Lord Mandelson

Saqib Bhatti Excerpts

Wednesday 4th February 2026 Commons Chamber

[Dr Kieran Mullan (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bolsover (Natalie Fleet). Actually, in writing my speech, I had people like her in mind: the Labour MPs who I know are genuinely passionate about tackling violence against women and girls. They use that passion to criticise us, and what we did or did not do in government—and I respect that—and sometimes to criticise their own Government. It is those MPs that the Prime Minister is trying to throw under the bus today. It is those MPs who I do not think would ever have agreed to the judgment the Prime Minister made, that it was “worth the risk”. This is not some hidden or secret position that the Government took; a Minister said on the record in an interview that the decision to appoint Peter Mandelson was “worth the risk”.

What does that mean? What are we talking about here? What was it worth? It was worth disrespecting, denigrating and betraying the victims of Jeffrey Epstein by appointing someone who chose to associate with a convicted paedophile. That is the risk that the Prime Minister chose to take. I do not think it is a risk that the hon. Member for Bolsover would have taken, or the former Deputy Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner), or many of those other Members; they would have made a different judgment.

There is a pattern here, and those of us on the Opposition side of the House know what it is like. When Prime Ministers are weak and struggling to maintain their authority, they will go further and further in doing things that their own Members do not want them to do, in order to save their own skin. Members can come to regret supporting that.

[Saqib Bhatti (Meriden and Solihull East) (Con)]

My hon. Friend talks about it being worth the risk, but this is not just about denigrating those victims; it is also about those Labour Back Benchers that the Prime Minister is marching up the hill. It is worth the risk for him to march them up the hill, then do a U-turn later and finally admit after many months that he knew all along?

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[Saqib Bhatti (Meriden and Solihull East) (Con)]

It is a great honour to follow my hon. Friend, although I have to say that was one of his shortest speeches. We come here for a serious matter of the utmost gravity. I have heard a number of good speeches from all parts of the House, including Members on the Government Benches. I commend all those Members who have stood up and said that they are not happy with the Government’s position. That is not an easy thing to do. I am pleased that there is now a manuscript amendment that will force the Government’s hand and ensure that the ISC has a pivotal and critical role.

A number of observations have been made today, some of which I agreed with and some of which I did not. I did agree with a great many of them, but a couple of Members said that the Government had demonstrated leadership in getting to this point. They did not demonstrate leadership. They got here because they were dragged here; they got here because there had been a dump of documents by the Department of Justice, the Leader of the Opposition tabled a motion that forced their hand, and they finally had to confront the fact that Peter Mandelson had a relationship with Epstein for much longer than many of us knew—although certainly the Prime Minister knew, as we found out earlier today. The idea that the Government have demonstrated leadership is for the birds.

I have heard Members on both sides of the House talk about the victims of Epstein, but I say to Labour Members that those are just words if they are not followed up with action. Although the ISC amendment is important, it is not the end of the journey. For months the Conservatives have been pushing for clarity so that we can discover the truth about what was going on with Lord Mandelson’s appointment. This goes to the heart of our politics. What did we find out today when the Leader of the Opposition challenged the Prime Minister? He had run out of road and finally had to come clean about the fact that he knew about this relationship. As for the idea that we need to know the depth of the relationship, let me ask Labour Members this: how deep does a relationship with a paedophile need to be before it becomes eligible for declaration?

[Dr Mullan]

I think the fact that the Prime Minister resisted giving that answer for so long proves that he knows it is incredibly damaging to his Government that he did not want people to know that he had known and appointed Mandelson anyway.

[Saqib Bhatti]

I agree with my hon. Friend. We were sitting together earlier in the debate and reflecting on some of the speeches. I think it was the Health Secretary who talked about the “toxic culture” at No. 10. The amendment was a demonstration of that toxic culture. It was not tabled for the victims of Jeffrey Epstein; it was tabled to protect the Prime Minister.

[Sir Alec Shelbrooke (Wetherby and Easingwold) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that focusing on the angle of what Mandelson did as a Minister in releasing secrets and trying to make money from them is still deflecting from the fact that it was felt to be “worth the risk” to send to America as our ambassador a man who was associating with a convicted and, at that time, released paedophile?

