National Scheme of Delegation of Planning Functions

Paul Holmes Excerpts

Wednesday 28th October 2026 Westminster Hall

[Wendy Morton]

That is spot on. My hon. Friend is absolutely right.

[Paul Holmes (Hamble Valley) (Con)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on securing this debate. She mentioned accountability and democracy. As she knows, the Government are currently taking the Representation of the People Bill through Parliament. The Bill rightly tries to encourage increased participation and accountability in our electoral system. Does she share my concern that the role of councillors is undermined by these planning changes, that local people will lose confidence in the democratic checks and balances of local government, and that we therefore may see turnout and participation go down?

[Wendy Morton]

My hon. Friend is right. For a long time, it has concerned me that turnout at elections, particularly local elections, has been falling, and I do not believe the answer is simply to lower the voting age. Rather, we should be seeking to engage with people and communities on a cross-party basis. What we are seeing now is a Government who impose top-down targets, say it is all about devolution and go through the mayors, but when it comes to accountability and scrutiny, I cannot scrutinise the Mayor of the West Midlands. He does not even reply to my letters, yet he is getting more powers.

These planning measures come down to local councils, and once again, local councillors are losing their voice—our communities are losing their voices. How can we say that we want to engage with communities? How do we shape the future of our country and our communities if we are taking away transparency and accountability, which are the very foundations of good, strong democracy?

Delegation is a familiar concept. In fact, the Government’s own paper said that officers made 96% of planning decisions in the second quarter of 2024, but that cannot become how every application is determined. Where is the evidence about delays as a result of planning committee call-ins? How much delay arises from waiting for the committee, and how much from staffing shortages, outstanding technical advice or the complexity of the process?

Under the new rules, ordinary applications for up to nine houses on sites smaller than half a hectare must be decided by officers. Larger applications are not guaranteed a hearing either. Referral requires that the nominated officer and the chair of the planning committee agree and that a test of significance is met; if they disagree, the decision stays with officers.

Even reserved matters for a purely residential scheme of several hundred homes can be subject to mandatory delegation, so why exclude councillors from details that materially change the make-up of their own community? A ward councillor will know exactly why a proposal matters locally, but under the new rules they cannot make sure it is heard at committee. It would be helpful if the Minister could outline how the Government will ensure that the significance test is applied consistently. What can a councillor do when a well-founded referral request is rejected? How can it be that an application concerning a protected tree can still be eligible for committee consideration while an application for nine houses can be excluded? What principle explains that distinction? Why should councils be able to consider the future of a single tree—I am not saying that trees are not important—but not the circumstances of a housing development?

We then come to the issue of transparency. Will reasons for refusing to refer an application to committee be published before the application is decided, allowing time to raise an error? Reporting afterwards will give no comfort to concerned residents if permission has already been granted. As the Minister is undoubtedly aware—and I appreciate this topic is not entirely in her brief—some councils are seeking to preserve democratic oversight through informal councillor panels advising on planning applications. What assessment has the Department made of the risk of developers alleging predetermination when councillors express a view through those panels and subsequently participate in the gateway decision or determine the application at committee? Could the resulting legal challenges and delays undermine the very house building targets that the regulations are intended to support? I would be grateful if the Department published clear guidance so that councils can retain meaningful elected involvement without creating further uncertainty.

There is also the question of neighbourhood plans. One council leader told me their council has called for applications that conflict with an adopted neighbourhood plan policy to be eligible for committee consideration. Communities spend years and thousands of pounds preparing these plans before residents endorse them in a referendum. They deserve a route to elected scrutiny when an application conflicts with those policies. Will the Minister provide that safeguard, including for applications otherwise subject to mandatory delegation?

There is a similar concern about houses in multiple occupation, which are used all too often to house those decanted from asylum hotels. Councils introduced article 4 directions because they identified a need for greater control over conversions in particular neighbourhoods, yet applications brought into the planning system by those directions can fall within schedule 1 to the Town and Country Planning (Discharge of Local Planning Authority Functions) (England) Regulations 2026, preventing elected members from determining them. Will the Minister clarify exactly which HMO applications must be delegated, and explain why an article 4 direction provides no exception? Where an application raises significant concerns about the concentration of HMOs, such as about parking or the loss of family housing, will the Government allow councillors to secure a committee hearing?

Let us not forget planning officers. They also deserve protection. They undertake difficult professional work, often with very limited resources. Moving contentious decisions away from committees has a real risk of leaving officers personally exposed. Councils are rightly asking what safeguards will protect officers from undue influence or pressure from developers, applicants and other interested parties. Will there be requirements to record substantive discussions, declare conflicts of interest and obtain a second opinion in contentious cases? What independent route will officers have to report improper pressure? Officers must act impartially, so how will the Minister prevent them from becoming a lightning rod for political criticism when elected council members have lost their decision-making role? The Royal Town Planning Institute has warned of the risk of increased abuse and public pressure. What support will be funded to protect staff and to help councils retain those important experienced planners?

Transparency protects officers and residents alike. People should be able to follow the evidence and understand who decided and why. Accessibility matters, too. Developers often have a planning consultant and a legal team, whereas residents concerned about an application only have the option to open the planning portal for the very first time. They should not need professional help to find out whether an application will reach committee, how to ask for scrutiny or whether their concerns have been considered. Will Ministers engage in a publicity campaign to update people on those changes and ensure that each authority has an easily understandable explanation of the new process on its website, including how residents can put their case where there is no committee meeting?

The Planning Inspectorate also has an important role. An inspector will examine whether the proposed local plan in my constituency meets legal requirements and is sound. Separately, inspectors determine many planning appeals, but how will local evidence about infrastructure and cumulative green-belt loss be considered through these processes? On another point of fairness, or rather the lack of it, applicants can appeal refusals, but objecting residents have no equivalent appeal on planning merits. Given that imbalance, why weaken scrutiny before the decision? What affordable option will residents realistically have if an application is wrongly kept away from the committee?

A separate part of this new scheme requires councils to consult the Secretary of State before refusing applications for 150 or more homes. How will that operate transparently? How can residents make representations? Ministers are creating an additional opportunity for Whitehall interference and involvement while restricting elected local councillors. That undoubtedly creates a democratic deficit. How does that sit with the Prime Minister’s promises on devolution and community empowerment? I do not see how it does. The Local Government Association’s Conservative group has organised a letter from more than 1,500 Conservative councillors calling for this scheme of delegation to be repealed; I put on record my thanks to them for that. Let us hope that the Prime Minister gives it his urgent attention when it is delivered to him at No. 10 tomorrow.

We all know that councils must comply with the law, but we must remember that agreeing to update their constitutions does not mean that they consent to these regulations or believe that they serve their communities. A Government talking about devolution should trust local representatives and communities. I hope that the Minister will reconsider these regulations. At the very least, the Government should restore an effective route to committee for contentious applications to protect neighbourhood plans and article 4 directions and provide clear safeguards for officers.

Before the scheme takes effect on Saturday, will the Minister commit to those changes and to publishing an assessment of the scheme’s impact ahead of the statutory review in 2028? My constituents are being asked to engage with their local plan by Monday. I want to be able to tell them that doing so will make a difference and that their elected councillors will still have a meaningful role when decisions are taken. That is the assurance that I am seeking.

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[Paul Holmes (Hamble Valley) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Lewell. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton) on securing this debate, and I welcome the Minister to her position.

I have serious concerns about this policy and agenda, and specifically about the future ability of residents to have a meaningful say in the development of their own communities. Now that I am no longer the shadow Housing Minister, I am happy that I can speak about these things in a much freer way than I possibly could at the Dispatch Box, although I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Lewis Cocking) will be absolutely excellent in his winding up. Like the hon. Member for Didcot and Wantage (Olly Glover)—he is my hon. Friend, actually—I have very fond memories of the Planning and Infrastructure Bill Committee. I often found myself going home in the evening and thinking, “How could I have agreed so much with the Liberal Democrats?”, but I looked myself in the mirror, had a wash and got over it the next morning.

