House of Commons
(1 week ago)
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Mr Speaker
Before we begin questions, I want to congratulate the men’s House of Commons tug of war team, captained by Sir James Cleverly, which yesterday beat the House of Lords team to win the Macmillan cancer tug of war 2026 in aid of that great charity. I was a last-minute addition to the team to ensure its victory. I would also like to say well done to the women’s team, captained by Tonia Antoniazzi, which included Madam Deputy Speaker Caroline Nokes. They put up a valiant fight against the Lords team, but unfortunately lost this year—the first time they have ever lost.
Oral Answers to Questions
(1 week ago)
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Peter Swallow (Bracknell) (Lab)
Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)
Phil Brickell (Bolton West) (Lab)
The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Hilary Benn)
Before answering, I pay tribute to Sir Desmond Rea who died recently. He played an important role in the peace process in Northern Ireland, particularly through the transformation of policing as the first chair of the Northern Ireland Policing Board. I am sure the whole House will join me in sending condolences to his family.
I welcome the clarity provided by the Supreme Court in the Dillon case, which has confirmed that the Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery is capable of delivering human rights-compliant investigations and reaffirms the Government’s position on the interpretation and application of article 2 of the Windsor framework.
Peter Swallow
Terrorists were responsible for the vast majority of deaths during the troubles. Many of those murders remain unsolved, and the last Tory Government’s Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023 sought to offer immunity to the perpetrators. Does the Secretary of State agree that that is wrong in principle, and can he provide an update on when he plans to move the approval motion for the remedial order to repeal it in the other place?
Hilary Benn
I agree with my hon. Friend that seeking to give immunity to terrorists who committed the most terrible crimes, including the killing of police officers, soldiers and many members of the public, was profoundly wrong. It is also wrong in principle. On the remedial order, now that we have the Dillon judgment we will be bringing it forward as soon as parliamentary time allows.
Fleur Anderson
The Supreme Court found wholly in the Government’s favour. Does the Secretary of State agree that the Government now have a responsibility to put in place legislation that delivers justice for victims and survivors of the troubles, who are both civilians and veterans, and that upholds the special duty of care to veterans?
Hilary Benn
I do indeed agree with my hon. Friend—that is exactly what the troubles Bill will do. It is essential to build confidence across all communities, which the legacy Act failed to do, to put in place protections for our veterans and to enable all families who are seeking answers to request information through a reformed legacy commission.
Phil Brickell
As the proud son of a Northern Ireland veteran myself, I wish to put on the record my eternal gratitude to the brave men and women of our armed forces who served our nation in Operation Banner. With that in mind, can the Secretary of State reiterate to the House how many veterans have been convicted for offences committed during the troubles and how that compares with the number of paramilitaries who have been successfully prosecuted?
Hilary Benn
I ask my hon. Friend to pass on my thanks and, I am sure, the thanks of the whole House for his father’s service. He and all those who served deserve our eternal gratitude. As my hon. Friend knows, the number of service personnel convicted of troubles-related offences was very small—only one in the last 28 years—whereas between 25,000 and 35,000 paramilitaries were sent to prison during the troubles. Of the current 10 live cases, eight relate to paramilitaries accused of killing or attempting to kill soldiers and police officers—paramilitaries whom the last Government wanted to give immunity to.
Alex Easton (North Down) (Ind)
Does the Secretary of State agree that the Supreme Court judgment in the Dillon case reinforces vital legal protections for our security forces, creating a more secure environment? Will he join me in thanking the courageous men and women of our army and police who fought and defeated terrorism with integrity?
Hilary Benn
I will certainly join the hon. Member in expressing those thanks to all those who served with such distinction in Northern Ireland during the troubles to keep people safe. The Dillon judgment has provided extremely important clarity about the correct interpretation of the Windsor framework, as I said a moment ago. It also reinforces the case that the Government make: that we need to put protections for veterans, which were not contained in the last legacy Act, on the statute book.
Jim Allister (North Antrim) (TUV)
I welcome the rebuff in the Dillon judgment for the article 2 expansionist demands of the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission and of the Equality Commission for Northern Ireland. Does the Secretary of State accept that rights in Northern Ireland must evolve according to United Kingdom law, not European Union law? Thus, on the gender issue, does he accept that the ruling of the Supreme Court on the supremacy of biological sex must prevail?
Hilary Benn
That is indeed what the Supreme Court found in that particular important case. The Equality Act 2010 applies in only limited ways in Northern Ireland, as the hon. and learned Member knows. I agree with him on his first point. The Government took the appeal because they felt that the interpretation of the Windsor framework, particularly article 2, by the Northern Ireland courts was too broad. The Supreme Court has agreed with the Government and said that it is a much more narrow interpretation, relating to the troubles, not the expansive interpretation that we have previously seen.
Charlie Dewhirst (Bridlington and The Wolds) (Con)
May I echo the Secretary of State’s comments in relation to the sad passing of Sir Desmond Rea?
In response to the Dillon judgment, a Northern Ireland spokesperson said on 7 May:
“We welcome the clarity provided today by the Supreme Court, which has confirmed that the ICRIR is fully equipped to deliver human rights-compliant investigations”.
Does the Secretary of State therefore accept that the courts have determined that the ICRIR as presently constituted is sufficiently independent to conduct its investigations? If so, why is there any need to make these cumbersome changes in his proposed Bill?
Hilary Benn
As I have said from the Dispatch Box many times before, the courts had previously found that the ICRIR was independent. The Supreme Court has dealt with the two particular issues identified by the Court of Appeal in Northern Ireland. I have already indicated to the House that the Government propose to make amendments to the disclosure provisions, which I think are right and proper compared with those that were contained in the legacy Act. It remains the case that the last legacy Act did not command confidence on the part of all—[Interruption.] It is no good hon. Members on the Conservative Front Bench shaking their heads; it did not command confidence on the part of all communities in Northern Ireland, and that is why the changes are necessary.
Gavin Robinson (Belfast East) (DUP)
The Secretary of State will know that the howls of outrage from the article 2 expansionists have been proven to be wrong, yet those same howls of outrage have been repeated ad nauseum by the Irish Government. They continue with their state case against this country and they continue to assert that there is an incompatibility with the ICRIR. In doing so, they refuse to respond to the requests of victims; they have not responded once to the ICRIR’s requests for information from the Guards; and, as the Secretary of State heard with the victim in our presence just last week, the much-fêted Garda unit does not even answer the phone. Will he now challenge the Irish Republican Government to withdraw their case and to recognise compatibility with article 2?
Hilary Benn
As I have said to the right hon. Gentleman a number of times before, the Government’s view, which is reinforced by the Dillon judgment, is that the legislation that we are bringing forward, combined with the judgment, means that there is no basis for the inter-state case; but it is a matter for the Irish Government to take a decision about what they do about that. The other argument for the legislation that we are putting forward is that it will enable precisely the co-operation that the right hon. Gentleman is seeking and that will be so important to many families in Northern Ireland, including the families of service and police personnel who were killed and injured during the troubles. There may well be information that the Irish Government can now provide, and that is another strong argument for the legislation.
Gavin Robinson
The Secretary of State must know that victims in Northern Ireland would like him to stand up for them, to challenge the excess and the eccentricities of the Republic of Ireland Government, and to ensure, when they promise that they will provide information, that they do, and that their reluctance to do so has now been proven hollow. Gender has already been mentioned and he knows that the Dillon case was silent on some of the other expansionist parts of the quest on article 2. He has indicated his support for the Supreme Court’s view, but will he ensure that he defends that view in court?
Hilary Benn
I reject the suggestion that in some way I am not standing up for victims, because the legislation that we have brought forward is about trying to give confidence to all victims in Northern Ireland. The right hon. Gentleman was one of many critics the immunity provisions in the legacy Act, which had no support in Northern Ireland, did not command support from any of the political parties, was wrong in principle and was never even commenced by the last Government. In relation to the Irish Government, we should judge each other by the steps that we take. Since we last had an exchange on this matter, the Irish Government have now legislated—it is just awaiting the Irish President’s signature—to enable witness evidence to be given to the Omagh bombing inquiry. That is a sign of the Irish Government’s good faith.
Darren Paffey (Southampton Itchen) (Lab)
Sojan Joseph (Ashford) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Matthew Patrick)
There is rightly huge pride in the defence sector in Northern Ireland, where aerospace and defence are worth more than £2 billion a year. The defence growth deal will unlock even more opportunities for businesses, workers and apprentices.
Darren Paffey
One of the many things I have learned on the excellent armed forces parliamentary scheme with the Navy this year is the importance of UK defence manufacturing for our economy and our national security. In Southampton we have Tekever and Leonardo, and of course in Northern Ireland there is Navy shipbuilding at Harland & Wolff. Does the Minister agree that the Northern Ireland defence sector plays a vital role in defending the UK and protecting our allies?
Matthew Patrick
My hon. Friend is right. Not only are businesses thriving and creating good jobs, but they are protecting us and our allies, including protecting Ukraine from Russian aggression. I am proud of Northern Ireland’s critical role in defending our country and protecting our allies.
Sojan Joseph
The Northern Ireland defence sector already makes a substantial contribution to the local economy, supporting well-paid, highly skilled jobs right across the region, with at least 900 jobs directly supported. Does the Minister agree that, as well as benefiting national security, this new investment will benefit the wider economy, including in my Ashford constituency?
Matthew Patrick
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. This investment is a win-win-win—we protect ourselves, our allies and our economy, and with that we boost opportunities for people to get good, long-lasting and rewarding jobs.
Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)
Has the Minister seen the report published this week by techUK, which has members across Northern Ireland in the defence sector, focusing particularly on tech? The report expressed concern that the absence of the defence industrial strategy has been the single biggest cause of retardation of its members’ business, and is particularly affecting employment. What does that say for growth in Northern Ireland?
Matthew Patrick
I have not read the report from techUK, but I look forward to reading it. I think the right hon. Member might mean the defence investment plan, which we are hoping will be published next month before the NATO summit.
Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)
Northern Ireland has skills, technology and infrastructure to contribute to the defence industry across the United Kingdom, but the Sinn Féin Economy Minister does not want defence jobs. Will the Minister assure us that the attitude of Sinn Féin will not be a deterrent to those vital jobs coming to Northern Ireland?
Matthew Patrick
We are very proud of the investment we are making in the Northern Ireland economy and in an already booming defence sector. I think people from right across Northern Ireland welcome that investment in good jobs.
David Smith (North Northumberland) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Matthew Patrick)
The first duty of any Government is to protect their people, and this Government are ensuring that we all feel the benefit of the investment in defence. Take, for example, the £1.6 billion deal to supply missiles to Ukraine—manufactured in Belfast and built by Thales—which is supporting hundreds of jobs and tripling production capacity. This is important work that I am sure the whole House welcomes.
David Smith
I thank my hon. Friend for that answer. I also welcome the good news that this week alone, Thales in Belfast has been given a £36 million contract to provide those multi-role missiles, which will support 700 highly skilled jobs in Belfast. Does the Minister agree that the defence industrial strategy represents a huge opportunity for job creation and economic growth in regions such as Northern Ireland and constituencies such as mine in North Northumberland?