[Saqib Bhatti]

We should all share anger about that, because it speaks to a rot that, as we are finding out, has infected our politics and Government—Labour Government—in this country for decades. I understand that people make mistakes, in all parts of the House, but this is of such gravity that it speaks to a corruption that we need to get to the heart of. What my right hon. Friend has just said is extremely important, because this is one issue involving corruption, but we cannot get away from the fact that Mandelson had a role at every echelon of the Labour party’s journey—whether it was new Labour before we came to power in 2010 or the “new new Labour” that is now in charge; whether it was helping in the selection of candidates, or—Members are shaking their heads. I am more than happy to take an intervention.

[Johanna Baxter]

I thank the hon. Member for giving way, because I would not want any Member of this House to inadvertently besmirch any other Member through misleading information. I served on Labour’s national executive committee for 10 years before entering this place, and Peter Mandelson had no role whatsoever in the selection of Labour candidates during that time. I make that point so that Members are aware of exactly what they are talking about.

[Saqib Bhatti]

I am glad to say that I did not mention any single Member of the House, so I am happy that the hon. Lady has put that on that record, but I do not trust Mandelson—[Interruption.] I am responding to the hon. Lady’s intervention. I do not trust Mandelson following what he has done, and I do not know how far his reach was in this Government or in that party. I do not trust him because we know he had a very close relationship—

[Johanna Baxter]

indicated dissent.

[Saqib Bhatti]

The hon. Member can shake her head all she wants; we know that Mandelson had a close relationship with Morgan McSweeney, the Prime Minister’s chief of staff. The Labour party has not even started to address that point about the chief of staff. I hope the hon. Lady is right, by the way, but if she is not and documents do come to the fore, I am sure we will come back to this House to scrutinise which Members he had a hand in appointing.

[Stuart Anderson]

On that point, it is being reported in the mainstream media that Mandelson had a hand in recruiting candidates for the Labour party. The mainstream media are reporting that; they will have evidence to back that up, so there will be candidate selections that he had a hand in. It is also rumoured that he has been involved in Cabinet reshuffles, so he has had a far greater reach than probably most of you realise, and any defence of that now is indefensible.

[Saqib Bhatti]

I could not have said it better myself—although I might not have used the word “you”. It is important to recognise the reach that Mandelson had, how he was enabled, and the fact that, at every step of the way, there was no regard for Jeffrey Epstein’s victims. That is a really important point, because there has been a lot of obfuscation today. We have had to drag the Government into tabling the new amendment so that they will now release the documents to the ISC.

Hon. Friends have made important points about the role of the ISC. I say again that this is not the end of the journey; Labour Members have a role to play in doing right by the victims. What we know is that Mandelson was an enabler, so anyone who has enabled Mandelson needs to take a long, hard look at themselves.

[Dr Luke Evans]

Is the wider point not that, if the Prime Minister had been duped, he would have released the papers back in September when we had the Standing Order No. 24 debate or put them out there now, rather than leaving it until this debate forced his hand? The only reason some papers are being released is that his hand has been forced by the Leader of the Opposition. Does my hon. Friend not think that is bizarre?

[Saqib Bhatti]

Well, it is not bizarre, because we have been here many times before. The Government have been dragged along time after time, scandal after scandal. I say to Government Back Benchers: this is a Prime Minister who is flailing. He has admitted, after months and months of pushing, that he knew—he knew about the relationship that Mandelson had with Epstein, and yet he thought it was a risk worth taking anyway.

I made this point earlier, but that “risk” was not just in denigrating the experience of the victims; it was in marching all those Labour Members up the hill and risking their careers. We are Members of Parliament; it is okay that we care about our careers, wherever they may end up, but the truth is that the Prime Minister did not care about them. That journey is not over yet, because he is going to use those people over and over again; he will throw other people under the bus before he throws his chief of staff under the bus—but that will happen too, I can almost guarantee it.

[Sir Alec Shelbrooke]

Does my hon. Friend think that we will now start to understand how Mandelson had such a level of influence that, having had to resign from Government for not declaring six-figure-sum loans, having had to resign from Government for trying to flog passports, and having gone off to the EU and faced all the allegations about that, he was brought back into Government and put into the House of Lords? There must have been something that made people think it was a good idea to bring him back again and again and again.

[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.

