—that is the honest truth—and to answer the hon. Gentleman’s point, I do not wish to be one either. I am not close enough to that, so I cannot answer that honestly, but what I can say is that I heard from Sir Olly Robbins this morning about how he was leant on and also what documents he may have had access to, including the vetting report.
What we have heard today is that the chief of staff leant on the Foreign Office, whether it was about Matthew Doyle or the appointment of Peter Mandelson. That is the issue. The Prime Minister, in my experience of having known him since 2017, is absolutely as straight as a die. He may have accepted the advice and maybe that advice has now proven to be wrong, but he has been let down by those around him. He made a mistake. He understands and has accepted that.
Dr Luke Evans (Hinckley and Bosworth) (Con)
In the immortal words of the famous film “A Few Good Men”:
“‘I want the truth.’
‘You can’t handle the truth!’”
The court goes quiet. That is the moment of realisation that things have moved from process to accountability and responsibility. If hon. Members have not seen the film, it is about two marines who are on trial for killing another. The real story that unravels, however, is whether command can deny any responsibility for the actions that it has set in motion. Here lies the parallel. When subordinates act on the understood direction of authority, where does responsibility ultimately sit? They acted because of someone; it belongs to that person.
Let us recount the facts that are not disputed in this House. Lord Mandelson was announced by the Prime Minister as the UK ambassador to the US in December 2024; UK Security Vetting recommended against developed vetting clearance in January 2025; the FCDO overruled that recommendation, enabling the appointment; the Prime Minister stated publicly that due process had been followed; and Sir Olly Robbins, the then permanent secretary, was later dismissed. However, what Robbins told us in the Committee in November 2025 is telling.
“By the time we are describing, it was clear the Prime Minister wanted to make his appointment himself. Therefore, I understand the FCDO was informed of his decision and acted on it, and, via the Foreign Secretary, sought and obtained the King’s approval for the appointment. In this case, as Chris explained, the Prime Minister took advice and formed a view himself, and we then acted on that view.”
The FCDO is clear: that was not drift; it was acting under direction. The Prime Minister formed that view and the FCDO acted on it—acting on instruction, acting on direction, acting on what the Prime Minister wanted. Yet since then, the Prime Minister has been trying to separate the decision and the consequence. There is the decision, there are the consequences, but we and the public know that we cannot separate the two. If an official acts in the shadow of a settled view, responsibility returns to the source, where the shadow was first cast.
Let us draw some more comparisons with the film, because it is quite telling. Colonel Jessep does not issue the written order; the Prime Minister does not personally do the vetting. Subordinates act on a clear command and intent; the FCDO acted on the political intent. The defence by the colonel was that he did not order that; the defence by the Prime Minister was he was not told. The court finds that authority cannot be passive; we in this House say, “Neither can the Prime Minister.” The blame lands on the subordinates, and the same has happened here. In both cases, the controversy does not turn on the mechanics but on where the moral and constitutional responsibility resides. Officials were acting on a settled prime ministerial preference.
The Prime Minister cannot have it both ways. He cannot have decisive authority on the way in and plausible deniability on the way out. That is not process; that is power without accountability. If the decision was his, is not the responsibility his? If not, why not, and whose is it then?
Peter Fortune (Bromley and Biggin Hill) (Con)
This is probably a useful speech to intervene on, due to my striking resemblance to Tom Cruise. [Laughter.] The key point in that scenario was about responsibility. Labour Members are probably lucky that Sadiq Khan has cancelled all the tubes today, otherwise they might be under another transport mechanism. Does this not show more widely that the Prime Minister is failing in his key role, which is to take responsibility for the decisions he is charged to take?
Dr Evans
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. This is the bottom line: the Prime Minister shaped the system by having a settled political decision—one with horrific consequences—despite all the warnings that we have talked about in this House, about Mandelson being fired twice and so on, and now tries to point to the process as the failing. The country is not buying it. The film teaches us this simple lesson: power cannot hide behind those who obey it.
Before I finish, I have a message for Labour MPs and will address them directly. To paraphrase Colonel Jessep’s famous speech, the PM neither has the time nor the inclination to explain himself to Back Benchers who rise and sleep under the blanket of the very majority that he provides and then question the manner in which the PM provides it. The PM would rather they say just “thank you” and went on their way. Otherwise, he suggests they pick up a weapon and stand at post. Either way, he does not give a damn about what they are entitled to.
Esther McVey (Tatton) (Con)
Following the revelations at the Foreign Affairs Committee today by Oliver Robbins, who said how the Prime Minister had pushed for Peter Mandelson to be appointed and had pushed for his former director of communications, Matthew Doyle, to be appointed as well, though unqualified for the post, does my hon. Friend agree that those are the actions of a Prime Minister concerned not about the national interest but rather his personal interest? Nor are they the actions of a Prime Minister concerned about national security; they are merely the actions of someone concerned about his job security—and particularly in pushing for Peter Mandelson, who is a known national security risk.
Preet Kaur Gill (Birmingham Edgbaston) (Lab/Co-op)
Surely there can be no situation where the hon. Gentleman thinks officials should not flag concerns with Ministers or Prime Ministers, who are fundamentally accountable to this House and to the British public. What we are talking about here is accountability.
Dr Evans
Accountability starts from the top. We have heard from the FCDO today that the message from No. 10 was to “Get this f***ing done”. That was the political directive and everything else followed suit. That is exactly what Olly Robbins has said.
We on the Conservative Benches know the truth. The public want the truth. The only question that remains is whether Labour Back Benchers can handle the truth. Surely if they cannot, they must do something about it.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Speaker
Just to help the House, given how many people we have to speak, I suggest an informal time limit of seven minutes, and Carolyn Harris will set a good example of that.
Carolyn Harris (Neath and Swansea East) (Lab)
I will be very brief, as I am not attempting to audition for a BAFTA, unlike some colleagues. Neither am I trying to attempt any factional point scoring, as some colleagues have done today. The Prime Minister himself said yesterday that Peter Mandelson should never have been appointed as our ambassador to the US, so let me ask simply this: can the Chief Secretary tell the House how the Prime Minister has changed the way due diligence and security vetting will be conducted before appointments are announced in the future?
David Davis (Goole and Pocklington) (Con)
Our ambassador in Washington stands at the nexus of the Five Eyes, with more classified intelligence crossing his desk than crosses the desks of most Cabinet Ministers. It is obviously one of the most important appointments the Prime Minister makes, but it is also one of the most sensitive. A security failure in that post could seriously jeopardise the Five Eyes relationship—the Americans are notoriously twitchy about security—so the appointee’s conduct before the appointment must be beyond reproach and their trustworthiness must be impeccable.
One of our best ambassadors, Karen Pierce, was already in place. She was highly regarded by the State Department and the White House; indeed—contrary to what the Lib Dem leader said—so much so that President Trump called the Prime Minister to urge him to keep Pierce while expressing concern about Mandelson in one of three calls from the White House on her behalf and against him. She was a high-class, high-performance, zero-risk choice. Against that, we had the London establishment’s view that Mandelson’s amoral dark arts would somehow make him a good ambassador—a view typically espoused by people with no idea of what makes a good ambassador.
Among the questions before us in assessing the Prime Minister’s judgment is whether Mandelson was a better appointment than Karen Pierce and, if so, whether the benefit of that appointment was sufficient to outweigh the clear risks. Of course, the answer to both those questions is an emphatic no. It was abundantly clear to anyone taking that decision that he was a significant security risk. He was a man who had twice been forced to resign from Government and who had known links to a paedophile.
Mandelson was also closely associated with the Russian oligarch Deripaska, a man who had been responsible for the deaths of 100 people and was personally responsible for murders and extortion. Mr Mandelson—Lord Mandelson, as he was then—spent weekends with Deripaska in his dacha and in Moscow. He did this at weekends, of course, because the EU does not record where its commissioners are at the weekend. That is the sort of background we are talking about.
As we heard from my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Essex (Mrs Badenoch), the leader of my party, Mandelson was also a non-executive director of Sistema, a Russian arms dealing company led by a Putin ally. When he stood down from his role at Sistema, he took a large shareholding, which he kept for some time. All of this is in the public domain. It was in the public domain before Mandelson was appointed. There were links to China, too. I can list them over and over again: TikTok, which is owned by the Chinese state; and Shein, which is based on Uyghur forced labour. Of course, he also called time and again for closer Anglo-Chinese relationships.
When appointments such as these are made, it is not a judgment beyond reasonable doubt. It is not even a judgment based on the balance of probabilities. It is a judgment on significant risk. Are we going to take a significant risk with the Five Eyes relationship? Of course we are not. It should be clear, on public data alone, that this man is, or was, a significant risk. Indeed, the propriety and ethics team in the Cabinet Office flagged to No. 10 most of the issues I have just described before this process started.
Mr Speaker, forgive me for being so direct, but we should remember that Peter Mandelson is a man who has proven that he is greedy for money, greedy for glamour, greedy for status and greedy for power, and that he is willing to break the rules to get them. That is the key point: he is willing to break the rules to get them. Such a man is a classic security risk in the face of Russian or Chinese kompromat, not to mention the risk posed by his known involvement with Epstein.
Dr Scott Arthur (Edinburgh South West) (Lab)
I am not in the Peter Mandelson fan club—I am old enough to remember his first life in government—but this morning we heard that UKVS had judged him to be a borderline risk and that officials thought that that risk could be managed. That is quite different from what the right hon. Gentleman is outlining.
David Davis
That is the public information. If the hon. Gentleman wants to get into the argument between UKVS, which we are now told was saying the risk was marginal, and No. 10, who are saying that the strike-off is a red, he can do that. I am talking about public data, and about what we should know before we start the process—
David Davis
No, no, the hon. Gentleman has had his go. Sit down.
No. 10 has chosen to ignore these things, and that is critical. We have heard about the pressure that was being put on the Foreign Office over and over again. Forgive me again, Mr Speaker, for this direct quote, because it is obscene. The Select Committee Chairman recounted today how Morgan McSweeney called Sir Olly’s predecessor and told him to, “Just fucking approve it.” Speaking in the Committee, Sir Olly made it clear that he was under “constant pressure” in an “atmosphere of constant chasing”. Why? We already know that it was not because Mandelson was a materially better candidate than Karen Pierce, the brilliant, well-established, highly regarded incumbent with excellent connections to the White House. It was because Mandelson was a leading member of the new Labour aristocracy, full stop. It was not talent, but connection. It was not even in the national interest. Plainly it was not even in the Labour interest. It was in the interest of a Labour clique.
Mandelson’s appointment was a decision made with complete disregard for the known risks, which explains the Prime Minister’s lack of curiosity about the vetting. It was not a lack of curiosity; he did not ask because he did not want to know. The former Cabinet Secretary warned the Prime Minister that he should secure Mandelson’s security clearance before any appointment. He was warned on 11 December 2024 by the Cabinet Office about Mandelson’s public past. On 11 September last year, No. 10 was asked by a journalist whether Mandelson had failed developed vetting. No. 10 knew. It is as plain as a pikestaff.
So where do we go from here? We have a Prime Minister and a Government in power who are making decisions in the interests of their own clique within their party, and in doing so they are putting the United Kingdom at explicit risk. The Prime Minister should resign.
Ian Byrne (Liverpool West Derby) (Lab)
Peter Mandelson once spoke of the Labour left being sealed in a tomb. Today, it is the toxic politics he came to represent that should be buried—politics that repels millions and that is far from the values on which our party was founded. If we are serious about renewal and about learning the lessons of this troubling episode, we must confront the culture that enabled it. That means looking at figures such as the Prime Minister’s former chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, a protégé of Mandelson, and at the network of influence around him.