Matthew Patrick
Of course. The dedication and professionalism of our armed forces is respected across this House, the country and the world, and we must have a strong defence industry standing behind them. Through the defence industrial strategy, businesses right across the United Kingdom can play their part in taking our defence industry to the next level.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
Taking into account the world-class engineering capabilities already proven by industrial icons such as Shorts, Harland & Wolff and Thales in Northern Ireland, will the Minister ensure that the defence growth deal specifically leverages the existing high-tech supply chains and advanced manufacturing skills base across areas such as Strangford, to supercharge our regional private sector growth and ensure that this rising tide lifts all the manufacturing ships in Northern Ireland, which have the capacity to do so much more?
Matthew Patrick
I will do all that I can to ensure that. I have met many of those businesses and many small businesses from across Northern Ireland to discuss the defence growth deal. The hon. Member will be pleased to see there is a focus on skills and supply chains to support more of those businesses.
Lincoln Jopp (Spelthorne) (Con)
David Reed (Exmouth and Exeter East) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Hilary Benn)
The Northern Ireland Troubles Bill will return to the House early this Session. In the meantime, I have been consulting widely on the legislation. I will bring forward amendments designed to improve the process for victims, to further safeguard veterans, and to differentiate between the roles played by security forces and paramilitary terrorists.
Lincoln Jopp
In the Secretary of State’s wide consultation, did he consult General Sir Nick Parker, who suggested that there should be no further criminal investigations, inquests, inquiries or prosecutions unless there is new and compelling evidence that was not available at the time of the event?
Hilary Benn
I have consulted and met a wide range of people. I have seen the amendment that has been tabled, which we will come to when the Bill is in Committee, but the hon. Gentleman will be aware that there is already provision in the Bill for protection from repeated investigations unless the commission regards them as essential. I recognise, however, the need to build upon what we have already in the Bill, and that will be visible when the amendments are published.
David Reed
In the previous Session, the troubles Bill drew criticism from nine former four-star generals, regimental associations and veterans across the country. The Defence Secretary told this House earlier this week that he had “dealt with their concerns” and would make “significant amendments”, but every time we ask for detail, we are stonewalled. Will the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland lay out today exactly what protections he is proposing and guarantee that no veteran will be hounded through the courts?
Hilary Benn
We are looking at amendments to improve the process for families, to further safeguard our Operation Banner veterans and to ensure oversight of how the protections work. We will make it clear that there is no equivalence, and never was, between the actions of terrorists and the conduct of our armed forces and the police in trying to protect life. We will ensure that coroners and the commission take proper account of the circumstances in which our armed forces were operating. All those things will be consistent with the joint framework and with the Government’s human rights obligations, and I would hope that the Opposition would welcome them all.
Tonia Antoniazzi (Gower) (Lab)
During our Committee’s inquiry on legacy, we heard serious concerns from victims and survivors about the Government’s approach to information disclosure. In the Dillon case, the Supreme Court showed a significant degree of deference to Government on national security grounds. What reassurances can the Secretary of State give to families and survivors that national security will not be invoked to withhold information simply because it is uncomfortable for the state, rather than because its disclosure would present a genuine risk to the public?
Hilary Benn
As my hon. Friend the Chair of the Select Committee knows only too well, responsibility for national security ultimately rests with Ministers, and the Dillon and the Thompson judgments confirmed that. As I have already indicated, I have proposed changes to the disclosure provisions in the Bill, including requiring the Secretary of State to conduct a balancing exercise when considering each case and also to give reasons. The Supreme Court made it clear that the Secretary of State does not have a veto, because any decision can be subject to judicial review.
Alex Burghart (Brentwood and Ongar) (Con)
The Secretary of State will have seen reports in the Belfast Telegraph that prior to 1985, a large part of the gelignite used in IRA bombs was routinely stolen from a single factory in County Meath in the Republic. The supply amounted to many tonnes of explosives, and it took the lives of many hundreds of people. At the time, British intelligence repeatedly raised concerns with Dublin. Nothing was done, despite the factory’s allegedly being in receipt of Irish state subsidy. Following those revelations, will the Secretary of State commit to writing to the Taoiseach to ask him to hold an urgent public inquiry into the Enfield explosives factory?
Hilary Benn
I have indeed seen the reports to which the hon. Gentleman has referred. As I have explained, one purpose of the troubles Bill is to facilitate co-operation with the Irish authorities in relation to all these matters. We cannot undo the past, but what we can do is provide information for those whose lives were lost as a result of the use of those explosives, through full co-operation between the Irish authorities and the legacy commission. We require the Bill to make that happen.
Alex Burghart
With all due respect, the Secretary of State did not answer my question. This is an extraordinary missing piece of the puzzle in the story of the troubles—in the story of how the IRA obtained weapons that killed people in our country. The Secretary of State is perfectly within his rights to raise this with his opposite numbers, and to ask them to conduct a full public inquiry on behalf of the victims. Will he do so?
Hilary Benn
Since the hon. Gentleman has raised the matter directly with me, I undertake to him—and to the House—to raise it with the Irish authorities, because they will have seen the exchange that he and I have just had.
Mr Paul Kohler (Wimbledon) (LD)
The May review of the Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery describes a “toxic”, “divided” and “disrespectful” senior culture, along with structural weaknesses in the governing legislation. It also raises concerns that the Government’s forthcoming troubles Bill will make matters worse. However, in his response to the review, the Secretary of State appeared to suggest that it was simply up to the ICRIR to sort this out, although the ICRIR is sponsored by his Department, the review was commissioned by his Department, and his Department is now legislating to rebadge this failing body as the legacy commission.
Will the Secretary of State tell the House whether he accepts that he is ultimately responsible for Peter May’s 19 recommendations being followed? Will he also give us an update on whether the Northern Ireland Office plan is still on schedule, and explain how the troubles Bill is to be amended to remedy the structural shortcomings exposed in the review?
Hilary Benn
The responsibility is held jointly with the independent commission established under the legislation put in place by the last Government. Some of the things that have been uncovered are evidence of why we need to reform the way in which the commission works, which is what the troubles Bill will seek to do. We have a joint plan on which we are working together. I have made my displeasure very clear to every single one of those who sit on the legacy commission board, because what was found is not acceptable. However, we must acknowledge that the report also said the commission had a great many committed staff, and nothing must get in the way of their carrying on with their work to find answers for families.
Kevin Bonavia (Stevenage) (Lab)
Rachel Hopkins (Luton South and South Bedfordshire) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Matthew Patrick)
Public service reform is needed, and that is exactly what we are doing. Just last week we announced a £42 million package to be invested in the digitising of prescriptions. With 45 million prescriptions issued every year, the service is inefficient and expensive, and we are changing that.
Kevin Bonavia
Thanks to this Government’s investment in public services, Northern Ireland received a record funding settlement in the spending review. Given that settlement and the extra transformation funding, does my hon. Friend agree that it is now up to the Executive in Northern Ireland to deliver the changes in public services that are so clearly needed?
Matthew Patrick
Yes, but, as I have always said, it is not just a question of cutting a cheque and walking away. Of course we have given more money to the Executive than has ever been received before in the history of devolution—[Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”] I am glad that that is welcomed on our Benches, but we also bring partnership working to ensure that public services can turn the corner.
Rachel Hopkins
Many of my constituents have close family ties to Northern Ireland, and understandably take an interest in health outcomes in Northern Ireland and in the United Kingdom as a whole. Does the Minister agree that when it comes to public health all parts of the UK can learn something from each other, and can he update the House on conversations between the UK Government and the Northern Ireland Executive on their respective successes in improving patient outcomes?
Matthew Patrick
My hon. Friend is right: no person has a monopoly on good ideas, and no Government do either. I want the best for the whole United Kingdom. Where Northern Ireland leads the way, we can try to roll that out across the rest of the UK, but where it needs support—for instance on the digitising of prescriptions—we will provide that too. This is about working with the Executive to improve patient outcomes.
Sorcha Eastwood (Lagan Valley) (Alliance)
The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland will not thank me for saying this, but whenever we have these discussions about the transformation of public services in Northern Ireland, it seems like we can have either good public finances or an unreformed Stormont, but we cannot have both. With three parties in Northern Ireland supporting reform proposals in the last number of weeks, when will the Government get serious about giving Northern Ireland the means to govern itself, and when will they get round the table to start discussions about the reform of Stormont?
Matthew Patrick
Those conversations are ongoing. We had a recent Westminster Hall debate about those issues, and we will have further conversations with party leaders. I will gently say, however, that those conservations cannot be a substitute for improving services now. Improvements can be made. The hon. Member and I have talked about cancer waiting times; we can do those things now, and they do not have to wait for conversations about reform.
Robin Swann (South Antrim) (UUP)
Transformation needs to be embedded through a recurrent budget. We are three months into this financial year, at Northern Ireland political speed, and we still do not have a recurrent budget. What steps is the Northern Ireland Office taking to bring about such a financial budget in Northern Ireland?
Matthew Patrick
Not only have we given a record settlement—more than ever before in the Executive’s history since devolution—but we are supporting the Executive, having discussions with them and encouraging them to set a budget, so that the people of Northern Ireland can see the improvement in public services that they really need.
Speaker’s Statement
(1 week ago)
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Mr Speaker
Before we come to Prime Minister’s questions, I would like to pay tribute to former colleague Lord Alan Haselhurst, who died this week. Although we come from opposite sides of the Pennines, and the aisle, Alan served this House initially as the MP for the old Lancashire seat of Middleton and Prestwich from 1970 to 1974, before he represented Saffron Walden from 1977 to 2017. He was also my immediate predecessor as Deputy Speaker and Chairman of Ways and Means from 1997 to 2010. He was a distinguished and respected parliamentarian, serving on numerous Committees during his time in the House, as well as playing a leading role with the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association.
Friends will know that Alan was mad about cricket. Along with my father Doug, he was a prominent and long-serving officer of the all-party parliamentary group on cricket, and I know Alan took his passion to the next level with his many novels about the sport. In 2018, he was appointed as a life peer, serving in the House of Lords until he retired at the end of 2024. I am sure that Members across the House would like to join me in sending our condolences to Lord Haselhurst’s wife, Lady Angela, as well as his children, grandchildren, family and friends, who are very much in our thoughts today.
Oral Answers to Questions
(1 week ago)
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Dr Roz Savage (South Cotswolds) (LD)
The Prime Minister (Keir Starmer)
May I also pay tribute to Lord Haselhurst? I know he will be deeply missed, particularly on the Benches opposite.
The findings of the recent Springhill inquest into the tragic deaths, in July 1972, of Father Noel Fitzpatrick, Patrick Butler, Margaret Gargan, David McCafferty and John Dougal are sobering. While the circumstances in which the events occurred were undoubtedly challenging, it is the duty of the state to hold itself to the highest standard. The Government accept and deeply regret these findings, and recognise their gravity. On behalf of the Government, I apologise unreservedly to the families for what happened and for the grief and trauma they have endured since the tragic deaths of their loved ones.
I also place on record our deepest condolences to the family of Lance Corporal James Freeman, who died in a tragic accident on Sunday. I am also aware of a Royal Navy helicopter crash this morning in Devon. This will be a deeply worrying time for the families, and more information will be set out as soon as possible.