Planning decisions shape our towns and villages for generations to come. They determine where new homes are built, how much pressure is placed on roads, schools and healthcare services, and whether the character of our neighbourhoods is preserved. These decisions have real consequences for the people who live with them every day. It is therefore essential that local residents have a meaningful opportunity to influence them.

I say to the Minister that my big concern, which we warned about on the Bill Committee, is that the Government seem ardent on taking those decisions and that influence away from local people. The Government’s proposed approach risks weakening the democratic safeguards that allow communities to have their voices heard. This policy represents a significant shift in the balance between professional planning officers and elected local representatives. One of the most concerning aspects of these reforms is the removal of existing arrangements that allow ward councillors to request committee consideration or that enable an application to be referred automatically when a specified number of objections has been received. Under the new scheme, the volume of objections cannot in itself justify referral to committee. Instead, applications must meet the national criteria, and the nominated officer and nominated councillor must agree that they should be referred.

Let us consider what that means for residents who have legitimate concerns about a development in their neighbourhood. They may organise a petition, write detailed objections and encourage their neighbours to participate in the consultation process, yet the strength of their opposition will not in itself guarantee that elected councillors will debate the application in public. Residents retain the right to submit representations, but their ability to secure community scrutiny is restricted.

That raises a question: what is the point of encouraging people to participate in local planning consultations if the system provides fewer opportunities for their elected representatives to consider their concerns publicly? If we allow this proposal to go ahead on Saturday, as I suspect it will, many people will ask why they should bother voting for their parish, borough or county councillor.

Planning decisions are one of the most public-facing decisions that a councillor makes. Councillors live in their communities. If a housing development is being built round the corner, or if a pub is being closed so that it can be converted into something else, they know what should be referred to their planning committee. That local knowledge is being taken away, so that a faceless officer can make that decision instead. That is not accountable.

[Sarah Green (Chesham and Amersham) (LD)]

In Buckinghamshire, we do not yet have a local plan. Right now, we are seeing speculative application after speculative application going in. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that removing ward councillors’ right to call those applications in not only undermines accountability, but makes our green belt even more vulnerable?

[Paul Holmes]

I absolutely agree. Councils are going through a process to develop a local plan. Alongside officers, they will know which applications should be capable of being called in if a local plan is ratified. If there is no local plan and there are small speculative developments happening across a whole constituency, that soon adds up. If the hon. Lady’s councillors are unable to play a massive part in shaping those developments and crafting those developments, it prompts the question: “What do they serve for?” That will be the question resounding across local government this afternoon.

A national framework cannot be expected to capture every local nuance. Although the Government argue that the scheme will create greater consistency and allow committees to focus on significant applications, there is a risk that standardisation will come at the expense of local discretion. The desire for consistency should not prevent councils from responding to the particular needs and concerns of their residents.

Minor delegations do not mean that planning decisions are any less important. Let me give the Minister an example from my constituency. The Pear Tree inn in Boorley Green is owned by a brewery that wanted to sell off a huge amount of the local play area and car park so that six houses could be built. Local councillors were dead against it. It is the only local pub in the area and is a very valued asset to the local community. Under this scheme, that proposal could not be referred by a ward councillor and could not be debated by ward councillors who represent the community. As the Member of Parliament, I could make a written representation but would not be able to go to a planning committee led by councillors to make that decision. That is fundamentally wrong. Under the current legislation, a parish councillor can submit the pub for consideration as an asset of community value. If an officer had been making that decision without a referral by a ward member, they would not have come to the same decision. Eastleigh borough council’s excellent decision to refuse planning permission was made by its ward councillors, who are elected by the people who live there.

I am not against building new homes and nor am I arguing against the expertise of planning officers; I am arguing for development to take place alongside transparency, public participation and democratic accountability. If the Government want communities to support development, they must recognise that people are more likely to have confidence in decisions when they feel their voices have genuinely been heard.

Finally, the Government have spoken hugely, including in today’s Budget, about devolution and empowering local people. The Minister will hear no argument against that from me—I hope her Department brings the mayoral elections for Hampshire forward to 2027. However, she cannot have it both ways; she cannot devolve to local people, while taking away some of the most retail decisions that councils and locally elected people make on behalf of those people—giving with one hand while taking with the other.

That is a topsy-turvy world that will cause the Government huge issues, prompting resentment from local people about the public participation processes they are expected to undertake, particularly with mayoral elections. I appreciate that this is not all in the Minister’s brief, but I seriously ask her to report to the Department the strength of feeling that the Government are creating among locally elected councillors. They are not happy, and nor are we or, more importantly, the people we serve.

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[John Milne (Horsham) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Lewell. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton) on securing the debate.

The Liberal Democrats are deeply concerned by the introduction of a national scheme of delegation, which gives the Secretary of State sweeping powers and allows planning decisions to bypass local planning committees. We opposed this approach throughout the passage of the Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025 and sought to protect the existing powers of committees. Faster planning decisions should come from having properly resourced planning departments and giving councils the freedom to set planning fees that truly reflect the cost of their job—not by shutting communities out of decisions about their local areas.

On Saturday, a national scheme of delegation will come into force. Every council in England must rewrite its constitution to match it, and none has been given a say on whether to do so. As many Members have said, planning is where most people first meet democracy, and it is one of the most important reasons why they vote for a councillor in the first place.

Household applications, minor commercial applications, schemes of up to nine homes and a range of technical decisions must now go to officers. For other applications, a committee can step in only where it raises a significant issue and an officer and nominated member agree; a councillor cannot refer an application alone. The ward member’s call-in has gone, and so has the route by which enough objections would bring an application to committee. Nine houses next to someone’s home are not a minor matter, and councillors will still be blamed for it. When something is built that nobody wants, residents will ask their councillor why, and the honest answer will be that they had no control over it whatever.

The Government’s case is that committees slow things down, but the reality is that this country does not have a big permissions problem in the first place; councillors already approve nine in 10 applications.

[Paul Holmes]

The hon. Member will know, as the hon. Member for Didcot and Wantage (Olly Glover) said, that a cross-party delegation of Liberal Democrats, Conservatives and Greens on the Planning and Infrastructure Bill Committee came up with sensible amendments to try to make sure there was a balance between efficiency in the planning system and the criteria under which officers could make more decisions, and still involving local councillors. Can the hon. Member elaborate on where the balance should be between councillors and planning officers?

[John Milne]

I very much agree, and I will come on to that.

Removing local scrutiny, as this scheme does, touches none of the problems I have mentioned. Where delay is real, it lies in planning departments running with about 80% of the staff they need, one in five major applications being decided on time, and fees that the Government accept do not cover the cost of the work. The Liberal Democrats made that point throughout the passage of the Planning and Infrastructure Act. My hon. Friend the Member for Taunton and Wellington (Gideon Amos) tabled 78 amendments in Committee and more than 50 on Report, including some to try to protect planning committees. Unfortunately, the Government accepted none of those amendments.

The Government have decided that residents are just a nuisance to be overcome. Through these measures, which come on top of years of reduced neighbourhood control, they have killed one bird with a thousand stones. It is not as if local people had much say over things beforehand. The Liberal Democrats regret the lack of any attempt to build consent. This is just storing up problems and resentment for the future, as Members have said.

I ask the Minister: will the Government let a ward member bring an application to committee on behalf of residents as the locally elected official? Will they look again at the standard method—the flawed formula—that sets local targets? Will they commit to telling us in plain terms whether this change is doing what it is supposed to by 2028 at the latest? Finally, national fees are planned at an estimated 90% cost recovery. Will the Government commit to full cost recovery so that planning departments are properly resourced? We need to rediscover the principle of consent.

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[Lewis Cocking]

I completely agree with my right hon. Friend. She is right to mention the duty to co-operate. Local leaders must step up to the plate. That is what they are elected to do, and that is what their residents expect.

Residents expect their local councillors to represent them, not to hide behind the duty to co-operate. They must co-operate across borders. They do not need powers taken away from them and given to unaccountable bureaucrats in distant council headquarters. Under the national scheme of delegation, proposals for under 10 properties will only be looked at by planning officers. This means that only in very limited circumstances will there be a way for local councillors to bring those decisions before a planning committee. Planning officers are not elected and are not accountable to voters.