Mandelson’s appointment did not happen in isolation, as we have learned today. It reflects a wider direction under the Prime Minister, where those behind the Labour Together project wielded significant influence in developing the toxic culture that has been allowed to take hold of No. 10 and the governing of our country. It points to a political culture that lacks candour, that exists to promote wealth and power, and that ignores all else in pursuit of them. It is a culture where proximity to power outweighs principle, where access counts far more than accountability, and where the suffering of victims is overshadowed by connections. When decisions are driven by patronage and power is concentrated in an inner circle, it is not only our internal party democracy that suffers, but the integrity of our public institutions and our country. Too often, it is our civil servants—those who serve with professionalism and integrity—who are left to carry the consequences.
I commend Sir Olly Robbins for giving evidence today. His professionalism and dedication, after a week in which he has been publicly hounded by some in government, were commendable, and it was good to see his trade union backing him steadfastly at the Committee today. Robbins will be a loss to the FCDO and the country, and it was all brought about by a series of catastrophic political decisions by No. 10. That is not right, not fair and not what the public expect of elected officials. Because of that, the public will rightly demand accountability and cultural change. That must begin with a thorough review of the political operation which brought the Prime Minister to power and which clearly continues to carry undue influence over this Government.
As I have done on multiple occasions in both letters to the Prime Minister and speeches in this place, I once again call for a full, transparent and independent investigation into the activities and practices of Labour Together, both prior to and after the election of this Government. Only then will we fully understand how this exclusive political network has been able to undermine our democracy and institutions right at the heart of Government.
Calum Miller (Bicester and Woodstock) (LD)
Like many, I spent the weekend door-knocking in my constituency. People in Bicester and Woodstock are frustrated by delays to medical appointments, fed up with rising prices and fearful about the war in the middle east. Yet a number of them raised the Prime Minister’s handling of the Peter Mandelson saga. Their overwhelming emotions were disappointment that a Prime Minister who promised change has delivered so little, and anger that a Prime Minister who said he would be better than the Tories has failed so badly.
The Prime Minister set out yesterday to defend himself. He set out the case like a barrister. He took the narrow view that the charge was misleading the House and tried to claim that Sir Olly Robbins had repeatedly misled him, and so it was only natural that he should have misled us. He failed first by misjudging the seriousness of his failure. It was as though he was charged with petty larceny when the actual offence was gross misconduct decapitation.
Yet the crucial weakness in the Prime Minister’s argument was one of chronology. He cited statements and reports between September 2025 and April 2026, but the crime he sought to defend was committed between December 2024 and January 2025. He had no answer to why he ignored the advice of the Cabinet Secretary to seek security clearance before appointing Mandelson. He could not explain why he announced Mandelson’s appointment without conditions, nor why the offer letter to Mandelson dated before Sir Olly started work said that Mandelson had cleared security clearance.
The damning evidence given today by Sir Olly Robbins confirms what the Prime Minister failed to dispel yesterday: there was a complacent culture in Downing Street—indeed, there may still be—which had a dismissive approach to the vetting of Lord Mandelson. The Prime Minister wants us now to believe that he would have sacked Mandelson if he had failed vetting, yet all of the evidence then showed that he and his team did not care about vetting and even believed it had already been granted.
We further learned this morning that officials in No. 10 asked the FCDO to find an ambassadorial role for Matthew Doyle—another man who was friends with a convicted sex offender. What is worse, they told FCDO officials not to tell the Foreign Secretary. The unavoidable conclusion is that under the Prime Minister and Morgan McSweeney, No. 10 believed that it could fix plum jobs for the boys—and they were all boys—with casual disregard for process, propriety and national security.
We come to the consequences of this sorry episode. First, a distinguished civil servant has lost his position as the fall guy for the Prime Minister. I was proud to work with Sir Olly, and I know the regard in which he is held by Ministers and civil servants, so I am frankly furious—to use the word of the day—to learn that a No. 10 spokesman has just said that Sir Olly was a
“man of integrity and professionalism”
who made an “error of judgment”. It is extraordinary that when political appointees like Peter Mandelson or the former Deputy Prime Minister are accused of errors of judgment, or worse, the Prime Minister has come to that Dispatch Box and defended them for days, yet when the Prime Minister’s error of judgment was highlighted again, he took a few short hours to dismiss Sir Olly.
In the last five days, the Prime Minister has gone further and directed the full power of the state against one man. The Government Legal Service reinterpreted the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010 on Sunday. The Government Communication Service briefed hard against Robbins, and Cabinet Office officials sought to prime the Foreign Affairs Committee before it heard from Sir Olly today. This state-led assault on one man is unprecedented, and it is unacceptable. If the consequence of committing an error of judgment is to resign, why is the Prime Minister still in post?
Secondly, this whole episode has done grave damage to relations between Ministers and civil servants. The Prime Minister once said that when staff
“made mistakes, I carried the can. I never turn on my staff”.
No one believes that now. His cowardly reaction has shown civil servants that they should be fearful of future treatment by the Prime Minister, No. 10 and Ministers. I believed that the Prime Minister, as a former permanent secretary, understood and valued the relationship of trust, candour and loyalty that governs the best relationship in Ministries. Today those relationships are shattered, and our country will be the poorer for it.
Thirdly, my constituents and people up and down the country who are worried about waiting lists, rising prices and threats to security can have no confidence that this Prime Minister can change our country for the better. When something went wrong in Government, the Prime Minister did not take responsibility; he took the easy way out. When called on to defend himself, he failed abjectly. This sorry tale points to a corrupted culture at the heart of No. 10, and there is now only one man left to carry the can. He must complete the clear-out and resign.
Alex Ballinger (Halesowen) (Lab)
I have come from the Foreign Affairs Committee sitting this morning, where we had the opportunity to speak to Sir Olly Robbins as our witness. I want to use my speech to pull out some of the pertinent points that we heard that I think are relevant.
Before I start, I absolutely agree with Members across the House who say that Lord Mandelson was a completely inappropriate and terrible choice for our ambassador, and that there has clearly been a failure in the process that ended up in his appointment and in the vetting. However, it is important that we look at what Sir Olly said in the witness statement today, because some of that contradicts what has been said in the House.
The first important thing that Sir Olly said is that no Minister—not the Prime Minister, not the Foreign Secretary, nor any other Minister—or any official in No. 10 was given sight of the fact that UKSV had declined Mandelson’s security vetting. They had no sight at all of any details of that vetting. He said that, justified that and defended that. No officials or Ministers should have sight of that vetting, because it is extremely personal and sensitive information. I went through that process myself when I worked at the Foreign Office, and we do not want to create any conditions that make people afraid to share sensitive information in the vetting process, thinking that at some point in the future it might be leaked, whether to politicians, to others in the line management chain or, as we have seen, to the press, because that undermines the integrity of the process as a whole. That reinforces what the Prime Minister said yesterday.
Secondly, Sir Olly disputed the characterisation that UKSV had failed Peter Mandelson’s vetting: that it was in some way a binary choice inside the Foreign Office. It is important that we explain—or that I try to justify—what Sir Olly was saying, because the FCDO has a slightly different process from that of other parts of Government. It is an overseas Department—a bit like the Ministry of Defence, for example—so people with seriously long careers and all sorts of different interests come into those roles. I am not suggesting that Peter Mandelson should have passed vetting, not at all, but it is not unusual for the FCDO rather than UKSV to make a decision on a borderline case. According to Sir Olly’s evidence, that is a normal process. It is important that we hold to that in future.
Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
I am really surprised that the hon. Gentleman is swallowing this guff about this being a borderline case. It was quite clear that security vetting put this case in the red box, which meant “fail”. Sir Olly is being lauded to the skies now because he is the victim of ruthless prime ministerial politics, but he also has an angle on this: he massaged, shall we say, his own judgment because he knew the pressure on him from the Government. There was nothing borderline about this; he is saying that it was borderline only because he needs an excuse for having overridden it when he should not have done.
Alex Ballinger
I can speak only to what the witness told us in the inquiry this morning. Many Members made the same case that the right hon. Gentleman is making now: that it was a red box case, as we have seen in the evidence submitted. However, Sir Olly was clear that this was a borderline case, and it is usual for the Foreign Office to conduct such cases. The right hon. Gentleman can make up his own mind about whether to believe Sir Olly or other people.
David Davis
I came in to watch the Committee. Sir Olly actually said that the advice he was given by his director of intelligence was “borderline”. One issue that was not clear was whether the pressure from No. 10 was simply on him or on all members of the channel, down to lower levels.
Alex Ballinger
I had a different interpretation. Sir Olly also said—we can look back at the transcript—that, yes, there was pressure from No. 10 to get the appointment done quickly. It could be interpreted that the Government wanted to get the appointment done before President Trump’s inauguration—there was an important timeline by which to do it—because there was a risk that any new ambassadorial appointments after that might be interfered with. Again, these are the words of Sir Olly; I am not bringing this up from nowhere.
Several hon. Members rose—
Alex Ballinger
Let me finish.
The other important point is that it was not just the UK Security Vetting system that put a borderline process through, which the FCDO then approved; it was also the intelligence agencies. It is equally concerning that Peter Mandelson was given STRAP clearance. I asked Sir Olly directly whether any concerns were raised by intelligence agencies on the process of obtaining STRAP clearance, which is a higher level of security that gives someone access to the country’s most classified secrets. No one from the intelligence agencies raised any concerns during that STRAP process. There are serious concerns about that.
Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)
I say gently to my hon. Friend, and to others who seek to make the same argument, that at the heart of this matter is a toxic and dismissive culture at No. 10—we cannot get away from that point. That dismissiveness has led us to this place. This is not a small administrative breach; it is a matter of national security. The British public is not buying it. Surely, there needs to be a full, transparent and independent inquiry on this whole situation that uncovers the truth and leads to consequences, including for the Prime Minister. That is what the British public want.
Alex Ballinger
That is not my experience of No. 10. I am pleased to see that there will be a review of the vetting system, because this process has uncovered serious problems within it.
I have a number of takeaways from this morning’s evidence. I agree that Peter Mandelson was a terrible pick for ambassador, even before the things that came out about him later, and it was the wrong decision to pick him. However, there have clearly been failures in developed vetting, in the process at the FCDO and in the STRAP vetting process. I am pleased that the Government have announced two reviews—one to be led by Sir Adrian Fulford and a separate Cabinet Office review—to consider those vetting processes and ensure that, in relation to Peter Mandelson’s vetting and to the UK vetting system more generally, such mistakes do not happen again.
I am slightly concerned that the Government have suspended the ability of overseas Departments to operate discretion in granting developed vetting. That is a sensible response in the short term, but I hope that as the reviews are carried out, the Minister will consider the reasons why those Departments have that discretion.
Dr Ben Spencer (Runnymede and Weybridge) (Con)
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. I have listened carefully to his speech. Given what he heard at the Committee this morning and his background and experience, does he regret Olly Robbins’s sacking?
Alex Ballinger
Sir Olly Robbins will have an opportunity to account for himself, but he gave a very good account of himself at the Committee this morning, and it is not for me to make that judgment.
I can think of several good reasons why the FCDO and the MOD might need to use that discretion in the future. I am also really concerned that details about Peter Mandelson’s vetting were leaked to the press in September. Even considering Peter Mandelson’s misconduct, the integrity of that process is really important, and Sir Olly also raised concerns about that issue.
I hope that the reviews announced by the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister the other day will look at the leaks to the press, because it is unacceptable that such vital personal information about the vetting process has been released in that way. Most importantly, Sir Olly’s evidence rubbishes some of the accusations that Members made in the House and, indeed, in the media yesterday that questioned the Prime Minister’s honesty about the situation, because he categorically ruled out any suggestion that the Prime Minister knew anything about it, for good reason. The Members who made those accusations and were rightly thrown out of the House should correct the record and apologise.
Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)
Will the hon. Member give way?
Mr Speaker
Order. It is important that the hon. Member winds up, because I said seven minutes, and he has now taken 10 minutes.
Liz Saville Roberts
Does the hon. Member realise that to people outside, this argument—these fine details of process—morphs into a defence of ignorance and then into a defence of incompetency? That is actually doing the Prime Minister as much harm as all these arguments about his honesty.
Alex Ballinger
We have heard real concerns about the process, and I am glad that the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister has announced reviews into that process, because we really need to make sure we get it right in the future.
Bradley Thomas (Bromsgrove) (Con)
This is a particularly sorry saga. It is corrosive for not just this Government and the Labour party, but the entire political class and politicians as a collective body and it is certainly corrosive for the country. That is because a theme has emerged from this episode and others under this Government around competency—or what the public would probably see as a general theme of incompetency.
It is frankly ludicrous and laughable that we have got to this point. For the best part of two decades, Peter Mandelson’s name has been a byword for sleaze and incompetence, and that is before we knew about the risks that he could continue to pose to our national security if he were given a position. The corrosiveness of this Government and their incompetency is borne out in all the decisions they have U-turned over—I think we are up to 18 U-turns in two years. We have seen the corrosive effects of Government policy across the board, whether it is on the economy or on the price that businesses are paying, as a result of questions that the Government have not asked. That begs the question about the Prime Minister’s general incuriosity about seemingly everything—least of all this, the most serious of issues.
Peter Mandelson was known to be a paedophile-adjacent character at the time that the Prime Minister took the decision, seemingly at any cost, to appoint him as ambassador to the United States. As many Members have said, it seems that that happened because he was seen as a particularly slick operator at the top of the Labour party, and he was seemingly untouchable to so many. It is a great shame that it has got to this point, with this ongoing debacle and scandal, and the Prime Minister’s evasion, to cause the downfall of Peter Mandelson.
Unanswered questions remain, including a really simple one that has been asked many times, although we have not had an answer. I would love to know, as would my constituents and many in this House, what seemingly virtuous qualities of Peter Mandelson warranted the on-balance very serious risk that the Government took in pursuing his appointment.
The pressure placed on the Foreign Office when clearing and appointing Mandelson has become apparent over the past few weeks, particularly this morning following the testimony of Olly Robbins, and it is frankly reprehensible. We heard that Olly Robbins was told to get that done at any cost: effectively to ride roughshod over good moral conduct to deliver the will of the Prime Minister. We are starting to hear glimmers that certain people at the top of Government—perhaps in the Cabinet—advised the Prime Minister or the Cabinet Office that they were not comfortable with that, but the Prime Minister was completely ignorant of it throughout the whole process.
We now know that Peter Mandelson was effectively appointed and given access to sensitive security information before his security clearance was granted. I have a direct question for the Minister: is he aware of whether Peter Mandelson had access to sensitive information prior to the security clearance recommendation coming through? If the Minister is not aware of that, what review is being put in place to ascertain the level of that information, and what risk management will be put in place to mitigate the effects of the exposure of any sensitive information that Peter Mandelson may have obtained before the security clearance came through?
There is another question of accountability. Many of us in the House, and people in the country at large, would love to know why the bar of personal accountability is so low for everyone else, yet impossibly high for the Prime Minister. If I had had the chance yesterday—lots of Members wanted to speak and I understand why I did not get an opportunity—I would have loved to have asked the Prime Minister whether he had considered resigning at any point, and if not, why not.
How many more people have to be blamed or scapegoated before this becomes a situation where the Prime Minister does the decent thing and resigns? How many more twists and turns does this saga have to follow before the Prime Minister does the right thing? I can tell the Minister—he is looking somewhat uncomfortable; I commend him for coming to the Front Bench today—that my constituents are sick and tired of the evasiveness of this Prime Minister. They want him to do the decent thing and to resign.
Gurinder Singh Josan (Smethwick) (Lab)
I want to address three aspects in my remarks: first, the appointment of Peter Mandelson in the first instance; secondly, the approach taken by the Prime Minister as details have emerged over the last few months; and finally, the vetting process overall.
The debate so far has been characterised by collective amnesia on the Opposition Benches. We have seen some amateur dramatic theatrics, and the leader of the Liberal Democrats has demonstrated why he is such a risk to trade and industry with one of our largest trading partners. We have seen the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), who sits on the Opposition Benches, choosing to lecture Labour Members about traditions in the Labour party. We have even seen some of my hon. Friends, whose experience of No.10, I suspect, has been purely about attacking No.10 or in a disciplinary capacity, claiming to have real insight into the culture there.
At the core of the current debate is the decision to appoint Peter Mandelson as the UK’s ambassador to the USA. Clearly, Peter Mandelson’s background of resigning twice from a ministerial office has been a matter of public record, but while there are other allegations about his conduct, not all of them were in the public domain at the time. Many recent revelations have led to his dismissal from the post of ambassador, action in relation to his peerage, and referral to the police, which is an ongoing process.
It is clear to all that Peter Mandelson should never have been appointed to the role. While that is the case, the apology offered by the Prime Minister on repeated occasions in this House and outside has been full, wholesome and without equivocation.
Most importantly, the Prime Minister has repeatedly and rightly apologised to the victims of Jeffrey Epstein for making the appointment in the first instance.
Gurinder Singh Josan
No, I will not.
While the initial appointment has been, and I suspect will continue to be, a matter of debate, the Prime Minister’s apology cannot be faulted.
Imran Hussain
On that point, will my hon. Friend give way for a friendly intervention?
Gurinder Singh Josan
In a bit.
I want to address the wider approach taken by the Prime Minister in this case and other allegations against senior figures in this Administration, which I think is relevant.
Gurinder Singh Josan
I will come back to the hon. Gentleman in a second.
This Prime Minister promised a change in the approach to dealing with such matters. An approach that embraces transparency and is robust and timely is essential in maintaining public trust and confidence in the Government, in politicians and in this House.
Imran Hussain
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way. He knows full well that this is not any personal vendetta against No. 10. He, of all people, knows the culture that exists in No. 10 and the toxicity of that culture. The question that I want to ask him—and I ask it in all sincerity—is whether he really expects the British public to buy what he is saying.
Gurinder Singh Josan
I have a better understanding of the culture in No. 10 than my hon. Friend does. I absolutely expect that the British public understand that the apology put forward by the Prime Minister has been full and unequivocal and that he has not messed about on that.
Several hon. Members rose—
Gurinder Singh Josan
I will take more interventions in a few minutes.
On every occasion when an allegation has been levelled, whether in relation to Peter Mandelson or the previous Deputy Prime Minister, the approach of this Prime Minister and this Government has been in marked contrast to the approach taken by successive Tory Prime Ministers. We saw then a real refusal to accept that allegations were valid. We saw a refusal to address allegations in a timely fashion by referring them for investigation. Investigations were dragged out and there was a refusal to accept their findings.
In the case of Peter Mandelson, as information about the allegations has have been forthcoming, the Prime Minister has come to the Dispatch Box again and again. He sacked Peter Mandelson, and he has taken action again and again. That action has been robust and speedy, and the ongoing commitment to the Humble Address will ensure full transparency. That is in marked contrast to how the previous Government handled such matters.
Dr Caroline Johnson (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)
The hon. Gentleman is talking about full transparency, and the ministerial code says that Ministers must be “open and transparent”. When the Prime Minister came to the House in February and said that the reason he sacked Mandelson was because he had lied to him about his relationship with Epstein, was that a full and transparent account of the reasons why Mandelson should not have had the job?
Gurinder Singh Josan
The Prime Minister presented the House with the information that he had at that time. Further questions about that should be directed to the Prime Minister. Fundamentally, the Government will not take any lessons from the Conservatives, who, over a number of years, presided over the trampling of trust and confidence in politicians and in this House into the ground again and again.
While I suspect that this House has not seen the last of the Peter Mandelson issue, I am hopeful that the change in approach towards allegations taken by this Prime Minister and this Government, moving towards transparency, timeliness and robust action, is one that will continue in the future. There is a lesson there for all of us.
Finally, I want to address the vetting process. I believe strongly that the vetting process followed by Government and Departments should be robust and should have the confidence of those subject to vetting, as well as the Departments employing them, their colleagues and the wider public. Clearly, to maintain that confidence requires a high degree of anonymity and confidence in that process.
It is also the case that any information thrown up as part of that vetting process is acted on appropriately by Government or by Departments in a timely fashion, but there is a fundamental dilemma in expecting the Government, or the Prime Minister in this case, to act on information that was never made available to Government or Ministers. That is the fundamental issue here. We need to ensure that the vetting system is fit for purpose, and a balance between confidentiality and response at the appropriate level is essential. The current balance is clearly not correct, and I welcome the steps being taken by the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister in that regard.
Let me end by saying that this whole episode has exposed issues of judgment and process, and I suspect that the debate will long continue in relation to both. There is much to commend in the judgment taken by the Administration as information became available. Whatever the merits of the case, and whatever people feel about what is being discussed, I hope that some of those approaches in relation to transparency, timeliness and robust action will continue.
Sir John Whittingdale (Maldon) (Con)
This morning’s Foreign Affairs Committee session lasted for two-and-a-half hours. It was certainly one of the more remarkable sessions that I have attended, and I have been involved in a number of quite controversial Select Committee hearings over the years. It showed the Select Committee system at its best, and Members across the House worked together.
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Halesowen (Alex Ballinger), a fellow member of the Committee who spoke earlier. I share his view that Sir Olly Robbins, who gave us evidence, put in an impressive performance. He is clearly angry at the way in which he is being treated; he has a distinguished career that has been brought to a premature end, and he is clearly very upset by that. In his evidence, he made some extraordinary revelations. He had given evidence to the Foreign Affairs Committee in November last year, when, as the Chair of the Committee suggested in her introduction, we may have heard the truth and nothing but the truth, but probably not the whole truth.
This morning, we heard a lot more of the whole truth. What became absolutely clear, which had already been suggested in the previous hearing, was that No. 10 Downing Street was absolutely determined that Lord Mandelson should become the ambassador of his country to the United States. Sir Olly told us that his predecessor, Philip Barton, had strongly advised that that should not happen until after the developed vetting process had been completed. Despite that advice from the permanent under-secretary at the Foreign Office, he was ignored—indeed, we are told that the Cabinet Office went on to suggest that developed vetting might not even be necessary.
This was not just a routine appointment, and it was not routine for two reasons. First, it was the appointment of probably the most important ambassadorial post that this country has. Secondly, and very unusually, it was a direct ministerial appointment. Most of the time, ambassadorial appointments are made from within the civil service, and people have already had the vetting procedure. This was somebody being brought in from the outside who had not been vetted and already had a track record of having had to resign from Government twice.
Carla Lockhart (Upper Bann) (DUP)
The role of Prime Minister is the highest honour in UK politics and demands sound judgment. The reality is that there was no sound judgment when the Prime Minister appointed Peter Mandelson—a disgraced individual who had two resignations and well-documented associations with a sex offender. What we are hearing from Members on the Labour Benches today is like hearing lambs to the slaughter. They are defending the indefensible, and the general public are hearing that and hearing how disgraced this place is by the decision of the Prime Minister to appoint Peter Mandelson.
Sir John Whittingdale
I completely agree with the hon. Lady. It is somehow being suggested by Labour Members that this was about people advising the Prime Minister—I think one speaker earlier said that the Prime Minister had been persuaded to appoint Peter Mandelson. Well, I worked for a Prime Minister, and she coined a phrase: “Advisers advise; Ministers decide.” In this case, as the hon. Lady says, it was the decision of the Prime Minister.