Henry Nowak’s family have shown extraordinary dignity after their son’s life was stolen in appalling circumstances. He was clearly a kind, thoughtful and much-loved young man. There are serious questions to answer, including how accusations of racism informed police thinking, and we are supporting the Independent Office for Police Conduct to get to the bottom of what happened. But no matter the pain we feel, there is no justification for more violence and disorder. The attacks directed towards police officers in Southampton last night were disgraceful and completely unacceptable. This is a time for serious work, not rage. Let me be clear: we will ensure that anyone found engaging in disorder meets the full force of the law, as we have done before.
This morning I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. In addition to my duties in this House, I shall have further such meetings later today.
Dr Savage
I echo the sympathies expressed by the Prime Minister for the families recently bereaved, particularly the family of Henry Nowak.
Corruption appears to be endemic in donations to British political parties. We have had years of Conservative cronyism. We have had allegations of embezzlement in Scotland. We have had undisclosed donations from crypto billionaires and foreign oligarchs. We have even had freebies dished out to some of the hon. Members sitting on the Labour Benches. The Government have already cracked down on some specific sources of donations that favour their political opponents, such as crypto and foreign money. Will the Prime Minister now commit to restoring the faith of the British public in the integrity of our British democracy by putting a cap on all political donations?
The Prime Minister
I thank the hon. Member for her question. We will do whatever is necessary to protect our democracy from foreign influence and from dirty money. That is why we commissioned the Rycroft review, capped overseas donations and introduced a moratorium on crypto donations, and we are taking further action, as set out in the King’s Speech. But the £5 million question still remains: why is the leader of Reform dodging questions about his donations, and why did he keep it secret in the first place?
Natasha Irons (Croydon East) (Lab)
The Prime Minister
I commend my hon. Friend’s campaign to address the Croydon bottleneck. The last Government cancelled work to address this; we will carefully consider the case for upgrades, including step-free access at Norwood. I am proud that her constituents are travelling on rail services that are now back in public ownership, and benefiting from the first freeze in rail fares for 30 years—a Labour Government transforming our railways and building a fairer Britain.
Mrs Kemi Badenoch (North West Essex) (Con)
I echo the Prime Minister’s words on Lance Corporal James Freeman and about the Royal Navy helicopter crash in Devon. I also send my deepest condolences to the family and friends of Henry Nowak. The circumstances around Henry’s wrongful arrest and tragic murder must be a wake-up call to the entire country and our institutions that every life matters, and it is the responsibility of everyone in this House to bring people together, not divide them.
Mr Speaker, with your permission, I would like to take this opportunity to pay tribute to Sir Alan Haselhurst—Lord Haselhurst—who died on Monday. Sir Alan served Parliament for over 50 years, eight of them in the Lords and 40 years as my predecessor as MP for Saffron Walden, while from 1970 to 1974 he was the Member of Parliament for Middleton and Prestwich. He was respected on all sides of this House, and was elected multiple times as your predecessor as Deputy Speaker, before he concluded in the other place.
Apart from serving his constituents, Sir Alan’s greatest passion in Parliament and perhaps in life was cricket, as you said, Mr Speaker. He was chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on cricket, a role which he encouraged me to take up and which I graciously declined, telling him I knew absolutely nothing about cricket. However, I think colleagues should know that Sir Alan’s intense lobbying is the reason that Sky Sports can be found on the parliamentary TV network. There is so much to say, but just to let everyone know, he was a good and kind man and he will be very much missed. My thoughts are with his wife Angela, his children Mark, David and Emma, and his grandchildren.
May I ask the Prime Minister by how much the welfare bill has risen since he came to office?
The Prime Minister
May I first thank the Leader of the Opposition for her approach and tone in relation to the tragic Henry Nowak case?
On welfare, as she knows, we inherited from the Conservative party a broken system, which we are now improving: delivering a youth guarantee; rolling out 300,000 work experience placements; and commissioning Alan Milburn’s review into youth unemployment. They are the steps we are taking. As she will know, the number on welfare went up hugely on the Conservatives’ watch, as did the cost under the shadow Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Central Devon (Sir Mel Stride).
Mrs Badenoch
The Prime Minister does not seem to know the answer, so let me tell him: benefits alone have risen by £20 billion since he came to office. The Prime Minister has promised welfare reforms—we heard him say it just now—so why was there no welfare reform Bill in the King’s Speech?
The Prime Minister
Welfare reform is balancing universal credit so that it no longer pushes people away from work. That is what we are doing; the Opposition voted against it. Welfare reform is introducing a right to try, to incentivise people to take up opportunities. That is what we are doing; they voted against it. Welfare reform is providing record funding on apprenticeships. That is what we are doing; apprenticeship starts fell by 40% on their watch. The right hon. Lady talks about the welfare bill. It soared by £88 billion on their watch. Nearly 3 million people were written off. Face-to-face assessments collapsed because of the contracts they agreed. And who signed off those contracts? The shadow Chancellor.
Mrs Badenoch
We need to bring down the benefits bill. The Prime Minister complains about the shadow Chancellor. The bill went up because of the pandemic and even then Labour Members were asking us to spend more. It is not the shadow Chancellor who is the problem; it is the actual Chancellor. She is not even in her place. The reason there is no welfare Bill is the Prime Minister has given up, and he has given up because Labour Members have given up on him. On Sunday, the Welfare Secretary was asked 12 times on national radio if he would make cuts to the benefits bill and 12 times he could not answer. So I will ask the Prime Minister: is he going to cut the benefits bill?
The Prime Minister
All our welfare reform measures, and all our measures to get young people into work, are to reduce the cost and numbers of people who are unemployed. That is why we have introduced the youth guarantee so that young people can have help into work. If, after 18 months, they have not got a job, they can then be given a job for six months supported, which we know is the best way to ensure they succeed. That is the change we are making, but the Conservatives introduced the system that is broken. We are reforming it. Did they vote to reform it with us? No, they voted to keep the broken system.
Mrs Badenoch
The Prime Minister keeps saying he is bringing in welfare reforms. None of those things is going to cut the bill. Even his own Timms review explicitly says—this is their review; this is in the terms of reference—that this is not about generating proposals for further savings. The Prime Minister had a chance to cut benefits. Last year, I remember the Government were planning to cut benefits and on the Floor of the House they U-turned. What did he do when he had a chance? He caved. He caved to all the MPs behind him who do not want benefits brought down. That is why they are sitting silently behind him. Does the Prime Minister agree with his Welfare Secretary that that was the moment he lost his authority?
The Prime Minister
I am proud of what we are delivering on this side of the House. The fastest growing economy in the G7—they said it could not be done. Despite the war in the middle east, the OECD forecasts that UK growth is up and inflation is down. Net migration, which reached nearly a million under the Conservatives—the Leader of the Opposition was the cheerleader—is down by a staggering 82%. The asylum backlog is down by 46%. We are delivering the fastest reduction in waiting times in the history of the NHS. That is on top of free school meals, free breakfast clubs and free childcare—and, of course, we are lifting half a million children out of poverty. I am very proud of the work of this Labour Government.
Mrs Badenoch
He says he is proud of what they are delivering—I am glad to see that the Prime Minister still has his sense of humour, given we all know that he is losing his job soon. He has no authority, and we know why: his MPs will not let him do anything. The Welfare Secretary said in private what the Government will not dare say in public. He said:
“Every meeting I have is: ‘Who can we tax in order to pay benefits to others?’”
Last week, Tony Blair said:
“If the Conservative Party repeats its offer of working together on welfare, Labour should accept”.
Today I am repeating that offer to the Prime Minister. Is he ready yet?
The Prime Minister
They introduced a system that is broken, they put the bill through the roof, and now they want to give us advice on welfare—no thanks! The question should always be not what benefits people are entitled to, but what help we can give people to change their lives. That is what the Work and Pensions Secretary was arguing, and he is right about that. It is a Labour Government that are helping people into work. Leader of the Opposition asks what we have done: more rights for renters, stopping unfair rent hikes, and giving 11 million people greater security and a place to call home; and more rights for workers, including bereavement leave on day one—ask anyone who has lost someone, and they will say just how important it is to have bereavement leave. We have lifted half a million children out of poverty. We often say in this House that every child should go as far as their talent or ability will take them. That does not happen if they are growing up in poverty. The Conservatives have fought us at every turn. I am proud of what we are delivering. There is much more to do.
Mrs Badenoch
The truth is that unemployment has risen every single month since they came into office. Mr Speaker, you can listen to their cheers get weaker and thinner with every passing moment. The fact is, despite his huge majority, the Prime Minister does not have the votes to reform welfare. There is a solution—a Conservative solution—[Interruption.] Labour Members are all jeering now, but I do not know why they are supporting the Prime Minister; he is more than happy to release their text messages while all of his have disappeared. Disappearing messages from a disappearing PM. There is a Conservative solution: benefits bill down, taxes down, growth up. Everyone in this House knows that the Prime Minister is just a caretaker keeping the seat warm for the Mayor of Manchester. But it does not matter who is in charge; Labour MPs will keep asking who they can tax to pay more benefits—it is in their DNA. The truth is that the problem is not this passive Prime Minister; the problem is the Labour party.
The Prime Minister
Forgive me if I do not take too much notice of the Leader of the Opposition. For 14 years they broke our welfare system, lost control of our borders, presided over the biggest fall in living standards on record, and broke the economy, prisons and the NHS—I could go on and on. No wonder she and the Conservatives are totally irrelevant. This Labour Government are delivering change. The biggest upgrade in workers’ rights in a generation—delivered. The Renters’ Rights Act 2026—delivered. Record funding for our NHS—delivered. The fastest growing economy in the G7—delivered. Lifting half a million children out of poverty—delivered. We are going to fight even harder for working people and a stronger and fairer Britain.
Brian Leishman (Alloa and Grangemouth) (Lab)
The Prime Minister
I know how difficult it is for residents who are not in their homes. I can reassure my hon. Friend and his constituents that the MRA is carrying out daily investigations to get answers as swiftly as possible, and we are working with the council to provide support for residents. I can confirm that the Energy Minister is in touch with MSPs and will ensure that both my hon. Friend and his constituents are kept updated on the next steps.
Ed Davey (Kingston and Surbiton) (LD)
I associate myself with your remarks about Lord Alan Haselhurst, Mr Speaker, and can confirm to the Leader of the Opposition that he will be missed across the House. I also associate myself with the Prime Minister’s remarks about Lance Corporal James Freeman, who was killed in Iraq. Our thoughts are with his family and unit. I also offer our thoughts and prayers to the family and friends of the 17 people who tragically drowned during the recent heatwave, many of whom were children.
The murder of Henry Nowak was an evil crime made much worse by the lies of the killer and the police response. The investigation must uncover everything that went wrong, and all police forces must act on its conclusions. Outside court, Henry’s father made a powerful plea that his son’s murder should not be used to create further division, but should instead be used to treat knife crime as a national emergency. Does the Prime Minister agree that the victims of knife crime and their families deserve a politics where we come together to solve these problems, instead of using them as a political football?