Everyone knows that sometimes planning officers get things wrong and the decisions need to be overturned. I have seen it. I have served on a planning committee and the trouble is that, once a planning application gets approval and gets built, it is there for a very long time. It is very difficult to rectify it once it goes wrong. Do the Government really think that unelected officials are better placed to make decisions on local issues than elected councillors? People vote for their councillors to represent them on planning issues and can hold their councillors accountable at the ballot box. However, it is not just planning that is at stake, but trust in politics as a whole. Removing powers from elected representatives is an attack on British democracy, and the British people can see right through it.

Local action groups such as Goffs Oak Community Association are already fighting tooth and nail to stop their towns and villages being wrecked by inappropriate developments, which are often proposed without any sort of adequate infrastructure. The Government clearly do not care about their views, otherwise they would not be bringing in this national scheme of delegation. These changes also ignore the fact that planning committees are not just there to approve or deny applications. Councillors talk with local people and can address their concerns by putting conditions on development.

[Paul Holmes]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. Another concern of mine is that, when looking at infrastructure such as healthcare facilities or larger-scale road networks, local councillors and MPs quite often work together to secure the funding from central Government and maybe a county council. Does he share my concern that in some of the larger schemes that will be decided by planning officers, the ability to get that multi-layered approach to funding will not be there, because there will not be the political will to do it?

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[Sally Jameson]

I will ensure that that request is fed back to the Minister for Housing, as well as the strength of feeling behind it. I thank the right hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton) for securing today’s important debate, as well as hon. Members for their contributions on the subject.

The modernisation of planning committees, as many will know, is a big part of the housing and infrastructure delivery that the Government intend. Our reforms are about creating a level playing field across the country to give certainty to communities and developers about the process their applications will follow. We recognise the vital role that planning committees play in providing local democratic oversight for important development decisions in their area. Our reforms were a key measure in the Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025 and are intended to support planning committees in this crucial role so that they can be effective as possible.

[Paul Holmes]

I thank the Minister for giving way and I will not intervene on her any further. She talks about giving people certainty, but this Government could have created certainty by standardising the planning system in favour of councillors making the decisions that they were sent to local councils to make. Does she agree that the reason the Government have not done that is because they have made a political decision to take that power away?

[Sally Jameson]

I do not agree with that. Extensive consultation was done around this policy before it was brought in—in fact, I believe there were three rounds of consultation.

The national scheme of delegation, which will come into force this Sunday, will allow committees to focus on the larger and more complex development proposals that really require member input. The applications that matter most to communities are those that will deliver the kind of development that local people desperately want to see. We also want to ensure that skilled planning officers in councils are trusted and empowered to make decisions on more applications more quickly to ensure that development is brought forward in the right place at the right time.

The national scheme of delegation will mean that officers will spend less time and resource preparing for committee meetings for smaller applications, speeding up decision-making processes more broadly and freeing up time to focus on larger and more complex applications. It will also provide greater clarity and consistency across the country about who in a local planning authority will determine applications. Irrespective of whether a decision is made by an officer or a planning committee, the important thing is that both are working to serve the interests of their community.

I want to thank the hon. Member for Didcot and Wantage (Olly Glover), who praised his council’s record on planning, and I hear the concerns he has raised. As I have said, I will make sure that they are fed back.

Lord Mandelson Humble Address: Government Response

Paul Holmes Excerpts

Monday 1st June 2026 Commons Chamber

[Alex Burghart (Brentwood and Ongar) (Con)]

I thank the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister for advance sight of his statement. If the story in The Times is to be believed, he may be positioning himself to be the chief successor to the Prime Minister.

I also thank the right hon. Gentleman for giving me advance sight of the material that was published today, which I was fortunate enough to see this morning. However, it is important to put on record that only a very few Members of this House were able to see it this morning. It was available at 9.30 am, yet it was published only at 2 pm, so here we are today with hon. Members not having had a chance to read it and yet being expected to ask the right hon. Gentleman questions. I know the response will be that we are going to have a general debate on Wednesday, but as Government Members will know, if the Minister chooses not to take interventions in a general debate, there is no scrutiny at all. At worst, this is obfuscation; it is an attempt to deny scrutiny in a way that is unnecessary. The documents should have been published at 9.30 this morning in advance of this statement.

[Paul Holmes (Hamble Valley) (Con)]

It was on the news!

[Alex Burghart]

It was on the news. The case of Peter Mandelson’s appointment remains of the utmost national importance simply because it touches on national security and on the Prime Minister’s honesty, integrity and competence. I want to make two basic points about the material before us today: the first is about disclosure, and the second about the process by which Peter Mandelson was appointed.

On disclosure, although we have a huge number of documents, it is clear that very many are missing. Some have been withheld, some have been lost, and it is clear that some have probably been destroyed. Because of the approach the Government are taking, however, it is impossible for hon. Members to know which documents fall into which category. We are told that the Metropolitan police has requested that certain documents be retained, but the Government have refused to tell us which documents are being retained.

I respect the fact that the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister has told us about three broad categories now—this is progress. We did ask for those categories some time ago and were told that we could not have them, but it turns out that we can have them. We know there is no good legal basis for the Government not to disclose to this House which documents are being withheld. The Government should tell us. Indeed, it would be possible for them to disclose those documents to the ISC or to certain Members of the House on Privy Council terms. Again, this is obfuscation. It is an unnecessary attempt to defer or deny scrutiny, and the Humble Address did not allow for the Government to redefine the request in this way. If the Government wish to retain documents because the Met police has asked them to do so, they should come back to the House and change the terms of the Humble Address. They have not done that and, consequently, they risk being in contempt.

Some Ministers have duly handed over their WhatsApp messages; it is clear that some have not. Are we to believe that there was no WhatsApp exchange at all between the Prime Minister and Peter Mandelson? We know that there was, because it has been reported in the press, and yet those messages reported in the press do not appear in the release today. It is clear that some messages have gone missing.

It is also the case that, in all these documents, the Prime Minister’s presence is almost non-existent. Despite the fact that he was appointing a man to be head of our most senior mission, we have almost nothing in his name. It is as though somehow he appointed Peter Mandelson as ambassador without leaving any documentary trace of that decision at all. It really beggars belief.

Take, for example, the former Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, well known to be a friend and ally of Mandelson. He appears to have submitted a nil return on his WhatsApp messages. I hope the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister will tell us why. Why was it that there were never any messages? That seems unlikely. Was it that those messages have been deleted? The House has a right to know. The House has a right to know in each case whether information has gone missing or it has not been handed over.

We know that Peter Mandelson has refused to hand over his phone—it is in the document. We know that he was asked to give over his phone on 31 March, some time after the Humble Address. He has declined to do so, and it is simply not acceptable that the Government should allow this to pass without some sort of pushback. The Government has within their power the opportunity to take legal action to recover the exit payment they gave to Peter Mandelson if he is not playing ball with the Humble Address.

There is then the matter of redactions. There are acres and acres of white space, a constellation of asterisks—perhaps all too appropriate for a Labour document. It is clear from the reports in the press that the ISC has had serious concerns about the redaction process. I listened to what the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister said, and I will listen with interest to what members of the Committee say in a moment. There are a huge number of redactions under the heading “Third Party”. On what grounds have those redactions been made? For example, on page 251 of part III, Mandelson refers to someone who is “currently staying” with him in Government property. This name is redacted. Why has it been redacted? Why cannot the House be told who was staying in Government property with the ambassador?

On the national security vetting material, it seems once again that the Government are happier to provide The Guardian with more information than they are prepared to provide to Parliament. Preparation of the security vetting document for publication appeared in recess, leaked by someone in Government who was familiar with it, and then we have seen that The Guardian has multiple sources saying that concerns were raised by the vetting agency about Peter Mandelson’s foreign contacts with the Chinese Minister, with Oleg Deripaska, with Tamir Hayman and so on. There were multiple sources, and yet we are being asked to believe that this information was only seen by a tiny handful of people within Government. Someone somewhere is not being frank with us.