Sir Olly Robbins also pointed out that by the time he took up his position, he was essentially presented with a fait accompli. He set that out to us—he said that
“I took over as PUS on 20 January”,
and that due diligence had already been completed. We know that that process, which included an interview with Morgan McSweeney, had revealed the ongoing relationship between Lord Mandelson and Jeffrey Epstein, but that it was ignored. We were told that approval of the appointment had already been given by the King, it had been announced publicly to the press, and agrément had been given by the United States. Sir Olly Robbins made clear that agrément is not just a formality; it was a very significant development. Lord Mandelson had also been given access to the FCDO building and IT access, and finally, he was being granted access to highly classified briefings on a case-by-case basis. I asked Sir Olly Robbins whether, given that all that was already in place, it would damage our relationship with the United States of America if he were to have the appointment withdrawn. He replied very clearly, “Yes, it would.”
As my right hon. Friend the Member for Goole and Pocklington (David Davis) set out, we already had a very good ambassador in Washington, but Downing Street had nevertheless said to the US Administration that it wanted Lord Mandelson to be appointed, and the White House had given its agreement through the agrément procedure. For Sir Olly Robbins to then withdraw the appointment would have caused real damage to our foreign policy. One can argue that if Sir Olly Robbins were told that the UKSV process had resulted in a clear recommendation of denial, he might—or perhaps even should—still have done so, but he also told us this morning that he was not told that. We were told that he did not see the UKSV report, and that he did not even know that the report has a red box saying “deny” with a tick in it. He said that he had never seen those documents before, and that that would be normal, because access is very restricted for the reasons that the hon. Member for Halesowen set out.
All that Sir Olly Robbins was told was that there had been a leaning towards refusal, and that it was a borderline case. Whether or not that was an accurate reflection of what the report actually said is another matter, and we can perhaps debate at what stage, or how far, the message from Downing Street—“We want this person to be appointed”—had been transmitted, to try to make that appointment as possible as it was. However, we are told that after Sir Olly Robbins had arrived as permanent secretary, he was subjected to regular calls from No. 10 saying, “Get it done.” He also told us that the message was not, “Get it done subject to security clearance,” which in his view, it should have been. The press release announcing the appointment of Lord Mandelson did not say “subject to security clearance”—that was never mentioned. This was announced as a decision that had already been taken.
Why was the decision taken? That is a matter that is open to conjecture. There is a view among some Labour Members that it was somehow a reward for services given in getting the Prime Minister his job. The leader of the Liberal Democrats said that it might have been an attempt to cosy up to President Trump, although as my right hon. Friend the Member for Goole and Pocklington pointed out, our previous ambassador had done a really good job in representing this country to President Trump. We may never know, but what we do know is that the Prime Minister was absolutely determined that that appointment should be made.
Even after the appointment was made, when all of these things began to be revealed—in particular, the ongoing relationship between Lord Mandelson and Jeffrey Epstein, which the Prime Minister said he was unaware of the closeness of and he was very angry when he was told about—inquiries had already been made. Journalists had been ringing up No. 10 and saying, “We have been told that Lord Mandelson failed his security vetting,” and No. 10 put out a denial. With journalists calling up and asking, “Is it true that he did not pass the UKSV assessment, and it recommended denial of security vetting?” one would expect that before saying, “No, that’s complete rubbish,” No. 10 might actually begin to ask questions. People in No. 10 might say to the Prime Minister, “You should be aware that we’ve had an inquiry about this.” Apparently none of that happened, or if it did, it was simply swept under the carpet. The end result of this process is that for more than a year we had someone representing this country at the most senior level in America, which is our closest ally, who the security agencies had concluded was a security risk. We do not know the full extent of the damage that may have been done during that time.
Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Sir John Whittingdale
I am afraid that Madam Deputy Speaker is coughing at me, so I will not give way.
I fear that there is still more to come. I hope that I can say on behalf of the Foreign Affairs Committee that we will continue to pursue this matter.
Dr Allison Gardner (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)
I will reiterate the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Halesowen (Alex Ballinger) made: I wish I had never heard the name Peter Mandelson. He should not have been appointed. It is right that he was sacked. I acknowledge my hon. Friend’s experience and expertise on the issue, which I admit I do not have.
Yesterday, in my question to the Prime Minister in his statement, I focused on Jeffrey Epstein’s victims, but I briefly mentioned the issue of other parties seeking to gain political capital. Much to the chagrin of the reasonable, quiet people of this country, those parties asked for the Prime Minister’s resignation, yet again causing chaos, to which the Opposition are so addicted, for the governance of this country. [Interruption.] The Opposition grumbled at that, as they are doing now, so I will take this opportunity to clarify.
If we ignore the social media trolls and bots and ignore the self-interest of the billionaire-owned right-wing press, we see that the quiet, reasonable majority of people do not want a change of Prime Minister. As one lifelong Tory said to me yesterday, “I see the Prime Minister is still here. That is a good thing.” They are grateful that this Prime Minister—[Interruption.] I was a teacher; I can out-talk anyone. Those people are grateful that this Prime Minister has not drawn our country into a mad, dangerous conflict that the Opposition would have immediately joined.
People value a stable Government who focus on the matters that they really care about. They want a stabilised economy. They want reform to special education needs and disabilities and support for schools. They want our NHS rebuilt and waiting lists to drop. They want our roads fixed. They want their wages to increase. They want affordable homes. They want their communities to be safe and welcoming, and they want violence against women and girls tackled. People are fed up of politics and of this navel-gazing over process. They are fed up of more politicians politicking and point scoring. They are tired of it, and why?
Dr Ellie Chowns (North Herefordshire) (Green)
Will the hon. Member give way?
Dr Gardner
I promise I will come to the hon. Member in a minute. I am in the flow. People are tired after 14 years of the previous Government chopping and changing Prime Ministers and Secretaries of State. We had the blonde bumbler and the loopy lettuce. This country was on its knees, its people exhausted. The people do not want more of the same. Despite the Opposition’s constant efforts, we will not let them manufacture more chaos.
Dr Chowns
In reference to the point that the hon. Member has just made, is she familiar with the YouGov poll that regularly asks the UK population how well they think Keir Starmer is doing as Prime Minister? Is she aware that the latest data shows that 70% of the UK population think that he is doing badly?
Dr Gardner
Polls can generate different answers depending on how the questions are formed. In other polls the Prime Minister is still a lot more popular than certain other Members present in this House.
In reference to the Opposition’s chaos, I will speak up for the civil service and express empathy for Sir Olly Robbins. In the whirl of Prime Ministers and Ministers under the previous Government, among the covid partying and profiteering—for which the Conservatives have never apologised, and for which I will never forgive them—the civil service clearly did its best to stop this country sinking into the mire. In such chaotic conditions, it is no wonder that a culture developed that decisions would be made without fully informing Ministers or Prime Ministers. That was partially because under the Conservatives, civil servants could not be sure who would be the Prime Minister or Minister that month.
Dr Johnson
I think the remaining people who want Starmer to remain the Prime Minister are those who are worried about who the Labour party might pick instead. The hon. Lady seems to be sharing all sorts of whataboutery information, but has she considered that the outrage is not manufactured? It is a huge national security concern that our ambassador, who had access to security information at the highest level, was a security risk to this country.
Dr Gardner
I apologise, because I struggle with my hearing. I did not pick up everything that the hon. Lady said, but I will come to the vetting and security policy in a second. I hope that might deliver an answer for her.
Conservative Members are quibbling about the process, but I remind them that the policy of the FCDO being able to grant vetting, contrary to the advice of UKSV, has been running for many years under successive Governments. This Prime Minister and this Government are now reviewing the process, and I will reiterate the key points. Mandelson should never have been appointed as our ambassador. The Prime Minister has repeatedly acknowledged that and repeatedly apologised.
Dr Gardner
I am conscious of the time. We have a seven-minute guideline, so I will carry on.
It is clear that Foreign Office officials granted developed vetting security clearance to Mandelson and never told Ministers that they had done so, against the recommendations of the vetting agency. That is shocking, and any reasonable person would have assumed that the information would have been proffered without asking. The policy is wrong. It should change, and as a result of the review, hopefully it will change. This Government—still less than two years old—will not let such a policy continue. I am pleased that the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister has immediately suspended the ability of the Foreign Office to grant security clearances. My hon. Friend the Member for Halesowen is not in his place, but I understand that he asked for that to be a short-term response for other security reasons, and I acknowledge his point.
Thanks to the previous Government, the cryptocurrency-fuelled damage of Reform and, of course, the economic suicide of Brexit, which both the Conservatives and Reform are responsible for, people are fed up and trust in politics is at an all-time low. Indeed, the Prime Minister recognises this and understands that recent revelations have further damaged that trust, and I acknowledge that. However, I stress that politics focused on people, not political process, and on the decent, hard-working people of our country, who are thankfully still at peace due to the strength of this Prime Minister, can be a force for good.
The Conservatives are still addicted to chaos and game playing, and seek scraps of political capital where they can get them. I suggest that they have flogged this issue as much as they can. They need to focus on rebuilding their dying party and apologise to the people. This Prime Minister and this Government are focused on rebuilding this country—the country the Conservatives broke, which they still will not apologise for.
Danny Kruger (East Wiltshire) (Reform)
The Prime Minister came to this House only yesterday saying,
“I will now set out the full timeline”,—[Official Report, 20 April 2026; Vol. 784, c. 23.]
and later insisting that he had come to
“give the full account to the House”.—[Official Report, 20 April 2026; Vol. 784, c. 28.]
That followed Downing Street’s acceptance earlier in the day that his previous account had, at the very least, inadvertently misled Members. Yesterday was meant to be the great clean-up—the day of the full facts, full candour and full accountability.
Today, Sir Olly Robbins gave evidence to the Foreign Affairs Committee and published a letter that blows a hole straight through the Prime Minister’s version of events. Many hon. Members have already exposed that. Obviously, the lack of curiosity on behalf of the Prime Minister was inexplicable and reprehensible. We have seen evasion, obfuscation and blame shifting, as well as blatant contradictions, and I want to point out one that has not yet surfaced this afternoon. The Prime Minister said that he was “astonished”, and that it was “incredible”, that information could have been withheld from him, but it is significant that Sir Olly Robbins’s letter says that the position conveyed to the Foreign Affairs Committee in September 2025—that
“Ministers…are not informed of any findings other than the final outcome”—
was “agreed with” the Cabinet Office and No. 10. In other words, the Prime Minister is now trying to dump the entire scandal on one official for acting on a position that Downing Street itself had signed off. That is not accountability; that is a stich-up.
Worse still, we learned today that, before Sir Olly even took over, due diligence on Mandelson’s appointment had been completed, approval had been given by His Majesty, the appointment had been announced, agrément had been secured from the United States, Mandelson had building and IT access, and he was already receiving highly classified briefings on a case-by-case basis. We have even learned that the Cabinet Office itself raised whether developed vetting was necessary, and the FCDO had to insist on it. So let us drop the pretence that this was some neutral, pristine process derailed by one mandarin misconducting himself. The appointment was politically driven from the top and forced through in an atmosphere of pressure.
Of course the Prime Minister’s position is untenable, as many Members have said, but it is possible that the Prime Minister’s honesty or position is not the most important thing about this saga. What matters even more is our system of government, for which the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister is partly responsible. If the Prime Minister has been surprised to find that the civil service acts within processes that screen Ministers from information and from the power to make decisions, no one else is surprised about that. I think the Prime Minister has spent so long as a civil servant and then as a politician behaving like a civil servant that, when he finds that the system does not work, he has a sort of professional breakdown and starts spluttering about process and reviews, and reviews of the processes. Yes, we need process, but the fact is that appointments, like everything else the Government do, are political decisions.
