Lord Mandelson

John Whittingdale Excerpts

Wednesday 4th February 2026 Commons Chamber

[Sir John Whittingdale (Maldon) (Con)]

We have heard some very powerful speeches in this debate. It is a credit to this House that we are discussing this issue and the appalling behaviour of Jeffrey Epstein in a way that is not happening in Washington. However, what we have heard in the last few days has been truly shocking. There have been the photos, the emails, and the revelations of the very close nature of Peter Mandelson’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, which raise questions of potential criminality, and even treason.

The House is asking how it was that somebody who was already established, who had already had to resign twice from Government in disgrace, who was the subject of questions about his performance in the European Commission, and who was known to have maintained a very close friendship with a convicted paedophile, ever came to be regarded as an appropriate appointee to the position of ambassador in Washington. That was the critical issue that the Foreign Affairs Committee was anxious to examine. We repeatedly asked that Peter Mandelson come before the Committee; he did not. We were told eventually that we had had an opportunity to speak to him briefly over breakfast when we were in Washington, and that was sufficient. It was not sufficient. We were not able to ask him any of our questions.

We did subsequently have the opportunity to ask those questions of the Cabinet Secretary and the permanent under-secretary at the Foreign Office. The Chair of the Select Committee, the right hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry), has already set out some of the issues that were raised, but I think it is worth repeating that we were told that Lord Mandelson’s appointment process had three stages. On the first stage, because this was a political appointment at the direct instruction of the Prime Minister, there was no interview panel, and there was not the “fireside chat” that would normally take place between an appointing Minister and a candidate. Instead, the Foreign Office was told that this was the wish of the Prime Minister, and Lord Mandelson was asked to fill in a conflict of interest form, so that there could be an understanding of private interests that “might” conflict with his position.

[Jerome Mayhew]

The Prime Minister made a huge deal about the process that had been gone through when he answered questions from the Leader of the Opposition earlier today. If I understand it correctly, the process was that the Prime Minister wanted Peter Mandelson.

[Sir John Whittingdale]

That was made absolutely clear right from the start. Indeed, the permanent under-secretary described this as a political appointment, which was made on the direct instruction of the Prime Minister.

I want to go through the three stages. The first stage was the conflicts of interest form. As the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee said, this essentially consisted of Peter Mandelson being asked to fill in a form and to choose what to put on it, and there was no subsequent questioning about anything that did not appear on his form. Of course, we have not seen the form. I believe that as part of the motion, which we are likely to pass today, that form should now be made public.

Given the potential conflict of interest, I raised with the permanent under-secretary the question of Lord Mandelson’s continuing shareholding in Global Counsel. The permanent under-secretary replied:

“This was honestly the hardest bit of this bit of the process for both of us. Lord Mandelson was a founder of the company…While he was confident that he could conduct his role as ambassador without giving rise to a conflict, we wanted to make sure we managed and mitigated that possibility in some particular ways.”

The conclusion was not that Lord Mandelson should dispose of his shareholding. Instead, some Chinese walls were put in place to ensure that he was not aware of who the clients of Global Counsel were, or of the work being undertaken. I listened with concern to what my hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Alex Burghart) said about the meeting that took place with Palantir. That raises real questions about the effectiveness of the so-called undertakings that were put in place by the Foreign Office, and we need to understand that.

[Dame Karen Bradley (Staffordshire Moorlands) (Con)]

I rise with incredulity, having learned that there was not a requirement to dispose of the interest. I recall going through ethics and propriety when being made a Minister, and I was told that it would be entirely inappropriate to hold things. I know of colleagues who had to dispose of their interests. Does my right hon. Friend agree that if the noble Baroness Gray had still been running propriety and ethics, something like this would not have happened?

[Sir John Whittingdale]

I completely share the view of my right hon. Friend. Like her, I went through a process in which I was required to get rid of shareholding interests, which were rather smaller than those held by Lord Mandelson. This is just one of a huge range of questions to which we need to know the answers.

[Alicia Kearns]

Another appointment that we have had is that of the National Security Adviser, Jonathan Powell, who some might argue is the de facto Foreign Secretary. Given that he is running around having secret meetings with Wang Yi and other Chinese senior officials, how can we have confidence that he went through the appropriate vetting, when we cannot have confidence that it was done for our ambassador to America?

[Sir John Whittingdale]

Once we get the revelations from the documents as to precisely what occurred in the case of Lord Mandelson, that is bound to raise questions about what procedures were followed in the case of other appointees, particularly Jonathan Powell, who in many ways is the Foreign Secretary of this country.

We were told that the second stage of the process was the “due diligence” carried out by the Cabinet Office. The due diligence consisted of “identification of information” and judgment about it. However, all the information that was obtained in the due diligence was actually in the public domain already. No additional investigation took place; it was simply, essentially, an internet trawl. That due diligence report was presented to the Cabinet Secretary for onward transmission to the Prime Minister. However, due diligence through an internet trawl, even at that time, would already have shown up the fact that Peter Mandelson had stayed in the townhouse belonging to Jeffrey Epstein after his conviction, so the continuing association after his conviction had already been reported in the press and was therefore bound to form part of the due diligence process.

The question that has been raised several times in this debate already is this: when the appointment was made, did the Prime Minister know? We understand that, potentially, he did, which I assume was contained in the due diligence report. That was put directly to the Cabinet Secretary:

“did you tell the Prime Minister about Mandelson staying in the Manhattan townhouse when Epstein was in jail?”

All that the Cabinet Secretary said to us was:

“I will consider whether there is further information that can be shared and write to the Committee.”

We have never had a full answer to that question.