The Prime Minister
I join the right hon. Gentleman in paying tribute to the 17 people who lost their lives in the heatwave, many of whom, as he said, were young—each of them tragic. We send our condolences to their families.
On the case of Henry Nowak, I thank the right hon. Gentleman for the approach he has taken. It is important in a case like this, which is so tragic—anybody who has seen the footage will have been deeply moved by it—that we reflect on our leadership roles here as political leaders. It is our duty to bring people together at a time like this, not to seek to divide them. It is particularly our duty to listen to what the devastated family are asking of us as political leaders. I thank all those who have acted in that way, because I think that is the right way to respond.
Ed Davey
I thank the Prime Minister for his reply and completely agree with him. We stand ready to work with the Government on serious policies to tackle knife crime.
With our armed forces overstretched, Labour now seems to be investing in a new weapon of war: the long-form essay. It gives another meaning to the phrase “drone warfare”—[Laughter.] Tony Blair says that the UK should suck up to Donald Trump, kowtow to US tech barons and go slow on Europe—the Prime Minister must be grateful for this rare endorsement of his agenda. Blair also claims that the sensible people are not radical and the radical people are not sensible. Is the Prime Minister concerned that unless he changes course, he will be remembered for being neither radical nor sensible?
The Prime Minister
The right hon. Gentleman rather spoiled what was quite a good gag. I am surprised he has not done more to welcome the savings we are delivering for family fun days out this summer; I really thought he would have been delighted at the cheaper tickets for soft play.
Noah Law (St Austell and Newquay) (Lab)
The Prime Minister
I thank my hon. Friend for raising this really important case. My thoughts are with Henry’s family, as are the thoughts of the whole House and the whole country, I am sure. I have watched the bodycam footage, as others will have done, and I found it really hard. It was harrowing. As a dad of a 17-year-old boy, I felt sick. I can only imagine how devastated his family are. It is extremely moving.
Henry’s life has been stolen. His family have responded with incredible and immense dignity and bravery. There clearly are lessons that need to be learned and serious questions that need to be addressed, not least the question of how accusations of racism informed decision making in such cases.
Henry’s father said this:
“We do not want his death to be used to create further division, hatred or tension.”
They are the words of a grieving father who has lost his son. I think those words have resonated with people across the country. We must not allow this tragedy to be hijacked by anyone who seeks to divide us.
Nigel Farage (Clacton) (Reform)
Following the horrendous circumstances of Henry Nowak’s death, I urge the Prime Minister to consider this: it is now clear to growing millions in this country that we are living under two-tier policing. The instructions that are given to police officers from police bosses are clear and written down in ink: “You must treat different ethnic groups in different ways.”
Apart from the upset and the anger at the circumstances of Henry’s death, the anger that was seen spilling out in Southampton last night is in danger of getting considerably worse if the public lose trust that they will be treated fairly by the police. Will the Prime Minister take some action, end this divisive practice of two-tier policing, and make sure that all British citizens are treated the same?
The Prime Minister
I do not believe that there is two-tier policing in this country. I am really shocked that the hon. Gentleman pretends to have respect for Henry’s family and then acts in this way. [Interruption.] They are a grieving family—
Mr Speaker
Order. Mr Brash, this is a very important question, and I want to hear the Prime Minister’s answer. If you want to carry on, go outside please.
The Prime Minister
The grieving family have asked us not to respond in the way that the leader of Reform has responded. They have lost their son in the most appalling circumstances, and they make a simple plea of us as human beings to please not exploit that. We all need to reflect on the words of Henry’s father.
My response—and the response of others, to be fair—has been focused on the lessons to be learned so that we can deliver justice. The hon. Gentleman’s response has been to appeal for rage. That is his response to a father who has lost his son and asked for that not to happen. Exploiting this tragedy to create grievance and division would be wrong in any circumstances, but to do it when the family are expressly saying, “Please don’t,” is unforgivable. It shows exactly who he is.
Daniel Francis (Bexleyheath and Crayford) (Lab)
The Prime Minister
I thank my hon. Friend for raising this case and express my sincere condolences to Holly’s family. I cannot begin to imagine the intense distress that they have experienced. My hon. Friend will know that the ambassador to France has raised Holly’s case with the French prosecutor general, and I know that the Minister for Europe, my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty), has set out further steps that can be taken and is ready to support the family. In the light of his question, I will reflect on whether anything more can be done.
Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)
The Prime Minister
I thank the right hon. Member for her question. As I hope she knows, I did have a call with the First Minister of Wales just two weeks ago, and made it clear that I and this Government will work constructively with the First Minister and the Government in Wales, because that is the right thing to do to deliver for Wales.
Tristan Osborne (Chatham and Aylesford) (Lab)
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. The Reform leader wants everyone to forget that he called for our NHS to be replaced with an insurance-based system—he might want to jot it down to jog his memory. Then he said that if people can pay, they should pay for NHS treatment. We can help him by jolting his memory here. You cannot trust Reform with our NHS—the only way to protect it is to vote Labour.
Rosie Duffield (Canterbury) (Ind)
The Prime Minister
I thank the hon. Member for the question. I recognise the challenges that she identifies. That is why we are permanently lowering business rates for retail, hospitality and leisure businesses. Every pub will get 15% off its new business rates bill, and bills will be frozen in real terms for a further two years. In relation to VAT, she will see that we are offering support by cutting VAT on children’s meals in restaurants—particularly over the summer period—with those savings set out two weeks ago by the Chancellor.
Warinder Juss (Wolverhampton West) (Lab)
The Prime Minister
Any death from suicide is a tragedy, as everybody across this House will know. We are bringing together students, bereaved families, universities and the NHS to strengthen the mental health support provided to students. We have also appointed a student support champion to drive improvement across our universities. The relevant Minister will be happy to discuss that and other matters with my hon. Friend.
Andrew Rosindell (Romford) (Reform)
The Prime Minister
We put record investment into the NHS to clear up the mess that the hon. Gentleman and others left behind. Since he brings up elections, I have studied the Reform candidate for Makerfield: a self-professed sexist who said women who get an abortion do it for “vanity purposes”, who encouraged people not to get the covid vaccine and who said Russia was “within its rights” to invade Crimea. Reform has nothing to offer but grievance and division yet again.
Harpreet Uppal (Huddersfield) (Lab)
I associate myself with the Prime Minister’s comments on Henry Nowak and the calls for calm over division.
The rugby league family lost a giant last week. John Kear, the former England, Wales and challenge cup-winning coach died suddenly on Sunday afternoon on his journey north after commentating on the challenge cup final at Wembley the previous day. After playing for Castleford, his local team, he moved to teaching and coaching for a total of 700 matches with nine clubs, and his career included famous underdog challenge cup wins with Sheffield Eagles in 1998 and Hull FC in 2005. John loved, and in turn was loved by, his sport. Will the Prime Minister join me in paying tribute to John and sending condolences to his wife Dawn and his family and friends?
The Prime Minister
I pay tribute to John. We were all deeply sad to hear of his passing. He was a remarkable athlete and coach, and an energetic and enthusiastic champion of his sport. He will be missed by supporters across the country and my thoughts—all our thoughts—are with his wife Dawn, his family and his friends at this sad time.
Sarah Green (Chesham and Amersham) (LD)
The Prime Minister
We absolutely recognise the harm and huge impact that pelvic mesh has had on so many lives. The hon. Lady will be aware that the Minister for Public Health has been a dedicated campaigner on this very issue. I want to see a full response to the recommendations published as quickly as possible, and I will make sure that the Minister keeps her updated on its progress.
Euan Stainbank (Falkirk) (Lab)
The 10-year bus pipeline published by the Department for Transport shows that demand for zero emission buses will double by the end of the decade. In Scotland, however, jobs are being lost in our bus manufacturing sector because overseas manufacturers are winning a greater number of orders and now constitute the majority of new registration buses on our roads, despite an investigation into the cyber-security of Chinese buses. Will the Prime Minister designate bus manufacturing as a sector critical to our national security?
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend is right to champion the brilliant, talented workforce building buses in Scotland. Our pipeline will give UK manufacturers the certainty and stability they need to plan ahead and be completely effective, and I can reassure him that we are working closely with the industry to provide the necessary response and support.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
The Prime Minister
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question, and we are united in our belief that we must fight the poison of antisemitism wherever it is found. We are investing more to keep Jewish communities safe, with more police patrols and greater security at schools and synagogues; investing £7 million to tackle antisemitism within our universities; and bringing in proscription-like powers to clamp down on malign state activity. We will set out further steps in coming days, and I will make sure the hon. Gentleman is fully informed of the steps we are taking.
Darren Paffey (Southampton Itchen) (Lab)
Less than 48 hours ago the family of Henry Nowak stood on the steps of Southampton Crown court and gave a courageous and dignified statement in which they said:
“We want to use Henry’s heartbreaking story to make change for the better. We do not want his death to be used to create further division, hatred or tension. We want his story to make our streets safer for everyone.”
Does the Prime Minister agree with me and my constituency neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton Test (Satvir Kaur), that the violence we saw whipped up on the streets of Southampton last night, the criminal damage to innocent people’s homes, and the injuries to 11 police officers are the total opposite of what Henry’s own family clearly and powerfully called for?
The Prime Minister
I thank my hon. Friend for his question and for the discussion that we had this morning about the impact in Southampton. I also thank him for the work he has done along with his fellow MP, and, if I may say so, my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jen Craft), who has been dealing with Henry’s family for some time. The attacks directed towards police officers last night were disgraceful and completely unacceptable. There is no justification for further disorder.
Dr Danny Chambers (Winchester) (LD)
The Prime Minister
I recall that the hon. Gentleman has raised this matter with me previously at Prime Minister’s questions. As he knows, the reorganisation of services is a matter for local integrated care boards who take decisions based on the evidence and engagement with patients. Across the country, patients are benefiting from the £450 million investment that we have provided to expand urgent and emergency care capacity. That improvement is because of the investment we have put in, but this is a matter for his local board.
Alison Hume (Scarborough and Whitby) (Lab)
Despite the efforts of dedicated teachers in Scarborough and Whitby, only 36% of pupils achieve grade 5 and above in both English and maths GCSEs. Does the Prime Minister agree that Mission Coastal has the potential to deliver the same transformational impact for young people in deprived coastal communities as the London Challenge achieved, and that it is the kind of bold and targeted intervention that only a Labour Government can deliver?
The Prime Minister
I thank my hon. Friend for her work on championing such an important issue. Mission Coastal will help break the link between background and success, giving the most disadvantaged children mentoring, career support and enrichment opportunities, because we believe that no matter where they grow up, every child deserves the same opportunities to succeed.
Victoria Collins (Harpenden and Berkhamsted) (LD)
The Prime Minister
We inherited a housing crisis, with people unable to have the security of their own home or even get on to the housing ladder. We are determined to change that. We have invested £39 billion to deliver more social and affordable homes, prioritising brownfield land. We must build more communities with strong infrastructure, but the hon. Lady’s party consistently votes against the planning reforms that will allow those homes to be built.