Politics is simply the management of the common life of the community, and the management of trade-offs between different ideas and interests. We in this country have developed over many years a model of doing things—of doing politics—that is or was the best in the world: civil servants accountable to Ministers accountable to Parliament accountable to the public. Break those links of accountability, and instead of a hierarchy with the public at the top, ultimately in charge through the ballot box, and civil servants at the bottom—genuinely the servants of the democratically elected masters—we have unaccountable civil servants at the top, Ministers floundering around as this lot are, Parliament is pointless and the public are outraged.
What has to change is the great restoration of the principle that the civil service serves the public, and it does that by respecting the ultimate responsibility of Ministers as decision makers. It is absurd to have rules that shield the decision makers from the information they need to make a decision, and no other organisation would do that. This is why we need to restore the Armstrong principle set out by Robert Armstrong in 1985:
“The civil service…has no constitutional personality or responsibility separate from the duly elected Government of the day.”—[Official Report, 26 February 1985; Vol. 74, c. 129W.]
Yes, I want to see the back of this Prime Minister, but most of all I want to dismantle the cabal of permanent secretaries who run this country and to restore the proper authority of Parliament.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
Order. I am going to try to get more Members in to speak, so I am reducing the informal time limit to four minutes.
Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)
I want to start with a point of inquiry which I hope the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister will be able to answer in his response later, so he has time to look into it if he does not know the answer already. Yesterday, I asked the Prime Minister whether his former chief of staff Morgan McSweeney
“passed all his security vetting and whether he ever handled documents for which he had anything other than the appropriate level of clearance?”—[Official Report, 20 April 2026; Vol. 784, c. 43.]
I am not sure that the House thinks we got a clear answer from the Prime Minister, but even if at some point Morgan McSweeney did get clearance, I am sure the House would be horrified if that happened long after he started working in Downing Street and after he was involved in the Mandelson appointment. It would be good to get a date for when Morgan McSweeney got his security clearance and to confirm whether he handled any materials prior to that for which he did not have appropriate clearance. If the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister cannot find an answer to that question by the time he responds, perhaps he could answer in writing by the end of the week, given the urgency of this matter.
The situation we are in of course raises questions about process, and process is important, but let us not make the mistake of thinking that this is not fundamentally political. Politics drove this: what was unusual about the appointment of Mandelson was that it was a political appointment. It is not standard for the ambassador to the United States to be a political appointment. Whatever Peter Mandelson is and was—I have my own opinions on that—he was not a career civil servant. He had been up to other things, so the security vetting was clearly very important indeed. The fact that this was a fundamentally political decision by the Prime Minister, driven as well by Morgan McSweeney, is evidenced by the fact that everyone here knows that the Prime Minister would not have signed off someone with Peter Mandelson’s record to stand as a Labour candidate for a town council. Yet he was eased into the incredibly important position of ambassador to the United States of America.
Sorcha Eastwood (Lagan Valley) (Alliance)
The hon. Gentleman is getting to the nub of the issue. This is about fairness in society. We tell everybody else outside of here, who we make the rules for, to play by the rules, but when you are in here yourself and you are the chief man, you can do what you want. That is what flies in the face of what the vast majority of the public think. Does he agree?
Richard Burgon
I totally agree with the hon. Member; she makes a powerful point. That is why the public are so outraged.
It was a political appointment. The reason the Prime Minister was so grateful to Mandelson was the role that he and Morgan McSweeney had played, through the organisation Labour Together, in getting him to be the leader of the Labour party. What was it that made them think Peter Mandelson was such a wise political appointment? It was because of what Peter Mandelson represented. Peter Mandelson epitomised the idea that the role of the Labour party is not what it was set up to do—to be a voice for working-class people and the trade union movement, speaking truth to power and changing society in the interests of the many not the few—but to be, as an organisation, closer and closer to the super-rich and powerful. It was because of Mandelson’s proximity to the super-rich and powerful that he was appointed to the role.
That is what has led to decisions that have made the Prime Minister and the Government unpopular. That is what has led to decisions such as the cut to the winter fuel payment and the cuts to disability benefits. The vision Mandelson put forward is polluting our party. That is why we need a full and independent investigation into Labour Together, the organisation favoured by Mandelson and McSweeney, which has dragged this party through the gutter. We see certain nefarious practices, tested in our party in opposition, now brought into Government. That needs to change, because otherwise we will end up with despair, leading to the election of a Trump-style Government in this country led by Reform—something that no decent person in this House should want to happen.
David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)
I first crossed paths with the Prime Minister when he and I were both working to improve the way our country deals with cases of child sexual exploitation. One of the principles that was enshrined in law across our society as a result of that was accountability—the golden thread between the leaders, managerial and political, and those who follow their instructions. It was very clear that if you led an organisation where mistakes were made and if you ignored the warnings, you were accountable. If you created a culture in which those warnings were not properly shared, you were accountable. It is not at all clear why the Prime Minister, given all he learned and all he did in those days, has decided to abandon that position.
It was said of the Prime Minister:
“Pretty much the first time I’ve seen him angry was when he commissioned the…report. He was angry because he did not know. He wondered why the escalation process did not permit the case to be referred up to his office.”
Those words do not refer to anything to do with Peter Mandelson. They date to the decision of the Crown Prosecution Service not to proceed against Jimmy Savile. However, those words in The Guardian could refer exactly to the matter we are debating today. I gently say to Government Members that while past performance is not a guide to the future, this is a Prime Minister who has form in deploying exactly this defence when caught out.
I cannot let this debate pass without raising an issue that is of great concern to my many constituents who work at HMS Warrior, the Northwood Headquarters base on the edge of my constituency. As my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition has set out, as a result of the Prime Minister’s dismissive attitude to vetting and the pressure he placed on officials, an individual was given access to intelligence on which my constituents rely to keep them safe when they undertake operations at a very high level of personal risk for the benefit and long-term interests of this country. Yet the Prime Minister refuses to accept any accountability for the risk at which his decision may have placed my constituents and their loved ones, as well as so many other people who serve our country.
I hope the Minister will be able to give the House an unambiguous assurance on behalf of the Prime Minister that whatever was shared with the Prime Minister and with Ministers, the necessary minimum risk mitigations were put in place, so that we can at least be confident that this Government thought to try to keep my constituents and those who serve our country safe.
Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)
Yesterday the Prime Minister apologised to the victims of Jeffrey Epstein, but where was that sense of responsibility when he made the decision to appoint Peter Mandelson? Where was that sense of responsibility when he actively chose to ignore information that was already in the public domain?
This morning, the Energy Secretary said,
“Prime Ministers make errors. Prime Ministers are fallible. Prime Ministers are human”,
but I am struggling to understand how the gravity of the misjudgment in this political appointment can be explained away by simple human error. This was not a split-second judgment or a decision made of urgent necessity under pressure in the heat of the moment; instead, it was a deliberate, considered political appointment made in full knowledge of the political priorities involved. Morgan McSweeney even swore it through.
What is more, Government Members were given lines to take yesterday, prompting them to quote a victim of Epstein in defence of the Prime Minister. The suffering of Epstein’s victims was of no consequence to the Government when Mandelson was appointed; they weighed it in the scales and found which side they wanted to come down on.
In truth, it is thanks to the bravery of victims such as Virginia Giuffre that Epstein’s crimes are even in the public domain. Her sister-in-law, Amanda Roberts, said this of Mandelson’s sacking last year:
“Our governments have allowed these people to hold their status and their title without shame…It’s unfair we continuously pull these skeletons out, that survivors have to continuously point the finger for us to do the right thing.”
These were women and children who were trafficked and abused by a network of men who acted with the confidence that they were untouchable—too powerful to be challenged and too protected ever to be brought down. It truly raises the uncomfortable question of whether Peter Mandelson’s familiarity with that world was treated as a skillset rather than a red flag. Was he chosen precisely because he was comfortable rubbing shoulders with the sort of men who shared private jets with Epstein, rather than in spite of it? How can the Prime Minister now express sympathy for the victims of crimes committed by a man whose closest associate he chose to elevate? How can he claim to share their pain when he made the very decision that caused them such distress?
Just this morning, Sir Olly Robbins told the Foreign Affairs Committee that Downing Street asked the Foreign Office to find a senior diplomatic role for the Prime Minister’s then communications chief, Matt Doyle, even though Doyle had campaigned for a friend charged with possessing indecent images of children. This is the Government who promised to turn the page on Tory sleaze and restore trust and integrity to British politics; instead, the Prime Minister pressured the civil service not once but twice to appoint friends of known sex offenders to senior diplomatic roles.
In closing, the facts were known, the associations were known and the public record was clear. This was a public decision. It was a wrong decision of such magnitude that the only conclusion will be to end the Starmer Administration, and that will happen when the Labour party decides to do so, because it is the Labour party’s responsibility.
Katie Lam (Weald of Kent) (Con)
Yesterday, my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition and I both asked the Prime Minister whether he knew about Peter Mandelson’s role as a director at Sistema when he appointed him to be the ambassador to the United States. Given that the Prime Minister did not answer our question then, I will repeat the facts of the case and ask the Minister for clarification.
From 2013 until at least 2017, Peter Mandelson served as a director for Sistema, a Russian conglomerate that invests heavily in Russia’s military industrial complex. This means that Mandelson remained a director at Sistema after Russia’s annexation of Crimea. It also means that he would have maintained close contacts with figures linked to the Russian Government, including Sistema’s former chairman Vladimir Yevtushenkov, who is currently subject to sanctions as a result of his links to Vladimir Putin.
Any sensible Prime Minister would want to consider the facts carefully before appointing somebody to a sensitive diplomatic post and would give proper consideration to whether those relationships would leave that person exposed to Russian influence. This is particularly true in the case of Peter Mandelson, who has a long history of improper financial conduct.
In November 2024, the Cabinet Secretary advised the Prime Minister to conduct security vetting on prospective candidates before appointing anybody to the ambassador’s post in Washington. In December 2024, the Prime Minister ignored that guidance and appointed Peter Mandelson anyway. In January 2025, the Prime Minister repeatedly insisted before the press and the public that Peter Mandelson had passed security vetting, despite the fact that that was not the case. When asked yesterday, he twice refused to confirm that he knew about Peter Mandelson’s links to Sistema, despite the fact that the advice that he received in December 2024 explicitly pointed it out. The advice included the following quote:
“Mandelson served as a non-executive director of the Russian conglomerate Sistema, which is itself the majority shareholder of RTI, a defence technology company…Mandelson remained on the board until June 2017, long after Putin’s annexation of Crimea in 2014.”
Either the Prime Minister is still reluctant to share with us all the information that we deserve, or he did not read the advice he was given—despite insisting repeatedly that his decision to appoint Mandelson was based on that advice. In light of this, can the Minister tell us definitively this afternoon whether the Prime Minister considered these facts about Peter Mandelson’s role at Sistema when appointing him—yes or no? If he did not, why did he not read his brief? If he did, why did he not consider it sufficiently concerning to abandon, or at the very least pause to reconsider, the appointment of Peter Mandelson to arguably our most important and security-sensitive ambassadorial role?
The Prime Minister has spoken extensively about what he did not know, but we and the British public are incredulous that he did not ask. We know that the Prime Minister knew about the Russian links, so what questions did he ask about those facts? What questions did he ask officials? What questions did he ask Mandelson, or did he simply not want to know?
Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)
Everybody has said pretty much everything, but I am going to say some of it again, as is my wont in this Chamber.