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[Saqib Bhatti]

My hon. Friend always makes excellent points. I was going to talk about Gordon Brown later, but I will do so now. He raised the question back in September. He wanted to know what had gone on, and he was batted away. Has the Minister asked the Cabinet Secretary why the former Prime Minister was batted away? Did that former Prime Minister not have enough respect in No. 10 to get a legitimate answer about what went down? The public deserve to know, and this House deserves to know.

I want to make another point about integrity, which was raised by a number of Members earlier, including my right hon. Friend the Member for Skipton and Ripon (Sir Julian Smith). The Prime Minister, by his own admission, has called into question the integrity of every Member of this House. We all know that trust in politicians is at an all-time low—we see it on the doorstep and in our inboxes. I was at a birthday party with my four-and-a-half-year-old son at the weekend. I was chatting to some parents, and the Mandelson headlines came up. I had to say, “Look, it’s not normal for a billionaire to fly politicians out. We have a pretty strict expenses regime following the expenses scandal.” We cannot move left or right, yet the British public do not trust us, because they think that we take them for granted. I had to explain to those parents that it is not normal to be invited to islands and to have luxuries thrown at you. This was not normal behaviour, yet the Prime Minister knew about this relationship and let it happen. That is a really important point.

[Harriet Cross (Gordon and Buchan) (Con)]

As my hon. Friend says, the Prime Minister knew, but he also stood at the Dispatch Box in September and said that he had “full confidence” in Peter Mandelson—Lord Mandelson—knowing what he knew. Does my hon. Friend not find that extraordinary?

[Saqib Bhatti]

I find it disgusting. What Epstein did was absolutely disgusting in its own right: he trafficked, he was a child sex offender, and in many ways he was a coward in how he left this world. I wish he had faced the full force of the law. The hon. Member for Bolsover (Natalie Fleet) talked about enablers and the role that powerful men played. I say to Labour Members that they are at a crossroads. If they really care about Epstein’s victims, they need to ask how this was allowed to happen.

By the way, it is not just about Mandelson and Epstein. My hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Stamford (Alicia Kearns) made a point about Bill Gates. I watched the video of Melinda Gates yesterday, and I was talking to my wife about how horrible it must have been to see the emails and what he was up to. My hon. Friend also mentioned Richard Branson. The reality is that there is clearly a culture of men who thought they were above the law, and the DOJ is grappling with that issue over in America.

We have talked about some very important things in today’s debate, for which I commend hon. Members, but we have to be honest about the fact that this matter came on to our shores. It is possible that there are victims whom we still do not know about, and that criminal investigations still need to happen. I need an assurance from Ministers that if that comes to the fore, the Government will act quickly to make sure that criminal investigations are started. The public require that to help us on the journey towards rebuilding trust, and we should not underestimate the need for that.

[Joe Robertson]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful, wide-ranging speech, and I am sure that more details will come out. Does it not come down to the fact that the Prime Minister appointed Peter Mandelson as ambassador to the US despite knowing that he had had a long-standing friendship with a prolific convicted paedophile, to the extent that he had stayed in that paedophile’s house while he was serving prison time? That in itself is sickening and shocking. Not only should people not be defending Peter Mandelson—and they are not—but nobody should be defending the Prime Minister for his sickening conduct.

[Saqib Bhatti]

The Prime Minister has brought his judgment into question. The Opposition have been saying that for a couple of years—Oppositions do that—but on this issue, he has marched everyone up the hill and Ministers have gone out to defend him on this issue time and again. His position really is now untenable. I guarantee Labour Members that when they go home and talk to their constituents, they will have to answer questions about why the Prime Minister allowed this to happen.

[Graham Stuart]

My hon. Friend may have heard the powerful speech by the hon. Member for Leeds East (Richard Burgon) earlier in the day about factionalism in the Labour party. The Prime Minister not only appointed Peter Mandelson to the post of ambassador knowing, as he declared today, what he knew, but he previously brought him in as a strategic adviser, advocate and planner in the 2024 Labour general election campaign. All Labour Members are tainted by that association with Mandelson, which was brought about by the leader of their party, now the Prime Minister, who knew about this matter at the time. That perhaps has not been picked up on as fully as it should have been in today’s debate.