If we had time, and we will have time on Wednesday, we could talk about the concerning information about Chagos. We could talk about the fact that Peter Mandelson, after he had been appointed, asked whether he could do paid work in Shanghai on a private basis. We could talk about the fact that Peter Mandelson wrote to the then Foreign Secretary saying,

“if you were minded to appoint me I would make sure you never regret it.”

The truth is that we must return once again to the process by which Peter Mandelson was appointed. Everything in the documents released today shows that the Prime Minister did not follow the instructions he was given by the then Cabinet Secretary on 11 August 2024. He was told to get security vetting done before the appointment was confirmed, which he did not do. He was asked to do that because the Prime Minister had been provided with a due diligence document by the Cabinet Office that said that Peter Mandelson had an ongoing friendship with Epstein after he had been sent to prison, that he had been a director of a Russian defence company that had supplied arms to Putin during his invasion of Crimea, and that he had maintained unhealthy business relations in China.

Despite this, the Prime Minister did not get the security vetting done before he made the appointment: he went ahead and made it anyway. The rest of the system was then scrabbling around afterwards to try to make up for the error, but it was the Prime Minister’s error. It was clear that due diligence was not followed. It is a failure that is visible from space, it is a failure that will define this Prime Minister’s premiership and it is a failure that will be written as his political epitaph.

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[Darren Jones]

I thank my hon. Friend for his excellent work in this area. The Government have learned a great deal from his expertise. The House knows that this area sits alongside other areas—non-corporate communications channels, peerage removal in the House of Lords, lobbying, transparency and the work of the Ethics and Integrity Commission—as a portfolio of work that the Government are in the process of reviewing. Now that we have completed the publication of the second tranche of these documents, we will want to accelerate our work on those subsequent areas of review. I look forward to coming back to the House with an update in due course.

[Paul Holmes]

The Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister is well known for being courteous and passionate at the Dispatch Box, and I am a fan. [Hon. Members: “Hear, Hear.”] This is where I get to the bad part: he is not necessarily known for answering everybody’s questions when they ask them. On the question asked by the Father of the House, my right hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh), will the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister commit to opening the debate on Wednesday and, with the leave of the House, closing it, so that every Member of this House can ask him questions?

[Darren Jones]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, and I would not want to displease a fan with an inadequate performance from the Dispatch Box. We have considered whether I should open and close the debate on Wednesday, which would be unusual, but we have decided instead that my colleague the Paymaster General and Minister for the Cabinet Office, my right hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen (Nick Thomas-Symonds), will open the debate. I will be here for the entirety of the debate, and I will certainly do my best to answer all the questions in closing it.

Points of Order

Paul Holmes Excerpts

Wednesday 29th April 2026 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I am not quite sure that that is a point of order for me—[Interruption.] You are trying to correct the record on a matter of political judgment. If somebody has inadvertently misled the House, it is for them to correct the record, not me, and I certainly do not want to reopen the questions that we have just closed. Thank you for bringing that matter to the attention of the House—it will now be in Hansard.

[Paul Holmes (Hamble Valley) (Con)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. How do I gain your advice on a point of order that is inadvertently misleading about what the Leader of the Opposition said? The Leader of the Opposition—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. That is danger with what I have started. We have had some very serious points of order; let us leave it with those serious points of order. We do not have the time to play around.

Lord Mandelson Humble Address: Government Response Update

Paul Holmes Excerpts

Monday 27th April 2026 Commons Chamber

[Darren Jones]

I am not quite clear what the question was in relation to the Humble Address. In relation to the Committee of Privileges motion before the House tomorrow, I refer to my previous answer.

[Paul Holmes (Hamble Valley) (Con)]

Last week, I asked the Prime Minister if he would publish his decision note on the box note given to him on 11 November from Simon Case. The Prime Minister said he could not remember the answer in that box note, and in the debate last week, the Minister himself said that redactions are only in black. The decision response on the box note has been left blank. Was there a decision, why has it not been published and will the Minister now undertake to publish the decision on that request from Simon Case, because this House and I believe that it will be fundamental to see whether the Prime Minister is actually telling the truth?

[Darren Jones]

I am happy to reconfirm that all redactions are in black in the documents that are being published in the Humble Address tranches. All documents that the Government hold in relation to that period of time have been published in the first tranche. Of course, decisions are communicated sometimes orally and sometimes in writing. The hon. Gentleman also asked me specifically about Simon Case’s advice and the process that was followed subsequently. I refer him to the letter published this afternoon from the previous Cabinet Secretary, who confirmed to the Prime Minister that due process had been followed.

Peter Mandelson: Government Appointment

Paul Holmes Excerpts

Tuesday 21st April 2026 Commons Chamber

[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?

[Paul Holmes (Hamble Valley) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend will remember that I asked the Prime Minister yesterday about the box note of 11 November 2024, in which Simon Case recommended that vetting be gone through before the appointment was made. The Prime Minister’s decision note did not include the Prime Minister’s decision, which has been redacted from the conditions of the Humble Address. Does my right hon. Friend think that the redacted information would show what the Prime Minister was trying to achieve by appointing Peter Mandelson without the appropriate vetting?

[Mrs Badenoch]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Why were the Prime Minister’s words redacted? These key pieces of information would help to solve this mystery—they would be much easier for us to understand than the words he gave at the Dispatch Box. I note that no Labour MPs have intervened on me, which is very unusual; when I am speaking in a debate, they are normally bobbing left, right and centre.

I am raising these concerns because of the seriousness of the situation the country is now in. With war in Europe, war in the middle east, a cost of living crisis and a global energy shock, we need a Prime Minister who has a grip on national security. Yet last week, the former Labour Defence Secretary and NATO Secretary-General, Lord Robertson, warned that the Prime Minister has shown “corrosive complacency” when it comes to defence. The same man who wrote the Prime Minister’s strategic defence review is now ringing the alarm bell to warn us of the grave consequences of the Government refusing to take the tough choices needed to increase defence spending.

This matters, because if we cannot trust our Prime Minister to tell the whole, full truth about this ambassadorial appointment—a key appointment in Britain’s national security architecture—it calls into question the assurances he gives us on everything else. It calls into question his promises to control taxes, which he has broken, his promises not to raise borrowing, which he has broken, and his promises to back business, protect our veterans, defend our farmers and prioritise growth, all of which he has broken. He has broken them because at his core, he is a man with no idea what he believes. Worse still, he appears to have no interest in doing the job of Prime Minister—just in being the Prime Minister. Curiosity is what drives serious leadership; without curiosity, problems are neither fully understood nor solved.

This whole affair just goes to show why this country is heading in such a woeful direction under the Prime Minister’s incurious regime. His defence yesterday summed it up: he said that no one told him and that he never thought to ask. This is, in his own words, incredible. However, even if we take the Prime Minister at his word—even if we believe the unbelievable—it is no better. He appointed Mandelson despite knowing that he was a threat to our national security; he said that due process was followed, having failed to follow that process himself; and he pressured the Foreign Office into signing off on this appointment. In 2022, the Prime Minister said:

“I believe that if you’re the leader, the buck stops with you. I will always stand up for my team, but I will also take responsibility for everything they do. That is what leadership is.”

How has he taken responsibility?

It is clear that the Prime Minister has no intention of facing up to his mistakes. It is clear now that he is not a leader and that he has no intention of doing the honourable thing.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jon Trickett]

Those two Prime Ministers in particular—the chaotic and the exotic—left this country in a disastrous situation. I do think that a Prime Minister who comes to the House and implies that he relies on a culture simply of process is mistaken. The Gordon Brown model, flawed as it was, will turn out to be far better than the one we have heard from this Prime Minister. I am sorry to say that, because I want to support a Labour Government who are effective, but that is the case. I saw it with my own eyes back then—I saw the vetting, the decisions, the pressure, and the tumult. I saw a Prime Minister struggling with their party to deliver a different kind of society and economy.