First, I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition, who laid out a powerful case against the Government, particularly against the Prime Minister and his excuses in all this. I think that something very intriguing took place today. The person who has just been sacked was brought to the Foreign Affairs Committee to give testimony about what this was all about. What we learned was that the Government wanted so much for Peter Mandelson to take over the role of ambassador that they drove everything aside in pursuit of it—bullying civil servants, essentially sacking one of them because he did not give the answers it appears that they wanted, and excusing themselves on the basis that everybody else was wrong and they were right. Well they were not, and that has now come home to roost.
The essential fact is that many of us knew about Mandelson’s activities. I have a whole dossier with me here about his links to China, with hundreds of names of people he had met and given details of all sorts of things to. We know now that he lobbied the Government, including over electric vehicles and the tariff. It is outrageous, really; he continued to put pressure on them, even when he was given the job. That is the nature of a man still repaying his links to China. We have heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Weald of Kent (Katie Lam) about his links with Sistema in Russia.
Even on that alone, there was copious evidence in the public domain about why Peter Mandelson should never have been allowed in any Government post whatsoever—that is before there was any attempt at inspection.
There is no way on earth that the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Bristol North West (Darren Jones) can get up and talk about faults in the system and about not getting clarity—nonsense! Everybody who wanted to know, knew. In the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, we knew about it. We had all the details and they were published. There is no excuse for the Government to say, “We waited for the Foreign Office to deliver this great thing, and it did not tell us.” They knew.
Secondly, the way the Government manipulated this is absolutely shocking. The outgoing Cabinet Secretary saw what was in the Cabinet Office’s review of the due diligence—by the way, that was to have a look and give recommendations to Government, which was not the same as what the Foreign Office was doing—and it showed just how tainted this corrupt and corrupting man was and what he had been up to. Having seen that, the outgoing Cabinet Secretary advised the Government—that was his job—that they should not go ahead to appoint Peter Mandelson but wait for the full review to take place, and, one way or the other, for him to be cleared or not cleared. But the Government did not do that.
That is the other question: why, despite that sensible, reasonable advice did the Government go ahead and press on—and at such speed? They put His Majesty the King in the firing line. When they approved the appointment, it went to the King—because they had declared it—even though they had not had clearance, and the agrément was given by our US partners. What in heaven’s name could have happened later on? None of the stuff to do with Epstein had yet come into the middle of the argument. The Government wanted this man, who is utterly corrupt, as our ambassador.
The other bit from today that I find astonishing is the admission by the ex-permanent secretary Olly Robbins that, despite the fact that Peter Mandelson had not been cleared, he was given STRAP clearance to see documents of such importance that they could have brought the Government and the country down.
I will end on this, Madam Deputy Speaker—you have been most tolerant. I simply say this: the Prime Minister is in the firing line on this one, and for very good reasons. He is in charge, and he knew what was going on. The people he sacked are still in the firing line. They cannot weasel out of this. They committed an offence in the books of anybody in the Chamber. The Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister will be in the firing line, because he has been put here literally to try to tell some story about how none of this is the Prime Minister’s fault. The Prime Minister has been economical with the actualité and terminologically inexact. All I can say is, no more terminological inexactitudes, please, when the right hon. Gentleman gets to the Dispatch Box.
Dr Ellie Chowns (North Herefordshire) (Green)
Before I begin my remarks on the appointment of Peter Mandelson as UK ambassador to the US, I want to stress my profound respect for the victims and survivors of the disgusting child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. I very much hope that they are in the minds of all of us in the Chamber as we have the debate. We should remain mindful that the chain of events that has brought us to this point stems from their bravery in standing up and speaking out to expose Epstein’s crimes.
What is at stake here is the future of the Prime Minister; there are certainly questions about the Prime Minister’s judgment. The Prime Minister’s sole defence appears to be that he just was not told, but it is clear that he did not understand the security vetting process, and actually he did not want to understand it. He did not want to do the security vetting process in the first place. He created a culture of political pressure that overrode that process. Finally, he has thrown a civil servant under the bus for failures that should be placed clearly at his own door.
The Prime Minister did not clearly understand the process. There was a process of UKSV doing the developed vetting and then of the Foreign Office considering that. We have had Sir Olly Robbins giving evidence to the Foreign Affairs Committee today, saying that there was a degree of grey area and that the case was borderline. He said that he only had a verbal briefing—he did not even see the piece of paper that made it clear that UKSV felt that Mandelson should not pass developed vetting—and that he decided that mitigations could be put in place in that system. It is clearly a process that the Prime Minister did not understand, despite the fact that at least one hon. Member has said today that this was very clearly notified to him in advance.
The Prime Minister did not even want to do the process. Again, it is clear from Olly Robbins’s testimony that, even before he took up his position, there was a tussle between No. 10 and the Foreign Office about whether to undertake the vetting at all, with No. 10 just wanting to rush through the appointment and the previous permanent secretary having to dig his heels in to insist that the vetting was done. The FCDO was subsequently hassled by No. 10 to get the appointment done before Trump’s inauguration, without any curiosity or caveats about whether the vetting was passed. The Prime Minister asked no questions. He displayed terminal professional incuriosity and wilful ignorance. That is totally unacceptable.
It is clear that no value was placed on the vetting process by No. 10, despite the PM now claiming that he is completely staggered that he was not told about it. Indeed, Olly Robbins today said that No. 10 had a “dismissive attitude” towards the vetting, putting in place a culture that established
“a very, very strong expectation”
that vetting would be passed. There was no culture of paying attention to due process; there was simply a culture of getting a political appointee in post as quickly as possible with minimal scrutiny.
That did not apply just to Mandelson, either. Again, as we heard today from Olly Robbins, it applied to Matthew Doyle, with a request coming from No. 10 to put him into a position without even informing the Foreign Secretary. Now, the PM has a temper tantrum and sacks the civil servant because he is furious about that. The country is furious with the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister has previously said that he takes responsibility for mistakes made in his team, but there is no accountability on show today. There is no responsibility taken by the Prime Minister. This is just one of numerous errors of judgment by the Prime Minister. He should resign.
Sorcha Eastwood (Lagan Valley) (Alliance)
As others have already said, we can almost feel like everything has been said at this point. However, one thing that strikes me in all this is that this place is called the House of Commons. Our job is to come here and represent the common person, yet this entire debate is so far removed from the common person.
As I said last night, if one of my constituents in Lagan Valley is accidentally overpaid on a benefit, that is clawed back. No matter the human cost to that person, it is clawed back right away—no questions asked, no special circumstances. We see that writ large across our public life, and the reason is that we said that we valued a rules-based, ordered system. We wanted a society that was fair; we valued integrity and we valued trust. More importantly, we wanted to understand that the people who came to this House were going to act in a way that was beyond reproach—in a way that they expected everyone else across the UK to behave.
I am dealing with the case of a guy who is disabled. He accidentally parked in a parking space but did not have his blue badge displayed, and he is getting hammered. Maybe he will get off—who knows? But we are dealing with a situation where the Prime Minister of the day is now saying that he regrets the appointment of Mandelson. I am not going to get into the whys and wherefores of DV, STRAP, CTC and everything else, because my people in Lagan Valley do not know what that means. A lot of people are banking on the ordinary man and woman on the street not knowing what that means, and on them stopping being curious and suspending their expectations because this is all highfalutin, serious stuff and we do not really know what that is. Maybe they did do right. Maybe they did not do right. People are bamboozled, but I am going to break it down for them.
I would say this to the Prime Minister: what was it about the twice-disgraced paedophile-adjacent, self-styled prince of darkness that you found so attractive that you put him into this plum job—not just of Government but of the United Kingdom on the world stage? What was it, Prime Minister, that appealed to you about Peter Mandelson? We still do not have the answer. All I know is that my constituents are disgusted with all of this. And this is not the first time; it is not the second time and it is not the third time. It has been going round on the merry-go-round, no matter who it is.
I am really glad that the hon. Member for Liverpool West Derby (Ian Byrne) is in the Chamber, because he has worked tirelessly to make sure that the issues at the nub of this are heard—the duty of candour and the obligation to be honest with the public, let alone with our colleagues and the entire Administration—yet we are telling families that they cannot access documents for another 100 years due to a technicality. How am I to make that make sense to them?
I am indignant, and I am outraged. A lot of people in this building are expecting us to no longer be outraged. We will be outraged, because if we cannot prove that this works, we know who is going to step into the shadows. We know who is going to be out there setting the algorithms. We know who is going to be preying on the carcase of what was once a great democracy. We are seeing other democracies fail. Let’s not fool ourselves that the UK is immune from this.
The No. 1 thing we can do, within our gift, is to show that we still value integrity. For those reasons, there is not a single excuse that this Government can come up with that I can sell to my constituents or myself that I will believe. For those reasons, I believe that the Prime Minister needs to go—not just for his own party but, more importantly, for the sake of the country.
Dr Ben Spencer (Runnymede and Weybridge) (Con)
Yesterday, I sat through over two and a half hours of questions and responses to the Prime Minister. His responses were pretty much focused on process, when really what is fundamental to the issue at hand are judgment and national security.
We do not need some sort of fancy UK vetting dossier to know that Mandelson is a risk to national security. What is more, above and beyond the impact on the victims of Epstein, it is a fact, surely, that the FCDO and the machineries of Government knew that the American Administration very likely had compromising information on Epstein. Despite Mandelson’s close association with Epstein, we appointed him as ambassador to a foreign power—admittedly an ally, but nevertheless a foreign power—to conduct difficult negotiations that would be critical to our national interest, knowing that it was highly likely that that country had compromising information on that individual. That, for me, is the most egregious, fundamental failure to protect our national security. We have learned that this was a political decision. It was the Prime Minister’s decision but, what is more, it reflects on all Ministers, given their collective responsibility.
I strongly believe in forgiveness. The Prime Minister has come here and made an apology, of sorts. It was a very caveated apology: “I didn’t know. People didn’t tell me. People lied and lied to my team.” We know that our apologies have value only if we truly believe that we did something wrong. The Prime Minister needs to finally show some leadership and take responsibility for his actions, for all of us.
Ian Sollom (St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire) (LD)
Yesterday the Prime Minister stood at the Dispatch Box for nearly 2.5 hours and said on at least 12 occasions that appointing Mandelson was an “error of judgment”—his judgment. He apologised and said that he took responsibility for it, but at no point—not once in that 2.5 hours—did he tell the House what his error of judgment was or exactly where he went wrong in his reasoning. That distinction matters. Saying, “I should not have appointed him,” is a description of an outcome; it is not an account of a judgment. It is like saying, “I should not have crashed the car,” without accounting for the actions that led to the crash, because whether the driver was speeding, distracted or asleep at the wheel, the answer matters. It matters for understanding what went wrong, for preventing it from happening again and for judging whether the driver should still be behind the wheel.
The difference is not a technicality; it is the difference between meaningful accountability and accountability that is merely performative, between a Prime Minister who owns his decisions and one who merely acknowledges them. Accountability to this House is not a constitutional nicety; it is the condition on which this House and the people we all represent grant the Government the authority to act at all.
We all know what was in the due diligence report that the Prime Minister received in December 2024: the twice-resigned Minister, the China and Russia connections, and the Epstein association that continued after conviction. The Prime Minister received that report. He has confirmed that he knew its contents, but he proceeded anyway. That was his judgment, and it is that judgment—not the vetting process, not the Foreign Office chain of command, not Sir Olly Robbins—that this House has not been given an account of. Instead, yesterday we received a detailed, exhaustive account of what officials failed to tell him. Yet the more exhaustive the catalogue of official failures becomes, the more completely the Prime Minister’s own reasoning disappears from view. He cannot simultaneously claim an error of judgment and outsource its explanation to official failure. He has offered us an alibi instead of an explanation, an account that places him away from the scene of the crash. Yesterday’s statement was a masterclass in process—process that the Prime Minister was apparently unaware of. It was not an account of a judgment.