Mr Calvin Bailey (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)
Yesterday, the Health Secretary confirmed that all eligible black men would be invited to the Transform trial. As chair of the all-party parliamentary group on prostate cancer, I welcome this vital step towards screening for this terrible disease, for which black men have a doubled risk for both diagnosis and death. This is something that Reform has responded to with nothing but divisive weasel words and rage-baiting. Does the Prime Minister agree that our NHS was founded by Labour to be there for everyone equally, and that when there is a proven higher risk, targeting support is equality?
The Prime Minister
I thank my hon. Friend for his work as chair of the prostate cancer APPG. This programme is England’s first targeted cancer screening programme. We are also funding a major expansion of research and treatment, backed by £20 million, to help men at the highest risk. We are determined to improve cancer care, and more cancer patients are now being diagnosed on time, thanks to Labour’s decisions, but of course there is more to do.
Mr Speaker
Points of order come after statements and urgent questions—[Interruption.] You did not ask a question, though—so the point of order can come after the urgent questions.
South East Water: Disruption of Supply
(1 week ago)
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Sir Roger Gale (Herne Bay and Sandwich) (Con)
(Urgent Question): Will the Secretary of State for the Environment make a statement following the disruption of water supplies throughout the area served by South East Water during the spring recess?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Emma Hardy)
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for asking this question. I will update the House on the water supply disruption in Kent, and I want to begin by expressing my sympathy for those affected by the disruption. Being without water is distressing at any time, but particularly during a period of hot weather, alongside school revision and examinations. This is now the third major outage affecting South East Water customers in recent months, and it is simply not acceptable.
South East Water reported that thousands of customers were impacted by supply disruptions over the course of the incident, and I am pleased that normal water supply has now been restored. I met the interim chair and senior operational staff twice during the course of the incident, including on Sunday, and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs team met them daily to hold them to account for the incident and to request that they set out by the end of this week how they will compensate customers.
Water supply disruption causes significant cost to businesses and impacts the most vulnerable in society. I have heard of a 100-year-old lady without water, and a care home in Cranbrook using wet wipes to keep their residents clean. This is simply unacceptable, and the company must take urgent action.
I thank all those working in the Kent local resilience forum, the local authorities, the health and social care partners, and civil servants in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government and DEFRA for their hard work to support those affected. I am also grateful to operational staff and volunteers who worked on the ground to restore supplies and provide alternative water.
A reliable supply of clean water is one of the foundations of a healthy, functioning society. The situation demands further bold action to deliver fundamental long-term reform, and that is why we are delivering whole-scale reform to the water sector. Through our clean water Bill, we will create a new single, powerful regulator, giving us for the first time a clear system-wide view of company performance and the tools to intervene more quickly when companies fall short. We will put consumers first by introducing a water ombudsman, ensuring that customers have a stronger voice and clearer routes to redress. We have already passed the Water (Special Measures) Act 2025, which introduced the toughest sentencing powers ever applied to lawbreaking water company executives, and introduced powers to ban unjustified bonuses.
It is vital that South East Water and all water companies deliver on improvements to their infrastructure, but most of all, they must continue to improve their ability to maintain water supplies to their customers, whatever the weather.
Sir Roger Gale
I thank the Minister for her obvious and genuine concern, and for the measures that she has sought to take. I join her in thanking the very many organisations that have sought to help us through this problem, and I include in that the employees on the ground at South East Water.
Mr Speaker, you know that thousands of people in Herne Bay in my constituency and thousands more in Whitstable, in the constituency represented by the hon. Member for Canterbury (Rosie Duffield), were left without water during the four hottest days of the year so far. That is totally inexcusable and totally unacceptable. Not only were households disrupted, but at the very time when they should have been having a glorious start to their season, guest houses, hotels, restaurants and pubs were shut, care homes had frightful problems, and a doctor’s surgery lost consultations, because they did not have water.
There is no quick fix. The Broad Oak reservoir should have been built 50 years ago. It will take 10 years if we start tomorrow, but we have to try to make sure that in the coming months, because there will be more hot weather, this does not happen for a fifth time across Kent.
Finally, I do believe that the water companies face a very real problem in the regulations as they stand. They are required by law to connect every new house to a supply, but they are not consultees in planning applications—we have to correct that. They have to be given a voice because they cannot spirit water out of thin air.
Emma Hardy
I share the right hon. Gentleman’s outrage at the situation. He is quite right to say that one of the answers is the reservoir, which will take a long time to build, but this is not just about the reservoir. It is also about desalination plants, and the need for more urgent action to tackle leakage; too much water is lost through leakage. Across Government, we are looking at building standards for new homes and at how we can make homes more water-efficient, because this is a big problem. I hope that I can offer the right hon. Gentleman some reassurance by telling him that the National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority has been doing some mapping to identify areas of the country that have more acute water shortage problems and what we need to resolve them.
I asked the company, “What are the actions you can take now?” There is no excuse for poor communication; that is something it can fix overnight. It can also improve its relationship with the local resilience forum. That does not cost any money. It can look at its bulk supply deal with Southern Water—that is another action it can take. It can accelerate its work on leakage reduction—that is another action it can take. Fundamentally, though, the right hon. Gentleman is quite right: the answer is building reservoirs and having greater water storage across our country. Quite frankly, I think it is that we have a situation where we complain about the drought all through the summer and complain about the rain all through the winter, yet have no way of storing that water. I am urgently trying to change that.
Mr Speaker
I remind everybody that this urgent question is about South East Water, not other water companies. I am sure that all questions will be linked to that subject.
Sojan Joseph (Ashford) (Lab)
Like many of my constituents, I have lost all faith in South East Water after its repeated failures to deliver adequate standards for customers in my constituency and across Kent. The latest incident left around 4,000 of my constituents having to cope for days with no water entirely, an intermittent supply or low water pressure. South East Water’s failure to invest in infrastructure means that I have no confidence that it will be able to provide a basic standard of service. Moreover, it kept in place the hosepipe ban until February, and there was no preparedness for the coming hot weather, so there is a lack of understanding by the senior leadership within that organisation. What practical measures can the Government take to ensure that we will not suffer in the coming summer months?
Emma Hardy
I share my hon. Friend’s outrage at the situation. He has been a fantastic champion for his constituents in raising this matter with me a number of times. On the immediate action that South East Water can take, we have said to the company that it needs to be prepared for future hot weather during the summer. What is its resilience plan, what actions will it take and where can it identify immediate actions to take? The longer-term solution is greater water storage. Fundamentally, this company is a water-only company. It has one job—that is all—and that job is to supply water, and it is, quite frankly, astonishing that it is failing to do that at the moment.
My hon. Friend will be aware that South East Water is under investigation by Ofwat and the Drinking Water Inspectorate as to whether, because of its recent credit downgrade, its licence conditions have been broken—so serious actions are being taken against the company. I will, of course, update the House as soon as I hear more about the actions it will be taking in the immediate short term. I should also say that the CEO has offered his resignation and the chair has already resigned. There is an interim chair, and the CEO is currently there while the organisation looks to replace him.
Dr Neil Hudson (Epping Forest) (Con)
Thank you, Mr Speaker, for granting this urgent question from my right hon. Friend the Member for Herne Bay and Sandwich (Sir Roger Gale). I thank the Minister for her approach and engagement on this vital issue.
It is deeply regrettable that we are here yet again with unacceptable outages from South East Water following the events back in December and January. The shortage of water supply in Kent in these hot conditions has had a terrible impact on local communities: homes have been without water supply; schools and businesses have been impacted; farmers and horse owners, again, feared not having enough water for their livestock; and local residents have lost confidence in their water supply and are switching to bottled water. That is simply outrageous.
These repeated failures from South East Water are simply not good enough. We have heard repeated accounts about poor communication and logistics from South East Water, including difficulties in accessibility to collect bottled water, compromising vulnerable residents. Can the Minister please provide guidance on what is being done to ensure that, moving forward, people can reliably access adequate supply, particularly vulnerable households? What is being done to ensure that vital healthcare delivery can continue uninterrupted? In these hot conditions, what measures can be put in place so that farmers and horse owners have enough water for their livestock? What meetings has the Minister had with South East Water, Ofwat, the Drinking Water Inspectorate, local resilience fora and affected councils since this latest disruption?
We have seen resignations at the top of South East Water, but we are yet to see any change in performance. What enforcement action is being considered against South East Water if it is found again to have failed its statutory duties? What investment has South East Water committed to improve resilience in Kent, Sussex and other areas, and how will Ministers ensure that it is delivered? Do the Government accept that repeated water outages are unacceptable, and what steps will Ministers take to support people in South East Water’s area so that they do not face yet another period of interrupted supply?
Emma Hardy
Access to water for livestock was raised with me after the last outage—I think by the hon. Member and the hon. Member for East Grinstead and Uckfield (Mims Davies). This time, South East Water did make deliveries of alternative water to farms across the region during the incident—or that is what I have been informed, but if there is intelligence otherwise, I am keen to learn about that and to understand. South East Water has said that it continues to monitor farms in at-risk areas.
The issue of vulnerable customers continues to be a challenge. I have been talking to the Cabinet Office about whether there are ways to share more accurate information and data. The water companies say that it is challenging to keep a priority register up to date because people sometimes fall in and out of being classified as “vulnerable”. For example, a lady who is pregnant is classified as being vulnerable and needing water, but after she has had the baby, she is no longer classified as vulnerable in the same way. We need to ensure that we can maintain accurate records of who is vulnerable and in need of additional water, so I am having conversations with the Cabinet Office about whether there are ways of sharing data, while bearing in mind the sensitivities and complications of sharing information. I ask all colleagues to encourage their constituents to self-identify through the priority services register if they are classified as “vulnerable”, so that they can access water as they expect.
I met the interim chair of South East Water, and we had a productive conversation. She is keen to reset relationships, and she wants to meet MPs who represent constituencies in the area and talk to them. She is committed to rebuilding the relationship with the local resilience forum and looking at how the company can improve communications. To be fair to her, she has been in post for only a few weeks, so this incident has happened very early in her interim chairship, but there are things that we can work on and build on. There are things that the company can do now around communications and I am concerned by what the hon. Gentleman says about accessibility problems at drinking-water stations.
The hon. Gentleman asked about who I have met. I have met the new interim chair and the senior people involved. I regularly meet the Drinking Water Inspectorate and Ofwat. There are currently live investigations into the company following the last incident and those will continue.
Ms Polly Billington (East Thanet) (Lab)
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for the way that she has approached this incident, particularly for pointing out that South East Water has one job. Unfortunately, the company is accountable to its shareholders more than to the people who it is supposed to serve. Notwithstanding the reforms to the water industry that the Government have already put in place, may I make a suggestion for the future? Rather than simply fining these companies when they fail so catastrophically, we should take stocks in the company to the value of the amount of the fine to be held by a locally convened water board, so that residents have some form of control and accountability for the decisions that are made. Otherwise, we are relying on extractive capitalism and that will destroy our water supply.
Emma Hardy
My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. As the White Paper set out:
“Where a water company might want to transition to a new ownership model, such as a not-for-profit, the regulator will develop a transparent process to assess whether a water company’s requested move to a new model should go ahead”.
We are looking at developing a transparent process, if that is something that the water company might want to consider.
