Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor

Matt Bishop Excerpts

Tuesday 24th February 2026 Commons Chamber

[Ed Davey]

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s intervention, which shows not only that we need to focus on the scandals we have heard about, but that even greater questions are raised if the trade envoy was actually speaking against British commercial interests. I hope that not just in this debate, but in other debates, and in Select Committees and elsewhere, we will get to the bottom of that issue.

As I was saying, I would like to highlight one example of how Jeffrey Epstein sought to use Andrew’s role as trade envoy to enrich himself. Channel 4 uncovered emails in the Epstein files in which Epstein was trying to meet the Libyan dictator Gaddafi in the dying months of the Gaddafi regime, to help him find somewhere to “put his money”—something that the Minister raised at the time. In other words, Epstein looked at the deadly crisis in Libya and saw a chance to make some money, and he thought his friend Andrew could help. This is what he said in one of the emails:

“I wondered if Pa should make the intro”.

A few weeks later, Andrew wrote back, “Libya fixed.”

Although the Epstein-Gaddafi meeting does not appear to have happened, this shows clearly what these relationships were all about for Epstein: increasing his own wealth and power. The idea that the role of special trade envoy for our United Kingdom may have been used to help him do that—to help a vile paedophile sex trafficker enrich himself—is truly sickening. Again, I pay tribute to the Minister, who tried to raise this at the time, like his colleague, the late Paul Flynn. It shows again why we need to change the rules of this House that govern Ministers and the debate here.

[Matt Bishop (Forest of Dean) (Lab)]

I thank the Leader of the Opposition for giving way. [Interruption.] Sorry, the leader of the Liberal Democrats—I stand corrected. [Hon. Members: “More!”] It’s coming.

I asked the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister yesterday in this House about the speed of bringing legislation forward. Victims, Members of this House and Members of the Lords all want this process to happen as swiftly as possible. Does the right hon. Member agree with the Chief Secretary’s comments and that whatever happens with Andrew or anybody else, we must keep pushing to get legislation brought forward swiftly, not in the years to come?

[Ed Davey]

I am grateful for both the hon. Gentleman’s Freudian slip and his suggestion that we need to speed up action in this area.

Let me begin to conclude. In many ways, this is the first truly global scandal, from the White House and silicon valley to Oslo and Paris. But it is also a deeply British scandal, reaching right to the top of the British establishment. Can there be many people more symbolic of the rot that eats away at the British establishment than the former Duke of York and special trade envoy, and the former Business Secretary, First Secretary of State and ambassador to the United States? Their association with Epstein and their actions on his behalf, while trusted with the privilege of public office, are a stain on our country.

Today, we must begin to clean away that stain with the disinfectant of transparency. Whether it is the President of the United States and his Commerce Secretary, Peter Mandelson and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor or Epstein himself, their victims and survivors have seen those responsible evade accountability and escape justice for far too long. I hope—I desperately hope—that is ending now, and I hope the House will approve this motion.