This morning, Sir Olly Robbins told the Foreign Affairs Committee that No. 10 showed no interest in whether Mandelson would receive clearance, only when, that there was, in his words, a “generally dismissive attitude” to Mandelson’s vetting, with focus only on getting him to Washington “quickly”. This is not a picture of a Prime Minister kept in the dark by officials. The alibi, it turns out, has witnesses, and they are not saying what the Prime Minister told us yesterday.
The Prime Minister has wide Executive latitude. He is entitled to make difficult appointments and to weigh competing considerations and reach conclusions that others would not reach. That is what governing requires. But the latitude is not unconditional. It comes with a democratic obligation to account for his reasoning to this House and to the people we represent—not to describe outcomes or to catalogue process, but to explain his judgment. What did the Prime Minister weigh up, what did he conclude and where in his reasoning did he think he went wrong?
Yesterday the Prime Minister told us 12 times that he made an error of judgment, but he has not told us once what that error actually was. We still do not know how he crashed that car, and this House demands an answer.
Gregory Stafford (Farnham and Bordon) (Con)
Yesterday’s statement from the Prime Minister should have brought clarity. Instead, it has left this House with more questions than answers. This is not a narrow procedural issue; it goes to the judgment of the Prime Minister. It is a disgrace that he is not here today to answer questions—perhaps the usual excuse that he was not told holds clear.
Let me begin with the exchange that I had with the Prime Minister yesterday, which crystallises the problem. On 4 February, the Prime Minister told my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition that the vetting process had disclosed information relating to Epstein. Yesterday, he attempted row back on that by saying that he had conflated vetting and due diligence, before then insisting that he understood the distinction. Those positions cannot comfortably sit together. If he understood the distinction, why did he give an answer that conflated the two? If he did not, why claim certainty at the Dispatch Box? His defence—that due diligence forms part of the wider process—did not answer the question that he was asked at the time. If that is not misleading the House, it is difficult to see what is. That lack of clarity runs through the entire account.
The Prime Minister confirmed that, in November 2024, he chose not to follow the clear and obvious advice of his then Cabinet Secretary, Lord Case, to carry out vetting before he appointed Mandelson. Now, the Prime Minister relies instead on a subsequent review by Chris Wormald, which states merely that the approach may be usual—not that it is right. The question remains: why was the advice rejected when it mattered?
The Prime Minister’s account of what he knew is equally difficult to reconcile. He says he had confidence that the vetting process had addressed the most serious concerns, yet he also says he had not seen the vetting report. If he had not seen the report, on what basis did his confidence rest? If he was relying on the Cabinet Office due diligence paper, why was that not made clear at the time when he was asked specifically about security vetting? Why was a direct question met with an answer that did not address it at all?
The contents of the due diligence paper raise further questions. It highlighted connections to Russian and Chinese interests. It referred to involvement with Sistema, a company embedded in Russia’s industrial and military structures with well-known links to Kremlin-aligned figures. That information was not hidden; it was in the public domain and placed directly before the Prime Minister in December 2024. Why did none of that trigger greater caution and, more importantly, greater action?
Most seriously of all, Sir Olly Robbins’s evidence to the Foreign Affairs Committee today was consistent with the fact that Mandelson could act in his role and have access to sensitive material before the process had concluded. We also discovered that the Prime Minister’s team tried to put Matthew Doyle, another friend of a known paedophile, into an ambassadorial position.
We still have no clear account of who knew what and when, what decisions were taken, where responsibly responsibility lay, or how this situation was allowed to develop. However, I think we understand why: this is about judgment. Time and again, the Prime Minister has shown a willingness to appoint people despite serious concerns about their records: a Transport Secretary with a fraud conviction, an anti-corruption Minister under investigation, a homelessness Minister with a record that raises profound questions, and a Deputy Prime Minister who failed to meet her own tax obligations.
In this case, despite personal associations that should have raised the most serious red flags, connections to hostile states, and a long and controversial history in public life, the Prime Minister judged Peter Mandelson to be a suitable candidate for one of the most sensitive ambassadorial roles because of his influence over the Labour party and the Prime Minister himself. This is not a failure of process; it is a failure of judgment. With judgment like that, the Prime Minister is not fit to lead this country for a moment longer.
Edward Morello (West Dorset) (LD)
This morning, Sir Olly Robbins appeared before the Foreign Affairs Committee. What I saw was a dedicated public servant who, over 25 years, has held some of the most senior roles in the civil service. The Prime Minister would like us to believe that he was let down by officials such as Sir Olly, but in truth it was the officials who were let down by the Prime Minister. They were let down by a Prime Minister who decided to appoint to the highest diplomatic post in the Foreign Office a person who had a known association with a convicted paedophile, and who had been forced out of Government on previous occasions for personal failings.
Having made that decision, No. 10 was determined to ram it through. We have heard of the repeated calls to Olly Robbins’s private office to demand that they get it done quickly. No. 10 even went so far as to argue that the vetting process was not necessary at all. It was FCDO officials who insisted that the proper process be applied, and it was thanks to that decision that there were risk mitigations in place at all. Other Members have raised concerns about security, but if it was not for officials insisting on security vetting and the imposition of mitigations, how much worse would the national security risk have been to the UK? This is not the Prime Minister being let down by officials; it is officials clearing up the Prime Minister’s mess.
The Prime Minister wants us to believe that the appointment of Peter Mandelson as ambassador to the US was a singular error of judgment. However, we now know as a result of Sir Olly Robbins’s evidence that No. 10 also sought an ambassadorial appointment for the Prime Minister’s director of communications, Matthew Doyle. Appointing one friend of a paedophile as an ambassador might be an error of judgment. Attempting to appoint two looks like no judgment at all.
In his statement to the House yesterday, the Prime Minister said:
“It beggars belief that…officials in the Foreign Office saw fit to withhold this information from the most senior Ministers”.—[Official Report, 20 April 2026; Vol. 784, c. 26.]
However, we have now learned that No. 10, having sought an ambassadorial position for Matthew Doyle, ordered Sir Olly not to tell the Foreign Secretary about it at all. On the one hand, the Prime Minister thinks officials should not withhold information. On the other hand, No. 10 is ordering officials to withhold information. Who is letting down who?
Today I saw a diligent, committed, proud and passionate civil servant who worked unbelievably hard for this country and for this Prime Minister. The Prime Minister may have found someone to fire, but the decision to appoint Peter Mandelson was his. The decision to ram that appointment through was his. The decision to announce the appointment before security vetting had been completed was his. The Prime Minister is running out of people to fire. It is time he answered for them.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
Order. The Minister will be called at 5 pm precisely, so with the remaining time, I call Jim Allister.
Jim Allister (North Antrim) (TUV)
Yesterday, the focus of many Members was to ask the Prime Minister why he never thought to ask whether Mandelson had security clearance. There was great reticence about asking that question, but today we discovered that there was no such reticence in No. 10 when it came to trying to meddle in this process. We heard from Sir Olly Robbins this morning that the message was very clear from No. 10: the Prime Minister wants this done “at pace”. The Prime Minister did not tell us that yesterday. He said it was nothing to do with him; this was an independent process. Never once did he tell us that his officials told the Foreign Office, “This must be done at pace.”
We heard from Sir Olly this morning that there was an “atmosphere of pressure” from No. 10 and that throughout January there was “constant pressure” to get it done, some of it laced with expletives. Sir Olly told us that it would have been “very difficult” not to approve Mandelson. That is in the context of the meddling, the pressure and the insistence that it should be done and done at pace, and in a context where even the Cabinet Office, he reported, said there should be no need to vet Lord Mandelson. Think of it! This is a man who was twice dismissed and had a litany of black marks against him as a public official, and the Cabinet Office—at the heart of this Government—protested that there was no need to vet Mandelson.
The appointment of Mandelson was an unbridled, unabashed display of cronyism of the highest and most disgusting order, and that is corroborated by what was happening in respect of Matthew Doyle at the very same time. In the early months of 2025, the Prime Minister, who wanted to rush through Mandelson’s approval, was also secretly, behind the backs of not just this Parliament but his Foreign Secretary, saying, “Could Matthew Doyle be found an ambassadorial post? But don’t tell the Foreign Secretary.” That is the circumstance that prevailed in the Prime Minister’s No.10, yet he comes to this House and tells us, “Nothing to do with me, guv. People didn’t tell me. I’m innocent because I didn’t know.” As a lawyer he should know that ignorance is no defence; as a lawyer, his training and instinct should be to interrogate, not to cover up. Sadly, what we have had in this case is a monumental failure not just of process, but of character, of judgment, and of leadership—and he should go.
The Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister (Darren Jones)
Today’s motion asks this House to consider the Government’s accountability to this place for Peter Mandelson’s appointment. The Government have been, and remain, fully committed to keeping the House informed of all relevant information related to Peter Mandelson’s appointment and subsequent dismissal as ambassador to the United States. Ministers have addressed the House on a number of occasions on this matter.
The Prime Minister has set out to the House that, while much of the debate on this issue has focused on process, at the heart of it all is the decision to appoint Peter Mandelson in the first place. The Prime Minister has been up front about that and takes responsibility for it. He knows that he should not have made the appointment. He regrets the decision, and he apologises for it, in particular to the victims of Jeffrey Epstein. Those women and girls have been subjected to intolerable cruelty and disgusting abuse, and are to date without justice. Their experiences should be taken seriously and they should be listened to.
I do not come to the House today to defend that decision—it was the wrong one. I am here to account for the Government’s accountability to this House on the process that followed. I take the Government’s responsibility to this House seriously, so I will not take the opportunity this evening to try to score party political points, or to defend a decision that the Prime Minister has said is wrong and for which he apologises. I do, however, commit to returning to this House as often as required.
Darren Jones
The Prime Minister followed the process that was in place, and I will turn to some of the details of that in the remainder of my speech.
On 11 March, I addressed the House in response to the Humble Address, as we released the first tranche of documents relating to Peter Mandelson’s appointment and subsequent dismissal. I committed to keep the House updated as we worked to publish documents relevant to that Humble Address, and I recommit to doing so today. I reassure the House that we are proceeding at pace to process the outstanding documents, a number of which are currently being reviewed by the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament, with the aim of publishing the next tranche of documents as a matter of urgency.
In the debate, I was asked specifically about redactions in documents published in relation to the Humble Address. I will be clear: redactions are visible on the documents by the black marking out of information. If there is no marking out, it is not a redaction. All redactions are agreed via the Intelligence and Security Committee before they come to the House.
Dr Neil Hudson (Epping Forest) (Con)
We have heard a lot from Labour Members today about process, but will the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister please tell my constituents, the House and the country why on earth the Prime Minister appointed Peter Mandelson to be ambassador to the United States?
Darren Jones
I refer the hon. Gentleman to the Prime Minister’s words, and I reiterate his apology for having made that wrong decision in the first place.
I will now move to the specific matter of security vetting. As the House heard from the Prime Minister yesterday, on the evening of 14 April he was told for the first time that last year, before Peter Mandelson took up his position as ambassador, the Foreign Office had granted Peter Mandelson developed vetting clearance against the recommendation of the United Kingdom Security Vetting authority, UKSV. In today’s debate there have been accusations that the Cabinet Office had suggested that developed vetted status or the process to seek that was not necessary. Those accusations are inaccurate. I can confirm to the House, based on advice that I have received, that a question was asked by the Foreign Office of the Cabinet Office team whether, on the basis that Peter Mandelson was already a Member of the House of Lords and a Privy Counsellor, further developed vetting status was required. That then subsequently took place, as Members of the House know.