My hon. Friend is absolutely right about increasing the customer voice. On day one when this Government came to power we announced new consumer boards for water companies. The Consumer Council for Water has covered the entire country, gathering together different people for customer panels. It has already held a customer panel in the South East Water area, so that customers can hold water company bosses to account—it works very much like a Select Committee hearing. I will share the report from that panel with the House. It is interesting that the No. 1 issue that came up for the water company to tackle was the lack of adequate communication. That does not require millions or billions of pounds spent on a reservoir—it just requires competence.
Sarah Dyke (Glastonbury and Somerton) (LD)
Leaving thousands of South East Water customers without access to drinking water has become a pattern of neglect, enabled by a water system that fails to hold water companies accountable for their actions. Whether it is environmental disruption or consistent water disruption, this situation is simply unacceptable, but the Government’s timid reforms do not rise to the scale of the challenge. We do not need more tinkering—we need a total structural overhaul. Given the repeated failures in water supply and sewage pollution in the South East Water area and across the country, will the Minister back Liberal Democrat proposals for a mutually owned public benefit model for water companies, focusing investment on the environment, customers and infrastructure, rather than on lining the pockets of the bosses of water companies such as South East Water?
Emma Hardy
South East Water is a water only company, not a sewage company, so we can criticise it for many things, but sewage pollution is not one of them. When the Government came to power we introduced customer panels on day one, and since then we have secured £104 billion of private investment, passed the Water (Special Measures) Act 2025 and given the Environment Agency more powers to monitor water companies and uncover wrongdoing. In fact, the EA has done more than 10,000 inspections of water companies and uncovered 81 examples that have gone on to criminal investigations. I gently point out to the hon. Lady that under the coalition Government funding for the EA was cut by more than a half.
We have also introduced criminal liability for water companies, introduced automatic penalties, reduced the burden of proof, introduced cost recovery, banned the sale and supply of wet wipes, looked at reforming our bathing waters, established the water delivery taskforce and have abolished Ofwat. Yes, there is more work to do on top of that, but I stand proud on the record of the actions that we have already taken following years of inaction.
Helena Dollimore (Hastings and Rye) (Lab/Co-op)
I thank the right hon. Member for Herne Bay and Sandwich (Sir Roger Gale) for securing the urgent question. The disruption caused by this incident has been extremely distressing for my constituents on the Sussex-Kent border who are served by South East Water. Many residents and businesses were impacted, and it is right that the chief executive and the chairman of South East Water have resigned. I urge the Government to look at the terms of the company’s licence and whether they have been breached.
We are here in the Chamber again discussing another major water outage—as the Minister knows, there have been two major outages in my patch—and we see the same mistakes and failures repeated time and again by the water companies. The Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee looked at the issue and found that the water companies need to have clear plans of action in place, including for providing water stations in the right places, such as those that people can get to without a car, and they need to think about the impact on businesses and maybe deliver water to them to keep them open. All of those things are forgotten every time, so will the Minister instruct all water companies in the country to have detailed emergency response plans in place for every constituency in the country and ask that they work with local MPs on them? We are the people who can get the contact details for the local headteachers and vicars, as I had to last Christmas eve, who can set up water stations, but the water companies need to do the planning before disaster strikes and people lose water. I urge the Minister to look at such measures.
Emma Hardy
South East Water has broken its licence conditions, and it is currently in breach of its licence. It has been downgraded by Moody’s credit rating agency because of its performance—I think it is the first time that a credit rating agency has downgraded a water company over performance rather than insolvency. Its licence is also being investigated by Ofwat under the consumer duty because of the supply outages in December and January.
My hon. Friend asked about emergency response plans. Water companies should absolutely have emergency response plans, but clearly the plans that South East Water has are inadequate. That is why we want to work with the local resilience forum, the water company and officials from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to ensure that those plans are improved before we have another short spell of hot weather.
Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge) (Con)
The hon. Member for Hastings and Rye (Helena Dollimore) asked a good question that the Minister touched on, but I want to press her further. Parts of Mereworth, Platt and Offham in my area were left not only without water, but without the support necessary for those who were most vulnerable, until two fantastic councillors, Matt Boughton and Sarah Hudson, both from East Peckham, really went in there and got into the fight with the water company to ensure that the water station was set up. What planning can the Minister help with to ensure that infrastructure is put in place? The water companies have got away with it for far too long. Let us not beat around the bush: South East Water has been the worst run company that I have ever come across and it is quite right that the leadership has gone. By the way, I have come across quite a lot of companies, so that bar is set quite high. The Minister has extraordinary discretionary authority to corral and coerce companies to act, so will she look at bringing forward a task group within regional areas to ensure that emergency water plans are in place? Otherwise this situation will happen again,
Emma Hardy
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his thoughtful question. The water companies have a statutory duty to provide wholesome water. In the event that they cannot do that, they must include provisions of alternative water supplies, as set out in the Security and Emergency Measures (Water and Sewerage Undertakers and Water Supply Licensees) Direction 2022, so they have that statutory duty to plan and prepare.
The right hon. Gentleman’s suggestion is a helpful one, and I would want South East Water to work with the LRF on this issue. In this case, it was just a water supply issue, but often when we have incidents that take out water supply—such as flooding, potentially—there is more than one issue, so it is important that companies work really closely with local resilience forums. I can commit to contacting the company and the local resilience forum to ensure they have those plans in place, and also recommend that they speak to the local Members of Parliament about those plans, to ensure that they are felt to be satisfactory.
Emma Hardy
And the councillors, of course, through the local resilience forum; they need to make sure they are ready for what may be another hot summer.
Kevin McKenna (Sittingbourne and Sheppey) (Lab)
Constituents of mine have been really worried and concerned by seeing residents of Herne Bay and Whitstable along the coast deprived of their essential water supplies. It should not have come as a shock; we know that there was 15% extra usage of water during the heatwave the other week, but local farmers were telling me in March and April that water supplies in the swales on Sheppey were really low. We have more investment coming, but it is really chalk and cheese in my area and in Swale, where we have Southern Water and South East Water. South East Water is absolutely dreadful, whereas on Sheppey—which is particularly vulnerable to water supply issues—we have a new water main coming, £4 million-worth of investment, and a massive new drainage system. The difference between those two companies is obvious, so will the Minister tell me how we cannot just increase the amount of investment going into the water system, but deliver it at pace, and how we can end the postcode lottery of whether people get water or do not just because of the management of these firms?
Emma Hardy
On the issue of farmers and water supply, I am keen to make it much easier for farmers to set up on-farm reservoirs. I have heard repeatedly from farmers that they find that difficult, so I want to make it as simple as possible. I have spoken to too many farmers who tell me about their frustrations, particularly in the Suffolk area; they say, “All winter, we send all the water out into the sea, and then all summer, we wish we had it back.” I want to do something about that.
Every single water company has been told to produce a drought emergency plan ready for the summer, to make sure we are prepared. As for making sure the companies deliver what they promise, one of the things we did through the Water (Special Measures) Act was ensure that if they do not deliver what they promise, the money they have taken to deliver it must be refunded to customers. That money has been ringfenced, and the Water Delivery Taskforce tracks all of the major projects to make sure they are on track and on budget. If they are not, we as a Government intervene to understand why, and to assess what can be done to bring those projects back on track.
My hon. Friend is quite right that someone who lives in a certain area should not suffer a much poorer service than they would receive if they lived somewhere else. That is why we want to get a better grip on the delivery of projects, and also make it easier for people to hold on to water during the winter, to make sure they have it during the summer.
Rosie Duffield (Canterbury) (Ind)
I thank the Minister, who has been engaged on this issue for a long time—she talks to me and my neighbours, and I know she really cares. My neighbours and I spend far too much of our time talking about the latest water shortages. Heat seems to equate to a lack of water in the taps. Whitstable has been devastated yet again, and we are really worried about too many new houses whose demand for water will not be met, as well as about local businesses in the summer. The excellent Nomad Pizza, an independent company, had to close for days during a peak time for tourism. By the way, lots of my constituents are very behind the nationalisation model; I get a lot of emails about that. With our reservoir 10 years away from being built, how can I assure my constituents that the tanks will not still be empty in July and August? If they are, businesses will suffer.
Emma Hardy
That pizza business sounds great, and definitely worth a visit in summer. The hon. Lady is right; when I spoke to South East Water again on Sunday evening, I asked, “What immediate measures can you put in place over this summer to make sure we have enough water supply?”
I have had some really productive conversations with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government about how we build homes that use less water—what we can do through building standards to build homes in a different way, so that they do not have to use the same amount of water. That happens all over the world; it is not beyond our grasp as a Government to do.
Fundamentally, we are going to need to build the reservoirs. We are going to need the desalination plants and those big sources of water, but as I have mentioned before, one of the more immediate things that South East Water could do is tackle the leaks. At the moment, too much water is going into the ground and being wasted.
Jim Dickson (Dartford) (Lab)
Residents in Dartford, like those across Kent, are experiencing poor service and increased bills—including residents in Ebbsfleet, who have to pay an additional sum for waste water to flow from their community into the Thames. That is charged for by the Port of London Authority; it is called dewatering, and it is incredibly unfair to those residents. They ask me continually why it is acceptable for this poor performance to occur and for water executives to continue to pay themselves large bonuses. What work is going on to tighten the regulations so that reward matches performance?
Emma Hardy
I totally agree with my hon. Friend. As I have mentioned before, I do not have an issue with bonuses per se; I just think they should be linked to how well people do their jobs. We have banned unfair bonuses through the Water (Special Measures) Act, but some companies have attempted to exploit loopholes so that they can continue to award them. We are determined to close those loopholes.
Helen Whately (Faversham and Mid Kent) (Con)
We have had a few days of hot weather, and yet again we have had water outages in my constituency and across Kent, on top of what we saw earlier this year and last year. Residents, businesses and livestock owners are frustrated, but they are also really worried, because getting water is the most basic thing in this country. It is right that the chief executive and chair of South East Water have gone; my anger with them was particularly about their response and how they have handled these outages. However, there is a longer-term problem with water infrastructure and supply that will not be fixed overnight. In my constituency, 20,000 more houses are in the pipeline for the next few years, and thousands more in the surrounding area. Is there enough water for those thousands of additional houses in rural Kent?
Emma Hardy
The hon. Lady raises an important point—I remember how powerfully she described the impact on her constituents and businesses when we were last in the Chamber talking about South East Water, so I know this is something she cares deeply about. As I have said, one of the things we are doing through the Water Delivery Taskforce is identifying areas of the country where there are more acute water shortages, and therefore what actions can be taken to ensure that people have the homes to live in that they need, and businesses have the water they need, without having a detrimental impact on the residents who already live in those areas.
South East Water, in particular, is reliant on a bulk supply agreement with Southern Water. That is one of the things I am keen to look into the details of, to make sure that that can be guaranteed, whatever circumstances Southern Water finds itself in. There are various other actions we can take; I have mentioned businesses, building standards and the way we build homes. In Cambridge, they have looked at retrofitting some homes to make them use less water.
