Lord Mandelson: Government Response to Humble Address

Jeremy Wright Excerpts

Tuesday 19th May 2026 Commons Chamber

[Sir Jeremy Wright (Kenilworth and Southam) (Con)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster if he will make a statement on the Government’s approach to redacting or withholding documents within scope of the Humble Address agreed by the House on 4 February 2026.

[The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Darren Jones)]

As I have set out to this House on previous occasions, the Government are working to comply with the motion passed in February. I can reassure the House that this remains the case, and I can provide the following update today.

The Government confirmed before Prorogation that we had referred more than 300 documents to the Intelligence and Security Committee. At the time, that represented all the documents in scope of the motion where the Government believed that publication would be prejudicial to UK national security or international relations. The Government have repeatedly assessed all the documents we have collected to make sure that all of those that need to be referred to the ISC are referred to the Committee. As part of this quality control process, the Government identified a small number of further documents that we felt should be reviewed by the ISC, and we immediately submitted those documents to the Committee. As Friday’s statement from the Committee set out, it has now considered all those documents.

As I have previously said to the House, the Government will be publishing a second tranche of material. This is currently being finalised and will be one of the largest Government publications ever laid in this House. That is reflective of the breadth of the motion, and also the Government’s commitment to transparency in responding to it. It constitutes a very significant disclosure exercise involving sensitive material from across Government. The Government have taken seriously our obligations to comply with the Humble Address in full, while also upholding other public interest issues, such as our duty of care to junior staff. The Government have carried out this work according to a robust process, with assurance from an independent KC.

Given that the House is due to rise on Thursday, and given the length of the publication, the second tranche will now be published after Whitsun recess to give the House sufficient time to review the material and to be able to ask me and the Government questions. It could have been published this Thursday, but I felt that the House would have deemed that to be inappropriate, given that it will be such a significant publication. [Interruption.] To refer back to my previous comments, this will be the largest publication—other than, I think, the Chilcot inquiry report—ever published to the House.

When the Government publish the second tranche of documents, we will also publish a methodology confirming the process we have followed, and the basis on which content has been redacted will be clear from the published information. The targeted redactions made to the material, beyond those relevant to national security or international relations, have been made in line with clear precedent set by previous Administrations in responding to Humble Addresses.

As I set out to the House on 23 February, and again when we published the first tranche of material on 11 March, we have taken the normal approach to redacting junior officials’ names, contact details such as telephone numbers and email addresses, the personal data of third parties where that is not in scope of the motion, and, where relevant, legal professional privilege. That has been done using the principles set out in the Freedom of Information Act 2000, and in line with the ministerial code and the resolutions on ministerial accountability passed by both Houses in 1997. Those resolutions state:

“Ministers should be as open as possible with Parliament, refusing to provide information only when disclosure would not be in the public interest, which should be decided in accordance with relevant statute”.

I am sure that Members across the House will recognise that there is no public interest in the Government publishing the names and contact details of junior officials or their telephone numbers.

[Darren Jones]

Forgive me, Mr Speaker. In that case, I will sit down and provide further detail in answer to questions from Members.

[Sir Jeremy Wright]

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for granting this urgent question, and I thank the Minister for what he has said. As you and the House know, the Intelligence and Security Committee has been considering redactions to documents on the grounds that, if unredacted, those documents may prejudice national security or international relations. It has become apparent to us that the Government also intend to redact documents for other reasons not specifically permitted in the Humble Address or, in some cases, to withhold documents altogether.

As the Minister says, the Government issued a list of further grounds on which they intended to redact along with the first tranche of documents that they published. Those grounds include email addresses, phone numbers and what is described as personal data. There is no mechanism for the House to confirm that those redactions are limited only to what is necessary, but I want to ask the Minister about material that the Government intend to withhold for yet further reasons, such as commercial confidentiality or to protect the monarch. The Government also intend to withhold some documents related to vetting in their entirety.

I should make it clear that my Committee has considerable sympathy with the substantive arguments that the Government may make for withholding information beyond that currently justified in the Humble Address. There are, for example, valid concerns about the disclosure of information given in a vetting process inhibiting future subjects of vetting, or those who are asked about them, from being as open and forthcoming as they need to be for vetting to be effective. However, we cannot accept that the Government are entitled to ignore, or unilaterally alter, the terms of the Humble Address.

Does the Minister accept that if the Government want to argue that the Humble Address is too broad as drafted and needs to be refined, they must come to the House and make that argument, and secure the House’s consent to any alteration? Does he further accept that without doing so, when the next set of documents is published with information withheld, the Government will not succeed in persuading the House or the wider world that this matter is closed? Finally, does he accept that if the Government took it upon themselves to redact or withhold information contrary to the terms of the Humble Address by which they agreed to be bound in February, that would be an issue not just of process, but of parliamentary sovereignty?

[Darren Jones]

In response to the questions from the right hon. and learned Gentleman about compliance with the Humble Address, I refer him to the statement that I have made previously in relation to the principles set out in legislation and the motions of the House.

The right hon. and learned Gentleman was, I think, asking me specifically about personal data that was collected as part of the security vetting process. As I think he suggested, the raw data that is collected as part of those investigations—perhaps relating to how much money someone has in a particular account, or with whom that person may have had a personal relationship in the past—would never be published, because if we did so, people would feel unable to answer those questions honestly and frankly in any UK security vetting investigation in the future, which would undermine the very basis of our national security system.