The third part of the process was the developed vetting, which we are told is a usual process for very senior appointments. We are told that it consists of a wide range of different investigations into staff files, company records checks, spent and unspent criminal records, credit history, a check of security service records, and an interview—not just of the candidate, but of the referees supplied—by a trained investigating officer. We will need to see the outcome of that report, even if it can only be provided, as the Government have now conceded, to the Intelligence and Security Committee.

With those three processes, the Prime Minister still decided that there was no obstacle to the appointment of Peter Mandelson as ambassador to the United States. We then come to the question put to him at Prime Minister’s questions following the Bloomberg report of the large number of emails. The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office learnt of those emails the night before Prime Minister’s questions. I pressed the permanent under-secretary on whether No. 10 had been told that the emails contained material evidence that could potentially change the whole perception of Lord Mandelson’s relationship. He said that he had a “duty of care” to Lord Mandelson and therefore needed to make checks. He essentially told us that No. 10 had not been informed. I find that very hard to believe. As somebody who used to prepare a Prime Minister for answering questions, I find the idea that the Prime Minister was not told something of that order absolutely extraordinary.

There is another question that needs to be asked. The British Government say that they discovered all the emails that proved the relationship was of very long standing and much closer than had ever been admitted by Lord Mandelson, because Bloomberg obtained copies in a leak. They were held by the US Government in the Department of Justice for months. The US Government knew all about them, but we are told it was only when Bloomberg obtained them that the British Government found out.

[Dr Luke Evans]

Does my right hon. Friend believe it is conceivable that the Government did not ask, “Is there any kompromat on the British ambassador to the US?” The idea seems incredulous. As he rightly points out, this has been known about for years.

[Sir John Whittingdale]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. There are two possible questions. First, why did the British Government never ask the US Government, who they knew had all this material from Jeffrey Epstein, whether it contained any additional information that might be relevant to the appointment of Peter Mandelson? Equally, we are told that our relationship with the US is so close that we share intelligence. Is it really the case that they did not feel it necessary to tell us? Either way, it is an appalling breakdown of communication, and I have to say that I find it very difficult to believe.

These are all questions on which we pressed the permanent under-secretary and the Cabinet Secretary, and on which we failed to obtain any answers. I have to say that my confidence in a further investigation by the Cabinet Secretary is influenced by his failure to answer any of those questions when he came before the Foreign Affairs Committee the first time.

[Lincoln Jopp (Spelthorne) (Con)]

As I am sure my right hon. Friend remembers, once the Bloomberg leak had happened, many of us said to the Government that now that those things had turned out to be true, we should turn Lord Peter Mandelson inside out as if he had been outed as a spy; surely, had the Government done so, the things that were released over the weekend would have come out. Is he surprised, as I am, that the Government did not seem to do an investigation into Peter Mandelson subsequent to him being fired?

[Sir John Whittingdale]

I completely share my hon. Friend’s astonishment. As further revelations come out about the behaviour of Jeffrey Epstein, particularly in relation to his links with Russia and other hostile powerhouses, one would have thought that the Government would say, “Please, if there is anything involving Peter Mandelson, we wish to know about it.” The potential damage to our national interest that may have occurred as a result of Lord Mandelson continuing to feed information to Jeffrey Epstein is huge. That is something that has not even begun to be properly exposed yet.

[James Wild (North West Norfolk) (Con)]

In his interrogation of the permanent under-secretary of the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and the Cabinet Secretary, was my right hon. Friend able to shed any light on another part of our motion as to whether severance payments were paid to Lord Mandelson and, if so, how much they were? If payments were made, we should be seeking to get them back for the taxpayer.

[Sir John Whittingdale]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and actually he anticipates my next point. I asked the permanent under-secretary whether or not Lord Mandelson was still on the civil service payroll and was told that he was not. When I asked whether a settlement or payment had been made, I was told that he had resigned but that his contract would be honoured; when I asked whether that included a payment, I was told that was a confidential matter between Lord Mandelson and the civil service. I will read the direct quote, because the exact wording is worth quoting again. I said:

“So the Foreign Office is not going to give any information as to whether payment was made to him”.

The permanent under-secretary replied:

“Any implications of his termination will be reported in our annual report and accounts, but termination payments below a particular threshold, which I think is £300,000, do not get itemised”—

I think the quick answer is no. However, I hope that is also something the Government have indicated will now be made public.

[Jerome Mayhew]

I was just thinking about the response that my right hon. Friend got from the permanent under- secretary. Does he think that was a permanent under-secretary trying to be helpful to the Committee, or was it him obfuscating and telling elected Members of Parliament to get their noses out of his business?

[Sir John Whittingdale]

I have to say to my hon. Friend that I regarded the whole session as a sort of masterpiece in Sir Humphrey-speak—an awful lot of words that conveyed very little substance.

I absolutely understand the necessity of not revealing information that may be damaging to national security. However, as one or two Members have already said, transparency is really important here, and I therefore hope that the Government will make public as much as possible. As a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, I will certainly be pressing the Committee to look at all the information that is published and to follow up on the rather unsatisfactory session that we have already had.

I will conclude with my overall impression, having looked at this process in some depth. It was clear that the Prime Minister wanted Peter Mandelson to be our ambassador to the United States. The Foreign Office had to go through the usual procedures—we heard about the three parts of the process—but I believe that the clear message that was sent to the Foreign Office was: “Go through your motions, but make sure that it ends up with his approval being granted.” The overriding impression is that, to some extent, boxes were ticked, but the Foreign Office was told very clearly that Mandelson was to be the next ambassador, and that was a direct instruction from the Prime Minister.