Let me turn to the present events and what we learned from Sir Olly today. There are a few things that matter. First, the security department tended towards refusing the vetting of Mandelson when Sir Olly first arrived, while others thought that he did not need vetting of any kind. Then, while the vetting process was going on, the Government appeared to proceed with the appointment of Mandelson, and even the King and the United States Administration were told that he would be the ambassador.

The British state then conspired to deliver a positive vetting outcome, because that is what they believed the Government wanted. It was expressed in repeated phone calls from the private office in No. 10, which I was very familiar with in the years I served in government, to Sir Olly’s private office. The witness we saw this morning looked credible and made a very serious case that he was under pressure to proceed.

[Paul Holmes]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Jon Trickett]

No, I will make progress; there are many Members on both sides wanting to speak. The hon. Member may well be pleased with some of the things I am going to say. I am developing an argument, and I want to proceed with it.

The question I have not heard answered is why a group of people in No. 10—possibly the Prime Minister as well—felt that that level of pressure should be placed on the Foreign Office in favour of appointing Mandelson. There are two possible answers, but I will focus on one. The political unit in No. 10, possibly the Prime Minister too, wanted Mandelson because he was their close political ally and because he was plugged into a vast international network of what we might call the billionaire class. The truth is that much of the nexus of wealth that Mandelson was plugged into—so was the US President, by the way—was centred around Epstein. Let me pause for a second to say that none of these facts would have emerged were it not for the courage, bravery and resistance of the women who were treated so appallingly on Epstein island.

Getting Mandelson into Washington as part of that network—a political network of billionaires—was of the highest priority. All this leaves a bad taste. The Government promised the people change, but the change that they sought was to further accelerate the integration of the British state and Government into the networks of the richest people. People in our country—certainly those in my constituency—did not vote for that. They wanted change in their ordinary lives: a better NHS, improvements to the cost of living and so on. We have a long way to go to deliver that. What we have delivered is a disaster with the appointment of Mandelson.

I have raised the question of unemployment four times in recent months. There is growing unemployment in our area. It is hard to see how the time that the Government spent ingratiating themselves to Washington helped the unemployed and poor.

Just think about Mandelson’s involvement with Russian and Chinese business. So obnoxious is China supposed to be that this place has banned all Chinese-based networks, as though they were the agencies of an enemy state. How can it be that Mandelson’s links were seen to be of such low risk? This House has spent literally hours discussing the appalling behaviour of Putin and Russia in relation to eastern Europe. All these things should have counted against Mandelson, but when they were weighed in the balance, they counted less than the opportunity that Mandelson offered of access to a network of people, which included the US President.

I will make one final point. Mandelson played a key role in a faction that sought to change the strategic direction of the Labour party and the Government. The truth is that they wanted to change the Labour party into something it never was.

--- Later in debate ---

[Matt Western]

I thank the hon. Gentleman, my friend. I was simply addressing the point made by the Leader of the Opposition, who suggested that the operation at No. 10 was the worst in living memory. It is quite obvious that that is absolutely not the case. We have had two very recent examples, in 2019-22 and then 2022-23, under Johnson and Truss.

I want to make it quite clear that the way I see it, the mistake that may have been made by No. 10 is the clear delegation to the Prime Minister’s chief of staff, who was at the heart of an inner circle in No. 10 that no longer exists of Peter Mandelson, Morgan McSweeney and Matthew Doyle. As has come to light just this morning, Matthew Doyle was also part of the problem.

[Paul Holmes]

There must be a reshuffle coming, because no one would seriously make a speech like this at such serious times. The hon. Gentleman says that the Prime Minister was a stickler for process and claims that the Prime Minister somehow delegated responsibility for the appointment. Why did the former Cabinet Secretary—the chief adviser to the Prime Minister and chief civil servant—give that advice in the box note? Will the hon. Gentleman defend the Prime Minister’s decision not to follow that advice from the person who was making the decisions?

[Matt Western]

I am not close to those operations. I have never been a Minister—that is the honest truth—and to answer the hon. Gentleman’s point, I do not wish to be one either. I am not close enough to that, so I cannot answer that honestly, but what I can say is that I heard from Sir Olly Robbins this morning about how he was leant on and also what documents he may have had access to, including the vetting report.

What we have heard today is that the chief of staff leant on the Foreign Office, whether it was about Matthew Doyle or the appointment of Peter Mandelson. That is the issue. The Prime Minister, in my experience of having known him since 2017, is absolutely as straight as a die. He may have accepted the advice and maybe that advice has now proven to be wrong, but he has been let down by those around him. He made a mistake. He understands and has accepted that.

Security Vetting

Paul Holmes Excerpts

Monday 20th April 2026 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

What happened in January was that developed vetting clearance was given by the Foreign Office. That was the simple fact of the matter. It was only last week that I found out the further circumstances that I have now set out to the House.

[Paul Holmes (Hamble Valley) (Con)]

In the box note to the Prime Minister dated 11 November 2024, the former Cabinet Secretary, Simon Case, advised the Prime Minister that before announcing a political appointee, he should get security clearance. The Prime Minister ignored that advice. The Prime Minister’s response in that box note is redacted, so I ask him a very simple question: what was his answer on that box note, and will he publish what he said?

[The Prime Minister]

I have made it clear that my position was that the appointment was subject to developed vetting. I cannot in all conscience remember what exactly has been redacted. [Interruption.] The hon. Member is asking me about what was in a redacted note. I understood that the process had been subject to developed vetting. That is why I asked Chris Wormald to look at the process and reference back to Simon Case.

Lord Mandelson

Paul Holmes Excerpts

Wednesday 4th February 2026 Commons Chamber

[Dr Scott Arthur (Edinburgh South West) (Lab)]

I have been waiting for three hours to speak in this debate, and I wanted to talk about consensus, but it seems that my speech comes just one place too late in the list.

I will start by following on from the point that the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) made about recovering Mandelson’s pay, or at least stopping the pay being awarded to him. My constituents in Edinburgh South West want to go further and recover Mandelson’s pension, too. I thank the Opposition for bringing forward this debate. It is right that we debate these issues; people in my constituency certainly expect us to.

On consensus, I think where we are at is that the SNP, the Greens and the Lib Dems back the original Humble Address. I am not sure whether Your Party backs it —perhaps the right hon. Gentleman was just speaking on his own behalf. The Conservatives seem to accept that their Humble Address was a little reckless, and they want to support the involvement of the ISC. The Government have now shown leadership and brought that in. I think that is where we are at. [Interruption.] Members can feel free to correct me. Do they want to correct me? I am happy to take an intervention.

I expected to hear a little more today about what Mandelson may or may not have been getting up to during the era when Alistair Darling and Gordon Brown were trying to save our economy. I have huge respect for Gordon Brown. He is a man of real integrity. Alistair Darling is a predecessor in my seat, and he was a man of great integrity and someone whom I really respected. I think we can all agree that Mandelson was the complete opposite of those two great men and political leaders of my era. I do not doubt that once the criminal investigation is completed, there will be the public inquiry that some people are talking about.

It is right that we have focused on Mandelson’s links with Epstein today. My hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Natalie Fleet) made absolutely clear why that is so important.

[Paul Holmes (Hamble Valley) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman has just said that he thinks it is absolutely right that this House focuses on Peter Mandelson’s links with Jeffrey Epstein, and I welcome him for suddenly coming to that conclusion. Can I therefore ask him why the Prime Minister felt it necessary to appoint Mandelson as the US ambassador when—we know this after this afternoon’s revelation—the Prime Minister knew that Mandelson still had a relationship with Epstein?

[Dr Arthur]

That is why I am here, in this debate. I want these documents released, so that we can understand what decisions were made.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Arthur]

I am grateful for the correction. Perhaps I was not listening quite as carefully as I should have, so I really do thank the hon. Lady.

I end by thanking our Front Benchers for listening to the arguments of Members from right across the Chamber, for showing a bit of leadership, and for hopefully bringing us together with some consensus.

