Peter Mandelson: Government Appointment

Ed Davey Excerpts

Tuesday 21st April 2026 Commons Chamber

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

[Ed Davey]

In taking that wrong decision, did the Prime Minister follow due process?

[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.