Peter Mandelson: Government Appointment

Iain Duncan Smith Excerpts

Tuesday 21st April 2026 Commons Chamber

[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?

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.