[Saqib Bhatti]

I will leave Labour Members to reflect on that because many have spoken up today, but I say once again that they are just words if there is no action.

The judgment of the Prime Minister is deeply, deeply flawed. He alone is responsible for the culture at No. 10. I ran a business. If something was going wrong, the buck stopped with me. He alone is responsible for the culture at No. 10. It is not Morgan McSweeney. He enabled Morgan McSweeney. He needs to be held accountable for his relationship. We need to see the emails and we need to see what the conversations were—that is why this is important—but the buck stops with the Prime Minister.

[Esther McVey]

I am going to raise a very sensitive issue. My hon. Friend raised a point about vulnerable women being abused, about powerful men taking advantage, and about a friend who was appointed when he was known to be a friend of a convicted paedophile. We also have a Labour Government who ran away from investigating grooming gangs—again, vulnerable women being taken advantage of by powerful men. The Labour Government have said they stand up for women, women’s rights and vulnerable women. They have shown now that they do not, at any level—whether at the highest level or in respect of white working-class girls. Labour, I am afraid, has a lot of questions to answer about protecting women.

[Saqib Bhatti]

I will end with two responses to that intervention. First, my right hon. Friend is obviously absolutely right. I say to Labour Members, who were shaking their heads, that every decision—every decision—the Government have made is brought into question by the lack of judgment the Prime Minister has shown. I stood at the Dispatch Box and repeatedly called for a national grooming inquiry. I am a British-Pakistani Muslim male. I have two sons. I want them to grow up without aspersions being cast on them. One day, I hope to have a daughter—apologies to my wife—and I want her to grow up in a safe environment. We have to be honest and we have to be strong in making those calls. I say to the Minister, as he answers those questions, that the question about the ISC is really important. We need to know that under the amendment, it will have the full authority to deal with what comes in front of it, so that we and the public can make a judgment.

Secondly, why did Gordon Brown’s calls fall on deaf ears? Why was he not given the respect, as a former Prime Minister, of his calls being dealt with? Was Mandelson so strong that, despite his toxicity, he was protected and enabled?

Finally—I have made this point repeatedly—the judgment of the Prime Minister surely has to be in question. We will now find out what else was known. The Minister has the opportunity to share anything else that he might want to share at the Dispatch Box.

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am sorry to disturb the debate in this way. I have tried to follow it as much as possible while I have been in and out of the Chamber with other duties. A manuscript amendment has been agreed, with, I take it, cross-party agreement. People will be making up their minds on how to vote on that amendment, and we therefore need clarity—those on the Front Bench could intervene now to clarify this for me. I want to get this absolutely clear. We are all going to vote for the material to be released; there is consensus on that. The difference is with regard to who interprets what is released. The manuscript amendment excepts elements of information that are prejudicial to national security and international relations,

“which shall instead be referred to the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament.”

I agree with that, but I would like clarity on whether the Intelligence and Security Committee will make the decision about publication, or—[Interruption.] Please listen. Will it make the decision or will it simply advise the Government and the final decision will rest with the Government? It would be helpful to have that clarified before we vote.

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[Wendy Morton]

I apologise, Madam Deputy Speaker, I was getting a bit carried away there.

The Prime Minister assured MPs that “full due process” was followed in his appointment of Peter Mandelson as ambassador. He appointed Peter Mandelson despite it already being in the public domain that Peter Mandelson had discussed issues relevant to his ministerial position with Jeffrey Epstein while Epstein was in jail. I could go on. Why did the Prime Minister choose to ignore all that, at a time when Members on both sides of the House know that the public are often scathing about politicians? They say that we are all the same, but I can assure them that we are not. They question our motives and our integrity. Some even refer to Members of this place as members of the establishment, which is something that I will always rail against. [Laughter.] No, no, I can absolutely see why they might say that. [Interruption.] Labour Members may mock, but the point is about integrity.

[Saqib Bhatti]

My right hon. Friend is making a serious and important point. She has talked about how she ended up in this place, and I do not think anyone should denigrate all the hard work she has done to achieve what she has.

[Wendy Morton]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, but you just get used to that sort of thing when you have been here for a while.

We should never forget the people outside. We should never forget the Nolan principles. Conservative Members have explained the Nolan principles and their importance, which was perhaps needed by certain Labour Members. I urge the Government to do the right thing.