There are various other rules and regulations on businesses’ use of water—at the moment, we have a slightly bizarre situation where businesses have to use potable water. They are not able to use other types of water, and it seems a bit crazy that we are wasting drinking water on things that are not drinking or for domestic customers. We are looking at a whole spread of different actions to make sure that we have the water we need; the nine new reservoirs, the desalination plants and all those things are brilliant, but they are not going to be in place this summer or next summer, so we are looking at what more immediate actions we can take.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Speaker
Order. I will gently say that the question was about South East Water. The Minister has opened it up by mentioning other water companies, but it would be more helpful if we could concentrate on the theme. I am going to test that by calling Clive Efford; I think his constituency is covered by Thames Water, but I am sure that he will link his question in.
Clive Efford (Eltham and Chislehurst) (Lab)
Absolutely, Mr Speaker: my question is about South East Water, because what we have here is a company that fell over at the first short period of hot weather. We have to wonder what planning has gone on in that company, given that it fell over so quickly in the season. When are we going to call time on these water companies? The consistent failure that we see from them, while they extract enormous profits from the industry, has to come to an end at some stage. I know that my hon. Friend is as frustrated with these water companies as the rest of us, but there must come a time when we say to them, “Enough is enough”, and take control of them for the public good.
Emma Hardy
As I have highlighted, the White Paper talks about companies that wish to move to alternative ownership models, but I will briefly touch on special administration for breaching statutory duties. Under section 37 of the Water Industry Act 1991, a water company has a duty to supply water within its area of appointment. A serious breach of these principal duties or of an enforcement order can be grounds for a performance special administration regime, if that breach is so serious that it is no longer appropriate for the company to continue to hold its instrument of appointment.
Alison Bennett (Mid Sussex) (LD)
I absolutely despair of South East Water. As we have heard from Members who represent Kent constituencies, South East Water cannot cope with large water outages; but nor can it cope with small water outages. In my constituency, the village of Staplefield has just gone through 30 hours without water, without bottled water being supplied and without good information—indeed, there was even some misinformation. I understand that trying to fix decades of neglect of water infrastructure will take a long time, but in the Minister’s next meetings with executives at South East Water, will she ask to look at their communication plans so that people can know what is happening, get timely information and get the bottled water they need, since outages seem to be par for the course these days?
Emma Hardy
The hon. Lady is absolutely right. One of the issues that we discussed in the conversation on Sunday was communication, including about where to put bottled water stations. I was told that during this incident, South East Water had worked more closely with the local resilience forum to listen to its advice about where to place those stations. If that is not her experience, I would be keen to hear about that, so that I can take that back to the company. South East Water has an interim chair, who I know is keen to build new relationships with Members of Parliament—she has assured me that she will be meeting MPs. I urge Members collectively to raise this issue of communication and where bottled water stations are directly with the interim chair, so that we can have them in the right place. Fundamentally, Members of Parliament and councillors probably know and understand their areas far better than a water company does.
Matt Rodda (Reading Central) (Lab)
I thank the right hon. Member for Herne Bay and Sandwich (Sir Roger Gale) for securing this urgent question, and I thank the Minister for her approach to this difficult and appalling issue in Kent. Can she update the House a little bit more on the work to get meaningful compensation for the affected residents and businesses? In the longer term, what is she doing to improve the system of compensation? Many of my residents who had a water outage had to wait a long time for money to be paid back.
Emma Hardy
One of the first things we did when we came into government was to look at the guaranteed standards scheme. We have introduced increased compensation payments and new standards. Previously, compensation was not being paid when people were under a boil notice, but this Government have introduced that, along with doubling compensation for failings such as supply interruptions, low pressure and sewer flooding. Because of those changes, customers should for the first time be receiving payments for boil notices. We have told water companies to make compensation available to people as soon as possible. We are clear that customers come first. They are the people I care about, and they are the people for whom I am the Water Minister. We will also look at introducing a water ombudsman. In the conversation I had with South East Water on Sunday, I asked it to identify by the end of the week what compensation will be paid to who, and when, and I will be following up on that.
Dr Ben Spencer (Runnymede and Weybridge) (Con)
As the Minister is looking into the situation with South East Water, can I also feed back what happened last week, when parts of Weybridge had restrictions on water supply? Although we are supplied by Affinity Water, I think the problem is broader than just our area. Will she urgently review the resilience and availability of water supply, and in particular the impact that new house building will have on supply over the coming years?
Emma Hardy
On resilience, one of the things that we want to introduce for the first time is asset standards for water company assets. At the moment, those do not exist; there is no rule or criterion for the standard to which water companies need to maintain their water treatment work, waste water treatment work or pipes, or for how much leakage is acceptable. With the new regulator, we want to introduce those asset standards, which say that companies have to maintain their assets to a certain standard. That should help change things and basically build against what we have seen—admittedly not on this occasion; on this occasion, the company ran out of water—in other cases where infrastructure falls over because it is not adequately maintained and looked after.
That is why the no-notice inspections matter; with those MOT-style inspections, as I refer to them, people from the Environment Agency can go in with no notice, check the assets, mark the water company on them and then give it an enforcement notice to say that it has to improve its assets up to a certain standard. The situation will not be fixed overnight, but having that goal for where we need to get to will help to prevent infrastructure from falling over because it is not properly looked after.
Clive Lewis (Norwich South) (Lab)
South East Water is one of a number of privatised water companies that are responsible for selling off 35 reservoirs since 2017, and those companies have not built a single one since privatisation that is complete. We understand that this Government are committed to a regulatory approach to dealing with this issue, but that is akin to putting a complaints box on the Titanic. It is a nice idea, but I do not think it will work. Ultimately, private water companies’ first priority is private shareholders—many of them overseas—who do not give a damn about our constituents. This situation will keep happening until water is put back under public control, in public hands, and owned by the public.
Emma Hardy
I know how passionately my hon. Friend cares about this issue, and I genuinely pay tribute to him for championing this issue and for the work he has done in Parliament to bring people together. As I have mentioned, the White Paper talks about setting up a transparent process to look at whether a company should transition to a different model, including a not-for-profit, if that was what it wished to do.
Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)
Mr Speaker, as an Essex MP, may I endorse your lovely tribute at PMQs to Sir Alan Haselhurst? He will be much missed, even though he did achieve a respectable innings of 88 years in his time on this earth.
I strongly endorse the suggestion of my right hon. Friend from across the Thames, the Member for Herne Bay and Sandwich (Sir Roger Gale), about making water companies statutory consultees for planning applications. When there is an application for a large number of houses, the implications can be severe not just for fresh water, but for foul water and in particular for sewage. In my constituency, our sewage capacity is very nearly maxed out, and the implications of getting that wrong are frighteningly obvious. I can see that the Minister is helpfully nodding. Can we please change the law to make water companies statutory consultees, so that they can give expert advice on whether new planning proposals are feasible in reality?
Emma Hardy
The right hon. Gentleman is right to point out the consequences of getting it wrong. Just to reassure him, we are looking at using tools such as the water delivery taskforce where we have shortages, to see what we can do. That is for not just water, but waste water capacity too, because both are crucial. We want to see homes being built—people want somewhere to live, and first-time buyers in particular are finding it incredibly difficult—but we are taking a sensible approach. We are identifying where we have shortages in waste water or water to see what we can do to address the amount available, as well as what can be done to reduce demand in that area, including retrofitting, building standards and various other measures.
Terry Jermy (South West Norfolk) (Lab)
The Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee has extensively investigated South East Water; what I found particularly shocking was the fact that so many warnings and concerns were raised but were simply ignored. Despite a high risk of water supply failure, the lack of preparedness was plain to see. Will the regulatory reforms that the Government are looking at have real consequences when those concerns are raised, but are ignored by the water companies?
Emma Hardy
I thank my hon. Friend and all members of the EFRA Committee for their excellent report, which was forensic in looking into the failures of South East Water. It was a brilliant, useful document. He is right that tough consequences are needed if concerns are raised and ignored; that cannot be allowed to continue to happen. That is exactly why we want to create a new regulator with strong powers and teeth to be able to take action. It is also why we are looking at introducing this performance improvement regime for water companies so that, if we identify failure in a water company, the regulator has proper oversight to turn that company around and make it improve, with consequences if it does not.
Sarah Bool (South Northamptonshire) (Con)
I thank the Minister for her praise of the EFRA Committee’s report. I speak as a member of that Committee; we are doing extensive work on the water industry and we are following this matter carefully. As has been said, the key issue with the South East Water disruption was the lack of communication, something that applied equally to Anglian Water with the outage that occurred at exactly the same time in South Northamptonshire. I was not told about the outage, and residents report not knowing what was going on for 12 or 24 hours, and the water delivery was inconsistent. What more can the Government do to send a clear message to the water companies that this lack of communication is not acceptable?
Emma Hardy
I thank the hon. Lady for her work on the EFRA Committee. She is entirely right: it is unacceptable. I feel that I am a fair-minded person. I know that water companies cannot control the weather, and I know that they cannot build a reservoir overnight. However, they certainly can contact their Members of Parliament, contact their councils, get in touch with their local resilience forums and make sure that they communicate with their customers, as an absolute bare minimum, and that is exactly the conversation that I will be having with each and every one of them.
Chris Hinchliff (North East Hertfordshire) (Lab)
Alongside the failures in the south-east, during the recent heatwave there was a widespread disruption of water supply across swathes of my constituency, in Buntingford, Cottered, Ardeley and Throcking. In a country as wet as ours it should take a true organising genius to create disruptions in water supply, but we are on track for a water deficit of 6 billion litres in our country in the coming decades, and on top of that, AI data centres estimate that water consumption will reach up to half a trillion cubic metres every year. Does the Minister—whom I deeply respect—accept that if we are to prevent water supply disruptions from recurring year in year out, we cannot continue to have infinite increases in demand on our already vastly overstretched water resources?
Emma Hardy
My hon. Friend is right. It is astonishing that although, owing to climate change, we will experience wetter and wetter winters and drier and drier summers, we have no capacity to store water in the winter and use it in the summer. That seems to me to be absolute nonsense.
As for the issue of data centres, there is one possibility that I am keen to look into, and I touched on it in an earlier answer. Under the current legislation, water that is supplied by a water company must be of drinking-water standard. It strikes me as logical and sensible to say, “If water is being used for cooling purposes rather than for drinking purposes in people’s homes, could it not be of a different standard? Why does it need to be of drinking-water quality?” Where, for instance, we want to use water for data centres, for growth, why do we not—in a closed-loop system—use waste water? We have some legislation that has been drafted for the right purposes and sounds great—of course, a water company must produce water of drinking-water standard—but does it need to be of drinking-water standard if it is being used to cool machinery?
Helen Grant (Maidstone and Malling) (Con)
South East Water has openly and publicly admitted that it cannot supply drinking water for all the future homes that are planned for Kent. What is the Minister’s response to that specific concern, and is she having conversations with her colleagues in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government?
Emma Hardy
The short answer is yes. The previous chief executive of South East Water—or rather the current chief executive, who has not gone yet—met members of the water delivery taskforce a few weeks ago, with some of the councillors from the area, to discuss exactly that issue of how both water supply and housing demands can be met. I sit on the taskforce along with representatives of the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, so we are all having the conversation together about how we build the homes that are needed without having an impact on the people already living in the area, yet also ensuring that new homes have the water that they require.