[Paul Holmes]

The hon. Gentleman’s speech is coming across to me as quite miraculous, and not in a good way. He is claiming that his Front Benchers have shown leadership this afternoon. Let us remind the House exactly what has happened: his party’s leadership and Front Benchers have changed their amendment to the motion, because they knew that Government Members would not have voted for it.

[Dr Arthur]

Can we just reflect for a second? The original Humble Address was reckless. It was going to put information in the public domain that would have damaged our country. It could be argued that the original amendment was an overreaction to that, but we are getting to a good place now; we are reaching consensus.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Christopher Chope]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her intervention, and I am certainly not going to make any accusations about her owing anything to Peter Mandelson’s patronage. From what she says, it seems that she is going to join those of us in this House who are independently minded and express our views in a straightforward manner, but it is obvious that a lot of Labour Members who were elected in 2024 were chosen by panels that included Mandelson. This is not exclusively a problem for the Labour party; we must recognise that in our democracy the people who choose the candidates have enormous power, and if those people are corrupt—as has now been established was the case with Mandelson—that places in grave doubt the credibility of our democratic institutions.

[Paul Holmes]

According to reports, it is worse than that: Peter Mandelson had his fingertips throughout the whole of the Labour party, but also the Government. There are reports that after the Prime Minister had realised he had had a continuing relationship with Epstein, Mandelson was in No. 10 during the Cabinet reshuffle of 5 September, so he had a direct role in appointing half the Cabinet, has he not?

[Sir Christopher Chope]

These revelations keep coming, yet answers come there none. I hope that in due course we can pursue these points further with the Prime Minister when he next appears in the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Saqib Bhatti]

My right hon. Friend’s exasperation is exactly the exasperation that the British public will be feeling as they read the headlines. That is how they have felt as the stories have unfolded over the last few days and months.

This speaks to a fundamental point: the toxicity at No. 10. The rot starts at the top. Labour Members have the authority and the power to do something about this. The relationship that Mandelson was obvious to all of us. It was obvious to us when the Prime Minister appointed him to one of the most important positions in our country—and to a position in one of the most important capitals in the world—but the Prime Minister did it anyway, because he thought it was a risk worth taking.

[Paul Holmes]

In response to the intervention from my right hon. Friend Member for Wetherby and Easingwold (Sir Alec Shelbrooke), there is a key difference between this Prime Minister and former Labour Prime Ministers, in that Gordon Brown and Tony Blair appointed Peter Mandelson without knowing some of the connections that he had. The key difference is that this Prime Minister knew and still did it. There is still a Labour Prime Minister with integrity, and that is Gordon Brown, who actually took things to the police. This Prime Minister did no such thing.

--- Later in debate ---

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

The hon. Gentleman will have heard my earlier comment that it is a matter not for the Chair but for the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards if he has failed to declare interests during the debate.

[Paul Holmes]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Forgive me for detaining the House, but may I ask for your clarification on whether a Member saying that somebody in this House has been bought and paid for is in order?

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I did ask the Member to withdraw his comments. He now has the opportunity to do so.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alicia Kearns (Rutland and Stamford) (Con)]

“Liberation Day!”—that was how Mandelson described the day of Epstein’s release from prison for procuring children to be trafficked and raped. His next message was, “How is freedom feeling?” Epstein replied,

“she feels fresh, firm, and creamy”.

Mandelson’s next reply: “Naughty boy”.

We had not seen those emails, I admit, when the ambassador was appointed, but let us look at what we did know when he was appointed ambassador. We knew at that point that he had consoled this paedophile on his being found guilty and convicted of just one of the many crimes he committed. We also knew that while he was Deputy Prime Minister of this country and Business and Trade Secretary, and while he was carrying the flag of our great nation, he stayed in a convicted paedophile’s flat while on an official visit to New York. How dare he do that while representing this country! Did no one in the Cabinet Office or the Department for Business and Trade—no civil servant or political appointee —know that he had said, “No, I don’t need a hotel, thank you ever so much. I’m going to stay at my friend’s Epstein’s house. Oh, by the way, he happens to be in prison, but I’m going to stay at his house anyway”? There are serious questions about why he was not pursued for misconduct in public office at that point. No one can say that the Labour Government did not know, because I have been a civil servant; I knew where my Ministers were staying when they were abroad. I am not sure that they always wanted me to know, but I knew, and none of them would have ever done that. That is at the heart of the issue with the judgment of the Prime Minister.

On Monday, a Government Minister said that nobody objected when Mandelson was appointed. Look at Hansard: I remember objecting very clearly and repeatedly, because it was clear at that point that Mandelson had repeatedly said that Epstein did not deserve to be in prison, that this was an awful time for him, and how he cared about and was thinking about his good friend.

Why was there no investigation, and why was the vetting not done right? There is no question but that the vetting cannot have been conducted properly. I have been through vetting myself—not as a Minister, I accept, but as a civil servant. I have sat in a room with a rather elderly gentleman for two hours, being asked about my every sexual proclivity, when I lost my virginity, and whether I had taken drugs. I was asked about every single aspect of my life because both apolitical civil servants and politicians in this place should hold themselves accountable and be right for appointment to their role.

It is clear from the debate, and from the evidence put forward by my right hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Sir John Whittingdale), that the Prime Minister wanted this appointment made, and because the Prime Minister wanted Mandelson, Mandelson was going to be appointed. We will see when the docs are released how they were able to get around the official vetting, but that brings me to my concerns about another political appointment that was rushed through because the Prime Minister demanded it: that of Jonathan Powell, the National Security Adviser. There are significant concerns about his business interests. There are significant concerns in the House about the fact that there has been no scrutiny of him because he will not come before the House and give evidence. There is also significant concern about his relationships in China and around the world, yet he is permitted—again, while flying the flag of this nation—to conduct secret visits to China, where he met Wang Yi and other senior representatives. The British Government refused to put out any press notice explaining why the visit happened, or even that it happened at all.

[Paul Holmes]

As usual, my hon. Friend is making a good speech. I was a special adviser at the Cabinet Office—a great Department with great civil servants. She mentions the cases of Jonathan Powell, and of Lord Mandelson as Deputy Prime Minister. Does she agree that this backhanded way of conducting Government business, without officials present, puts pressure on our great civil servants, and places them in difficult situations? It is not how Government should be run.

[Alicia Kearns]

I entirely agree with my very good and hon. Friend. I was taken aback by the comments of the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, the right hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry), who sought to give us a lecture on how Government vetting is undertaken. She kept referring to fast-stream civil servants as those responsible for vetting. Fast stream is a mode of recruitment, not a type of civil servant. It felt as if she was trying to suggest that junior civil servants should take the can for the vetting process that was pursued. I very much hope that is not the case, because it is deeply inappropriate.

The commonality between the appointments of Lord Mandelson and Jonathan Powell is Morgan McSweeney, so I must ask whether Morgan McSweeney is the one who should be held accountable. At this point, it looks as if no one will be held accountable.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alicia Kearns]

Unfortunately, as Members must slowly learn, where there is a vacuum of silence in this place, our constituents, the great people of this country, see conspiracy, and sadly too often they are right. The Paymaster General has committed to get me answers to my letter, and although he is currently having a conversation with someone else, I gently encourage him that I would like answers to those questions on severance pay today from the Dispatch Box, because I raised the issue on Monday and have received no response. It is in the motion, so please can we have those answers?

I also want briefly to reflect on what has happened over the past week. On Sunday, the Labour party informed the media that it could not strip Mandelson of his membership of the Labour party—perhaps the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) would like to intervene on that, as I suspect he has something to say about the Labour party stripping people of their membership. On Monday, the Government told the House that they cannot legislate as that would not be appropriate or possible, and it was too difficult, despite the entire House offering to sit until 4 am to do so. We then had silence from the Government when Members of the House asked them to refer the matter to the police. It was clear from early doors that this was going to end with the police, and hopefully in our courts, as I have argued it should have done back in 2010.