The Foreign Office officials who made the decision to overrule the recommendation of UKSV then failed to notify the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary or her predecessor, the Deputy Prime Minister, or any other Minister, including myself, or the former Cabinet Secretary, Sir Chris Wormald. That has been confirmed today in evidence given by Sir Olly Robbins to the Foreign Affairs Committee.
Several hon. Members rose—
Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Highgate) (Lab)
I have been listening to the description of this entire saga and it is confusing even to someone who is a Westminster insider, in the Westminster bubble. May I ask a question about process? My right hon. Friend mentioned 14 April, when the Prime Minister was notified that there had been a breach in the security vetting and that it had failed on one aspect. Will he explain to me the process at that point and what the Prime Minister would have had to do to gather all the information before coming to the House? Who would he have to speak to, what legal advice would he have to take, who would he have to consult and what permissions would he have to have? [Interruption.] This is important. What information did he need to have before he came back to the House? I want to know and my constituents want to know.
Darren Jones
As the Prime Minister has made clear to the House and via the publication of a minute of the meeting in which he was informed of this information, the Prime Minister made it immediately clear to his officials that he intended to come to this House to inform Members of Parliament of the situation about which he had just been told, but that he urgently needed a set of information about who had made what decision and when, in order to be able to provide the full facts to Parliament.
On Tuesday 14 April, the Prime Minister instructed officials to establish the facts urgently. I agree with the Prime Minister that he should have been informed of this a long time ago, as should this House. There were multiple opportunities for this issue to have been raised, not just when the decision to grant Peter Mandelson developed vetting status was initially made, but subsequently when the Prime Minister asked the former Cabinet Secretary to assure him that all due process had been followed—and he had been assured of that—and then subsequently again when the Foreign Secretary and the then permanent secretary to the Foreign Office provided a signed statement to the Foreign Affairs Committee confirming:
“Peter Mandelson’s security vetting was conducted to the usual standard set for developed vetting in line with established Cabinet Office policy.”
Several hon. Members rose—
Esther McVey
The Prime Minister has clearly said that he was right to sack the senior civil servant Oliver Robbins, so can the Minister guarantee that the Government will contest any employment claim from Sir Oliver Robbins for unfair or constructive dismissal all the way to the employment tribunal, and will not use taxpayer money to pay off this gentleman to avoid that outcome?
Darren Jones
The right hon. Lady will know that I am not at liberty to comment in respect of any potential claim to the employment tribunal.
Peter Mandelson’s security vetting was carried out by UKSV between 23 December 2024 and 28 January 2025. That included collecting relevant information and interviewing the applicant, in this case on two occasions. One issue has been raised in the debate about that time period; there is a suggestion that No. 10 applied pressure on officials at the Foreign Office in relation to the security vetting process. It was confirmed in testimony today before the Foreign Affairs Committee that no such pressure was applied beyond asking for the process to be completed as quickly as possible, and confirmed by Sir Olly Robbins that there was no personal contact by telephone or message. That is testimony from the official himself in front of the Foreign Affairs Committee.
On 28 January 2025, UKSV recommended to the Foreign Office that developed vetting clearance should not be granted to Peter Mandelson. The following day, on 29 January 2025, Foreign Office officials made the decision to grant developed vetting clearance for Peter Mandelson none the less. This was an established process for the Foreign Office, which had the authority to be able to make those decisions. It is worth reiterating for the sake of clarity, as the Prime Minister did yesterday, that UKSV makes decisions for many Government Departments, but not for the Foreign Office. The final decision on developed vetting clearance is made by Foreign Office officials, not by UKSV.
When I became aware of the details of Peter Mandelson’s case following the publication of reporting in The Guardian last Thursday, I was briefed on the matter that evening at the Cabinet Office by officials in respect of both the case of Peter Mandelson and the existing policy on UKSV recommendations and the Foreign Office’s decisions. I immediately suspended the right for the Foreign Office to overrule UKSV recommendations pending further investigation. In reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Halesowen (Alex Ballinger), I can confirm that the review that Adrian Fulford will conduct for the Government should be completed in around four weeks, so that we can take a quick decision on the proper functioning of the process.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith
In Olly Robbins’ letter to the Foreign Affairs Committee today, he countermands what the right hon. Gentleman has said from the Dispatch Box. He says:
“I believe the Cabinet Office (CO) raised whether Developed Vetting (DV) was actually necessary. I understand the FCDO insisted that DV was a requirement before Mandelson took up his post in Washington.”
After due diligence, the Cabinet Office was insisting that it was not necessary. Surely the right hon. Gentleman needs to retract his remarks.
Darren Jones
I repeat my words and refer back to them.
Much has been said about the ability of officials to disclose sensitive vetting information. As the Prime Minister has set out, I accept that the sensitive personal information provided by an individual being vetted must be protected from disclosure. If that were not the case, the integrity of the whole process would be compromised. However, neither the Prime Minister nor I accept that the appointing Minister cannot be told of the recommendation made by UKSV. Nor do the Government accept that Foreign Office officials could not have informed the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary or the Cabinet Secretary of UKSV’s recommendation while maintaining the necessary confidentiality that vetting requires.
The civil service code on this issue is clear, not just in normal practice but especially in relation to when Ministers are giving evidence to Parliament, as was the case via correspondence from the current Foreign Secretary to the Foreign Affairs Committee. There is no law that stops civil servants sensibly flagging UKSV recommendations while protecting detailed, sensitive vetting information in order to allow Ministers to make judgments on appointments or to explain matters to Parliament.
The Government have also changed the direct ministerial appointments process so that due diligence is now required as standard. The Prime Minister has also changed the process so that public announcements about direct ministerial appointments can now not be made until security vetting has been completed.
What clearly came to light about Peter Mandelson following the release of files by the United States Department of Justice was clearly deeply disturbing. In February this year, the Prime Minister instructed officials to carry out a review of the national security vetting process to ensure that it is fit for purpose. I can confirm that the terms of reference for that review have been updated to include the means by which all decisions are made in relation to national security vetting. The Government have appointed Sir Adrian Fulford to lead that review and, for completeness, have separately asked the Government Security Group in the Cabinet Office to look at any security concerns raised during Peter Mandelson’s tenure as ambassador to the United States, in answer to the question raised by the hon. Member for Bromsgrove (Bradley Thomas). We will publish terms of reference, and the Government commit to return to the House on their findings and recommendations.
On two other questions that were raised during the debate, accusations have been made of the Prime Minister both in this House of misleading and outside this House of lying. Those have been shown today by evidence in the Foreign Affairs Committee not to be true in any way. I am sure the House will be as concerned as I am that while officials felt unable to provide this information to Ministers, it was made available to The Guardian. As a consequence, I can confirm that a leak inquiry is now under way.
I thank right hon. and hon. Members for their contributions to today’s debate. This is my sixth address to this House on the appointment of Peter Mandelson as ambassador to the United States of America. I recognise that the House will want to know about the next steps in respect of the publication of the remainder of the information relevant to the Humble Address that was not included in the first tranche. I commit to the House that we will release that further material shortly, subject to the processes ongoing with the Metropolitan police and the Intelligence and Security Committee, and we will continue to keep Members updated as we make progress. I commend this statement to the House.
Mrs Badenoch
I start by thanking Members from across the House for speaking in today’s debate. We heard many powerful speeches, and I am particularly grateful to the many speakers from the Conservative Benches, including my right hon. Friends the Members for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith), for Goole and Pocklington (David Davis) and for Maldon (Sir John Whittingdale) and my hon. Friends the Members for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (David Simmonds) and for Weald of Kent (Katie Lam). I found myself nodding along to the speech made by the hon. Member for Leeds East (Richard Burgon)—I think that is the first time that has ever happened. We heard very good speeches from the hon. Members for North Herefordshire (Dr Chowns), for Lagan Valley (Sorcha Eastwood), for East Wiltshire (Danny Kruger) and for St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire (Ian Sollom) and the hon. and learned Member for North Antrim (Jim Allister). Members from all parts of the House have made powerful statements—Members of all parties who know that this story does not add up. We have also heard some statements supporting the Prime Minister, which can only be described as brave.
As I said when I opened the debate, I do feel for the Minister sent here today on the Prime Minister’s behalf. He is the latest person to have to carry the can for the Prime Minister’s mistakes. He could never have given this House the answers it deserved to hear about what is, at its core, a failure of the Prime Minister’s judgment, a failure of the Prime Minister to follow process, and a shocking failure of the Prime Minister to take responsibility for his own mistakes—not just apologise, but take responsibility.
The Minister could not answer the question of why the Prime Minister decided to appoint Peter Mandelson to our most important diplomatic role in full knowledge, based on the due diligence, that Mandelson was a security risk, despite many Members asking it. He could not answer the question of why the Prime Minister chose to ignore the Cabinet Secretary and appoint Peter Mandelson before he received vetting. That was clearly not the process at the time, despite what the Minister has said from the Dispatch Box. He has said that the Government are changing the process, but the advice in November 2024 was to carry out the security vetting, so what process are they changing? Is it one that the Minister is just making up?
The Minister could not answer the question of why the Prime Minister put the Foreign Office under “constant pressure” to approve the appointment. He could not answer the question of why No. 10 was “dismissive” of the entire vetting process. He could not answer the question of why No. 10 also asked for the disgraced Matthew Doyle to be made an ambassador and hid this from the Foreign Secretary, and he could not answer the question of why the Prime Minister sacked Olly Robbins if he was following a process that, as he claims, was in place already—it does not make any sense. He could not answer, because only one man can, and that man is not here today. I do not know whether the Prime Minister thinks he is above answering these questions—we will try again tomorrow. I do not know whether he still somehow thinks that he did nothing wrong, but I will tell the House what I do know. The Prime Minister has put the country’s national security at risk. He is not fit for office, and he must take responsibility. It is time for him to go.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered the Government’s accountability to the House in connection to the appointment of Peter Mandelson as Ambassador to the United States of America.
Richard Burgon
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. First, I apologise for not having been able to give you advance notice of this point of order. I asked whether the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister could answer a question that I have been trying repeatedly to get an answer to, and I would like your advice on how I can get that answer. The question is whether Morgan McSweeney had security clearance at the time that he was involved in the Mandelson appointment. Could we have an answer to that question, either now or in writing? I would be grateful if you could advise me.
Mr Speaker
What I will say is that we are not going to carry on the debate. I know that the Member has been here long enough that he will pursue this matter. I am sure that Members on the Treasury Bench will have heard that he does not feel he has had an answer, but I know that this will not be the end of the matter.
English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill (Programme) (No. 3)
Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 83A(7)),
That the following provisions shall apply to the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill for the purpose of supplementing the Order of 2 September 2025 (English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill: Programme), as varied by the Order of 24 November 2025 (English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill: Programme (No. 2)):
Consideration of Lords Amendments
(1) Proceedings on consideration of Lords Amendments shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at 7.00pm at today’s sitting.
(2) The Lords Amendments shall be considered in the following order: 2, 4, 13, 26, 36 and 37, 41, 85 to 87, 89 to 91, 94, 97 to 116, 120 and 121, 123, 155, 1, 3, 5 to 12, 14 to 25, 27 to 35, 38 to 40, 42 to 84, 88, 92 and 93, 95 and 96, 117 to 119, 122, 124 to 154 and 156 to 170.
Subsequent stages
(3) Any further Message from the Lords may be considered forthwith without any Question being put.
(4) Proceedings on the first of any further Messages from the Lords shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion two hours after their commencement.
(5) Proceedings on any subsequent Message from the Lords shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion one hour after their commencement.—(Taiwo Owatemi.)
Question agreed to.