[Paul Holmes]

My hon. Friend will recall that during various parliamentary debates in the Chamber on Peter Mandelson, and despite the Prime Minister knowing that he had that relationship, at one stage she and I asked the Minister the simple question of whether the Government would strip Lord Mandelson of the Labour Whip. That question was refused an answer, and they did not remove the Whip. Does that not show a constant lack of action from a Prime Minister who does not have a grip?

[Alicia Kearns]

One lesson of being in government—there are many—that I hope we have learned is that the writing is normally on the wall. It was very clear from early days that this man was going to let down our country, but those of us who criticised him were told, “This is imaginative; this is inspired. They are putting in place a man who can shake things up and make friends with Donald Trump.” Throughout his persistent behaviour, as more and more became clear, the Prime Minister could have taken decisive action. As I said, it has been clear for a long time that this was not going to end up just with Mandelson disgraced, or with us rightly saying that he should be removed from the other place; it is going to end up with him facing court, I hope. Let me be clear: malfeasance in public office is what he should be tried for, and that carries a life sentence. That is how severe are the crimes that he has been conducting, and I am ashamed that Gordon Brown raised the flag of warning and seems to have had nothing in response to his concerns.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Ward]

The release of information will be done in the way I have just set out. Either it will be done through the Cabinet Secretary working with independent lawyers or, if the material is deemed potentially to conflict with national security or foreign relations, it will be handed to the ISC, which is independent and can make a decision. To the point that my hon. Friend made earlier—this is really crucial—there will not be political involvement from Ministers or No. 10 in this process. The Cabinet Secretary and the ISC will work on it with lawyers.

[Paul Holmes]

I really must push the Minister, because he is giving conflicting messages. At one stage, he said that the direct contract award will be in scope of the ISC, without committing to any timescales. He has now said that the scope of the release of documents is a matter for the Cabinet Secretary, with no political involvement. As a political Minister, he has stood at the Dispatch Box to say that the direct contract award will be in scope. Will it be in scope or not?

[Chris Ward]

Any correspondence involving Peter Mandelson is within scope. As I say, that will be looked at by the Cabinet Secretary, who will make decisions with independent lawyers and working with the ISC.

Oral Answers to Questions

Paul Holmes Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd December 2025 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is right that harm from online gambling has surged—NHS referrals are up 91% in the past year. The decisions we made in the Budget mean investment in public services and lifting more than half a million children out of poverty, but we are working with industry to ensure that adverts do not exacerbate harm and, through our £26 million investment, helping the Gambling Commission to crack down on black market sites and illegal adverts to keep players safe.

[Paul Holmes (Hamble Valley) (Con)]

Q7. In 2020, the Justice Secretary said:“Criminal trials without juries are a bad idea”,and the Prime Minister himself has said that there should be “a right of trial by jury in all criminal cases”,but now they want to scrap trials by jury. With a Chancellor who cannot count and a Justice Secretary who has lost count of the number of people he has let out of prison, is it any wonder that the people of this country cannot ever again trust a single word this Prime Minister or Government say?

[The Prime Minister]

The Conservatives left a broken criminal justice system in which victims of rape and serious sexual violence wait three or four years for trial. Only this week I have heard further examples of 14-year-old and 16-year-old girls having to give evidence four years after the allegation. That is not justice for them, and I am determined that we will deal with that. As the hon. Gentleman well knows, of all criminal cases going to court, 90% have always been in the magistrates court and 10% go to the Crown court. Of that 10%, 7% of defendants plead guilty, which means that 3% of all criminal cases go forward for a jury trial—not all our cases. We are making sensible changes to ensure that victims get justice, which was denied to them under the failure left by the Conservatives.

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Paul Holmes Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Thursday 4th September 2025 Commons Chamber

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

My hon. Friend is right. One would think that the 1924 debate about bloodlines and pedigree as a basis for participation would no longer have any advocates, but it appears that a number of such advocates are left, a century later.

From the Parliament Act 1911 to the House of Lords Act 1999, the history of Lords reform is littered with examples of individual Members straining every sinew and making every different argument to try to resist reform. In 1911, Lord Curzon coined the term “the ditchers”—the Unionist peers who were to fight into the last ditch over the then Parliament Bill and whose efforts have acted as an effective block on further change. Today’s ditchers all sit on the Opposition Benches—

[Paul Holmes (Hamble Valley) (Con)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

I will give way to hear from one of the 2025 ditchers.

[Paul Holmes]

I guarantee to the Minister that, as a council estate boy from Lewisham, I am not someone who ever thought that my bloodline would get into the House of Lords—[Interruption.] One day!

I want to challenge the Minister about the points he has made about future reform. His party has a majority of 170, and we know that it won the general election. Why is he claiming that we are trying to block reform, which is completely untrue, while the Government are so lacking in ambition and do not have the courage or political will to bring a full package of reform to the House, which the Opposition might well support? What we are asking is why he is tinkering at the edges and then attacking us for not being in favour of reform, when he has refused to bring reform in the first place.

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

In respect of the hon. Gentleman’s bloodline getting to the House of Lords, I am sure it is only a matter of time before we see that.

In terms of the antics of the Opposition, I do not know whether the Conservative parliamentary party in the Commons speaks to peers, but it should talk to them about their behaviour on the Bill and other Bills that they have blocked and blocked and blocked. I understand that the Leader of the Opposition is apparently spending time to come up with credible policies—no one will believe that the Conservative party is in favour of wholesale reform of the House of Lords.

It has been more than 25 years since Parliament agreed to end the hereditary route, with a supposedly temporary arrangement to retain 92 hereditary peers. It is almost 200 years since the Great Reform Act 1832, which took away the hold of the great aristocratic families, opening up the franchise and taking their presence in electoral politics from monopoly to anomaly. Nonetheless, the hereditary principle remains in our Parliament: sometimes as symbol of tradition, sometimes as obstacle to real reform—as Conservative peers have recently demonstrated.

There is a real opportunity today for the shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. He has protested several times about newly found passion for wholesale Lords reform—

--- Later in debate ---

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

I can help the hon. Gentleman out on one issue: I can reassure him that he is most definitely awake; this is most definitely reality. Where I am afraid I will fail is in explaining the priorities on the Conservative Benches. The hon. Gentleman is quite right to draw attention to that.

[Paul Holmes]

I thank the Minister genuinely for giving way again; he is courteous and gentlemanly in doing so. I promise that this will be my last intervention. Could I just ask him about the difference between the problems he is discussing and what the Bill will enact, where a hereditary peer is not given membership of the House of Lords, but is still given the title and privilege of being a peer of the realm?

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

Quite simply, the amendment is trying to create the title as an honour without the actual membership. That is the difference. I had an exchange earlier about there being no barriers to life peerage; that is not saying no barrier to the title. The life peerage, if granted, obviously confers both the title and the participation. That is the difference between the two.

On the point about the amendment being unnecessary, as my noble Friend Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent stated in the other place—[Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] Family connections exist on the Government Benches, as well. The UK already has an extensive and long-standing honours system, which recognises and promotes the outstanding contributions made by individuals the length and breadth of the country and from all sections of society.

As has been said, being appointed as a peer is an honour, but it also brings the responsibility to contribute to the work of the second Chamber. The Government have a manifesto commitment to introduce a participation requirement to ensure that all peers contribute to the work of the other place—an approach that has received widespread support from peers. I certainly do not think that creating another layer to that system to provide for the statutory creation of non-sitting peers is in keeping with the mood of either House. I therefore urge the House to reject Lords amendment 3.

I turn finally to an issue on which I hope there will be cross-party consensus, which is resignation by power of attorney. Lords amendments 4, 5, 6, 7 and 9 would allow the House of Lords to set out arrangements for resignation from the other place where a peer lacks capacity, including when someone is acting under a lasting power of attorney. During the passage of the Bill in the other place, it became clear that there was considerable support to address in legislation the long-standing concern that Members who lack capacity were unable to resign from the House of Lords, and the Government have listened and acted. Following discussions with peers across the House of Lords, the Leader of the House of Lords brought forward these amendments to address the matter. What they make clear is that a notice to resign from the other place may be given and signed by a person acting on behalf of a peer who lacks capacity, providing that it is done in accordance with the Standing Orders of the House.

The amendments relating to resignation would come into force on Royal Assent to ensure that families who wish to avail themselves of these new arrangements do not have to wait until the end of a parliamentary Session to do so. It seeks to provide certainty to peers who have raised this issue. It is a solution that has received unanimous cross-party support in the other place, and I hope that the shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster will confirm the support for that amendment.

This a short and focused Bill. It delivers on a manifesto commitment to immediately remove the right of hereditary peers to sit and vote in the House of Lords. It is not personal, and nor is it a comment on the contribution that hereditary peers have made. The Government are grateful for their service in the other place, and I stress again that there are no bars on them returning as life peers if their party leaders wish to nominate them. However, the time has now come to deliver this immediate reform, so that we can move on to further reform of the other place, as set out in our manifesto, and deliver on what was promised in July last year. I therefore urge the House to support the Government’s position.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alex Burghart]

I do not recall us saying that it was a terrible idea. I distinctly remember many Conservative peers speaking in favour of it actually, but that is part of the joy of the independence of the upper House, which, as I will shortly explain, risks being undermined by this legislation.

What the Government are now trying to do is remove a group of public servants who have done nothing wrong and who have simply served their country and continue to do so. The reason they are being removed is very clear: the Government cannot rely on their votes. Consequently, they are attempting to take a group of opponents out of Parliament by Act of Parliament. This is simply Cromwellian. I am not suggesting that the Prime Minister is a second Cromwell. Cromwell was a great man—a “brave, bad man” as Clarendon said—while the Prime Minister is just a man.

I do not believe that the Government have Cromwellian intent. They are doing something clumsy and foolish, but—I mean this seriously—what they are doing will set a precedent. I do not believe it is a route that the Paymaster General would follow, but the people who come after him may be much more like Cromwell than he. [Interruption.] There is laughter from behind the Paymaster General, but I want us to think seriously about what future Parliaments might look like. If the precedent is set that political opponents can be removed by Act of Parliament, someone in the future, even if maybe not tomorrow, in two years or in 10 years, will point back to this—I guarantee it. It does not need to happen this way.

We have a group of people already in the House of Lords and already doing a job. Take Viscount Stansgate, who is an excellent Member of the House of Lords and Deputy Speaker. As I am sure hon. Members know, there are 65 hereditary peers who sit on parliamentary Committees, so this change will be enormously and unnecessarily disruptive to the working of the House. It would be much better to leave them in place and let them do their jobs.

[Paul Holmes]

On that point, I think of peers such as Patrick Courtown, the Opposition Deputy Chief Whip, who has served in the other House since 1975 in a number of ministerial capacities. That is because of where he was born, but there is a risk in seeing Members laugh about rich and privileged hereditary peers. This is not “Downton Abbey” any more, and many of these people have given their life to this Parliament. Does my hon. Friend agree that should the Government get their way this afternoon, there needs to be an urgent conversation about support for those hereditary peers who may suffer after losing their positions in the other House? The Minister raises his eyebrows, but many peers in that House are not stately home owners but people who have given their life and position to this Parliament, and they will need support going forward.

[Alex Burghart]

I am interested in my hon. Friend’s excellent point, and I hope the Minister will respond to that in his closing remarks.

What we will see is the removal of a group of public servants to make way for Labour placemen and Labour stooges—a huge act of patronage. I do not think anybody here believes that will improve scrutiny. It is just a numbers game. It is simply an attempt to give the Government a more compliant majority in the House of Lords, which they do not need. The Government will be able to get their business through the House of Lords anyway, so this is an unnecessary change that, despite the comments of the Paymaster General, belittles the contribution of the peers who already sit. It belittles their service, and it does not need to be done.

I turn to Lords amendment 2, on pay. I was interested by the Paymaster General’s response and listened closely to the detail he set out. There is an important principle here. We ask people to serve as Ministers of the Crown, and I think most of our constituents would agree that those Ministers should be paid. Members of the House of Lords are on no salary. They can collect their £361 a day if they turn up, but let us assume that one such Member is an unpaid Minister in the Home Office. They will find that on many working days they will be expected to travel—perhaps to Northern Ireland, Scotland or the north of England—and they will not be able to collect their allowance. On top of that, for taking on that important, unpaid job, they will also, for understandable reasons, have to give up their outside interests.

That means simply that many people in the House of Lords can afford to take ministerial jobs only if they are already of considerable means. I just do not think that the Paymaster General, in his heart of hearts, wants to see the perpetuation of that. If he does not agree with the Lords amendment, will he confirm whether the Government intend to bring forward comprehensive plans on that?

I will correct the Paymaster General on one small point of fact. He said that if Ministers in the House of Lords were paid, we would need to reduce the number of Ministers in the House of Lords as only a certain number of Ministers can be paid.

--- Later in debate ---

[Shaun Davies]

My hon. Friend makes a valid point. A point that has been made by other Members, including from the Opposition Benches, is that there is nothing stopping the Leader of the Opposition putting forward any hereditary peers for life peerages.

[Paul Holmes]

The hon. Gentleman says that the Leader of the Opposition could give those peerages, but he will be aware that that is organised through the usual channels, in conjunction with the Prime Minister and members of the governing party. We would be a lot more comfortable talking about the replacement of hereditary peers if the Minister had come with any clarity on the conditions that may be set going forward, but we have had none of that. I challenge the Minister to say that hereditary peers can be put in as life peers. We would like some more information on what we are getting.

[Shaun Davies]

The hon. Gentleman makes an interesting point. This is about priorities and choices. The Leader of the Opposition will be able to nominate people this year and next year—and maybe the year after, if she is still in place. She can make a decision on whether to put forward a hereditary peer or someone else during that spell.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

Fine, let me put it this way: the hon. Gentleman is supporting the position that his peers are taking, which is in breach of that convention.

I will give the hon. Gentleman another chance, because he is trying to put a defence up on that particular precedent. He supported the closing down of Parliament in 2019, and now he sits here lecturing me on precedent. I think it is best not to take any lectures from the shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster on that.

There was an opportunity for the Opposition this afternoon. They did not have to join in with the filibustering tactics that have been used, with tens of hours of debate on this very narrow Bill. The shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster could today have not joined in, but he will lead his troops through the Lobby to continue to try to block these reforms. That is what this is all about. It is not, as he pretended, about trying to improve the Bill. It is not that those on the Tory Front Bench are secretly in favour of radical reform, and this is not radical enough for them. They are trying to wreck this Bill, and that is exactly what he will do as he goes through the Lobby with his troops later.

[Paul Holmes]

The Minister may remember that at the beginning of the debate, I asked him to bear in mind the circumstances of some of the people who have given their life to this place over the last 25 or 30 years and are not in the best financial health. We are not in “Downton Abbey”—the film had its premiere last night. If he makes the decision to get rid of hereditary peers immediately, what support will be put in place by the House authorities, which I know he would want to work with, and the Government to ensure that those people are looked after? May I push him to consider the more practical proposal of waiting until the end of the Session, rather than immediately getting rid of the hereditary peers?

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

It is not my decision; it was the decision of the British people at the last general election in supporting our manifesto. If the Bill gets on to the statute book, hereditary peers will leave at the end of this parliamentary Session. I repeat the point we have heard throughout the debate: there is no barrier to them becoming life peers. Indeed, there is no barrier to them standing to become Members of this House if they wish to continue their public service.

Ministerial Code: Policy Announcements

Paul Holmes Excerpts

Tuesday 29th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

We now come to Paul Holmes.

[Paul Holmes (Hamble Valley) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Speaker—there I was ready to defend your honour, Sir. Even after your ruling yesterday, the Government made more announcements on the BBC this morning concerning health services, so has the Paymaster General asked his advisers at the Cabinet Office whether they think the Chancellor or any other Minister has broken the ministerial code? If he has not asked for that advice, why not?

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

Come on. The Conservative party, which showed zero respect for the ministerial code in office, trying to put questions like that is appalling—it is double standards. [Interruption.]