We have been assessing what is likely to happen over the next five, 10 or 15 years. What are the various water supplies that will be coming in? What impact will that have on house building? How can homes be built to a more water-efficient design? Those conversations are happening now, across Government. We need to achieve the right balance between ensuring that everyone has a home to live in and, at the same time, preventing a water crisis?
Lebanon: Israel Defence Forces Operations
(1 week ago)
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Monica Harding (Esher and Walton) (LD)
(Urgent Question): To ask the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs to make a statement on the Israel Defence Forces’ operations in Lebanon.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs (Mr Hamish Falconer)
Before I answer the hon. Lady’s important urgent question, let me say that I am sure the whole House will join me in condemning Iran’s strike on Kuwait International airport with drones this morning. It was a completely unacceptable attack, which has tragically resulted in multiple injuries and at least one confirmed fatality. We stand in full solidarity with the Government and the people of Kuwait, as well as our partners across the Gulf. I have conveyed my condolences this morning to the Kuwaiti Foreign Minister and his colleagues. We urge Iran to de-escalate immediately and return to meaningful dialogue to secure lasting peace and regional stability.
Let me now turn to the issue of Lebanon. The reckless and disproportionate escalation of Israeli military action there has resulted in a devastating situation for Lebanese civilians, killing thousands. At an emergency session of the United Nations Security Council on Monday, jointly called by the United Kingdom, we firmly condemned the actions of the Government of Israel and called for a genuine and lasting ceasefire. We also condemned Lebanese Hezbollah’s ongoing attacks against Israel, including the attacks on Israeli northern communities. They have faced a repeated barrage of missiles and drones.
Lebanese Hezbollah is a proscribed organisation. At Iran’s instigation, it has dragged Lebanon into a war that its Government and its people do not want. It does not speak or act for the people of Lebanon. It must end these attacks and disarm. I condemn the recent comments by Hezbollah’s leadership, seeking to destabilise the Government of Lebanon within their own country.
In April I visited Beirut to show our support for the Government and the people of Lebanon, and saw the impact of this military escalation at first hand. In the south, on a previous visit, I saw the devastating impact on civilian communities—villages razed to the ground—and I was pleased to be able to hand over tangible support to the Lebanese armed forces. Since April, conditions for civilians have only worsened. More than 3,000 people have been killed and more than 1 million have been displaced, with civilian homes and infrastructure destroyed. We believe that one quarter of the population of Lebanon is now displaced. Displacement means families fleeing from their homes, not knowing what they will return to. It means ever greater strain on hospitals and clinics. It means civilians sleeping in tents by the roadside. It means thousands of children—some of whom I met—not being able to go to school, and the spread of disease even among the youngest. That is why a ceasefire, properly observed by the parties, is so urgent.
While I was in Lebanon, I announced a commitment of an additional £20 million in humanitarian support, particularly for those displaced by the conflict, making the UK one of the largest international humanitarian donors to those affected by this man-made crisis. I also met President Aoun, as well as with other members of the Lebanese leadership. His Government are taking courageous steps, setting out an unprecedented commitment to tackling Hezbollah, and have made the case for direct diplomacy with the Government of Israel. The people of both Lebanon and Israel deserve to live in peace and security.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
Order. I am sure that the Minister does not really need to be reminded of this, but Ministers have three minutes in which to answer an urgent question, and his response overran by some time.
Monica Harding
It has become routine for Donald Trump to declare a ceasefire when none exists, and in Lebanon the President’s claim that fighting has ceased is a dangerous fantasy. Under direction from the Israeli Security Cabinet, the IDF is expanding its illegal military operations in southern Lebanon. Israeli forces occupy more territory in Lebanon now than at any point since the start of the century. Hundreds of shattered communities have been left in their wake, with more than 3,000 Lebanese killed and 1 million displaced. This looks far too much like the IDF’s operation in Gaza. Last week, Prime Minister Netanyahu said that Israel would expand its control to 70% of that territory, breaching the ceasefire there. There can be no doubt that these actions have breached international law, and they are likely to constitute war crimes.
Meanwhile, Hezbollah continues to target Israel with missiles and drones. Its violence has led to the displacement of Israeli citizens from across northern Israel and is completely unacceptable. There can be no place for that terror organisation in the region. No part of this resembles a ceasefire. We need to see concerted action from the international community, including the UK Government, to bring this cycle of violence to an end.
Do the Government support the need for an immediate ceasefire in Lebanon? Are the Government pressing the Israeli Security Cabinet to stop its illegal offensive and occupation in Lebanon? Will the Government stop all arms sales to Israel and sanction Netanyahu, alongside the extremist members of his cabinet? Have the Government made any progress with partners to advance multilateral plans for the disarming of Hezbollah?
There is no military solution to the Lebanon crisis. The only path forward is a Lebanese political settlement that ensures Hezbollah’s disbandment and full state sovereignty over all its territory.
Mr Falconer
I am grateful for the hon. Lady’s questions. As I am sure was clear in my answer, we do call for an immediate and meaningful ceasefire. I also commented on the extent of civilian suffering, which she was right to draw attention to. She was also right to highlight the vital importance of the rapid disarmament of Hezbollah, which is doing the people of Lebanon nothing but harm through its continued efforts to undermine the Lebanese Government and bring the Lebanese into a conflict that they do not wish to be part of. I discussed those questions of disarmament in all my meetings in April, with the President, the Prime Minister, the Speaker of the Parliament and members of the Lebanese armed forces. We will continue to play our full role, including in the Security Council, as we did earlier in the week.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
I call the Chair of the Select Committee.
Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)
Instead of it being completely unacceptable for Israel to invade and threaten the Lebanese people south of the Litani river, it seems to have been long understood that providing it did not cross the river, there would not be any particular consequences—as if there was a modern-day Rubicon. Now it has crossed, and now Israel and Hezbollah are fighting out their ancient hatred in the middle of a country, and deliberately trying to destabilise Lebanon. That is completely unacceptable.
When my Committee visits the country this month, I expect that we will hear many requests for more assistance to the Lebanese army, so that it can make real progress in disarming Hezbollah and defending its people. Can the Minister confirm that such assistance is going in? Can he give us more details of the plans?
Mr Falconer
I thank my right hon. Friend for her continued interest in Lebanon. I have been south of the Litani, and I have handed over watchtowers to the Lebanese armed forces in those areas. I would not want the House to have any impression other than that our view is consistent, north and south of the Litani. I saw for myself, from that watchtower, the extent of damage done to civilian infrastructure, with whole villages completely flattened. People said to me, quite rightly, that their lives mattered and that people in the south of Lebanon should not expect their villages to be flattened or their children to be displaced. I have been clear in all our contact with the Israeli Government and the Lebanese authorities how important it is for this violence to be brought to an end.
My right hon. Friend asked for further detail. I can confirm that we have provided over £175 million in training, equipment and advice to the Lebanese armed forces since 2009, and there has been particular work in relation to Lebanon’s borders against Syria and Israel.
Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)
Lebanese Hezbollah is an Iranian-backed terrorist organisation that, for too long, has caused harm to the Lebanese people, undermined the Government of Lebanon and threatened Israel. It is also part of a terror network that threatens our interests and security, and those of our friends in the middle east. The House should be in no doubt that Hezbollah continues to undermine efforts to secure peace in the region, and fails to comply with the terms of the 2024 Israel-Lebanon ceasefire. What is the Minister’s assessment of Hezbollah’s actions when it comes to violating the ceasefire, and of the support that it has received from Iran? Does he agree that the interests of peace are best served by Hezbollah being permanently disarmed?
The current conflict has caused terrible hardship in Lebanon and Israel, and the UK Government must use their influence and diplomacy in the region to help bring this to an end. We must see this conflict come to an end. Can the Minister tell us what direct discussions have taken place with representatives in Israel, Lebanon and the US Administration on the terms of a lasting ceasefire? What are the British Government doing to support the disarming of Hezbollah? What contributions and practical efforts are being made to fully implement the UN Security Council resolution 1701?
Much of this leads back to the architect of so much disturbance in the middle east—Iran—so I will conclude my remarks by joining the Minister in condemning the strikes that took place today in Kuwait. Iran cannot carry on persisting in the way it is as a state sponsor of terrorism.
Mr Falconer
The shadow Foreign Secretary makes a range of important points, including on the enormous and continued harm that Hezbollah does to the people of Lebanon, as indeed it continues to attempt to do to the people of Israel. It is completely unacceptable that communities in the north of Israel continue to face barrages of missiles and drones. We have called repeatedly for Hezbollah to stop; what it does harms Lebanon as much as Israel.
We have discussed in detail, with the Lebanese armed forces and the leadership of Lebanon, the progress that must be made in disarming Hezbollah. There has been a lot of commentary about the phasing and sequencing of those efforts over the last few months, but it must be the Lebanese Government who disarm Hezbollah. That is the only way that the Hezbollah issue can be properly dealt with. The Government of Lebanon are brave and courageous people in whom we have very considerable confidence. President Aoun, who I was in contact with today, is taking very important steps to try to safeguard his country and its future, and we must support him. He, his Government and his armed forces must monopolise force in Lebanon, not Hezbollah and not the IDF.
Abtisam Mohamed (Sheffield Central) (Lab)
Some 125 health workers have been killed in Lebanon in the last three months alone. Today, an Israeli strike hit an ambulance in south Lebanon, killing two paramedics, which takes the death toll to 127. The November 2024 ceasefire agreement is barely worth the paper it is written on. The Minister rightly condemns the targeting of civilians, but what about Israel’s targeting of health workers or journalists? Does the Minister realise that condemnation without action has utterly failed, and reinforces Israel’s continuing disregard for international law? Will the Minister make it clear today that sanctions must be used to hold Israel accountable?
Mr Falconer
My hon. Friend has been a persistent advocate on these issues. We have taken a whole series of steps, which I will set out in brief for the House. So important are the issues in Lebanon that during my visit in April, we went from providing only £10 million of humanitarian assistance to now providing £30 million. We are now one of the world’s largest humanitarian donors to Lebanon. Few other Ministers in the world have gone as close as I have to the blue line. I met incredibly brave representatives of the Lebanese Red Cross—young people who have, in many cases, given up their lives to try to minimise the harm coming to southern communities. I was so upset to see that there have been further strikes since I met them. I am proud of our support for them, and I utterly condemn the attacks.
Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)
It is a tragic perversity that the actions of Hezbollah and Hamas actually hurt and harm the interests and safety of those whom they purport to act on behalf of. Several years ago, former Israeli Prime Minister Barak described Israel as being the “villa in the jungle”. Last week, with cross-party colleagues, I was in Israel, and it is becoming increasingly evident that the Israeli Government’s actions are rendering it a rogue and a pariah state, oblivious to international and US pressure and opinion. That, in turn, is making Israel herself far less secure.
Apart from saying words, which are welcome, what can the Government do? Can I suggest an expansion and deepening of sanctions, because that will hit people where it is needed and may refocus attention?
Mr Falconer
Strong views are held right across the House on questions around the middle east, but I pay tribute to those on the Opposition Benches who have shifted their position in recent years. The British Government, while I have been the Middle East Minister, have made very significant policy decisions. There are existing sanctions, and I know the hon. Gentleman will understand why I do not go further on the question of sanctions, and I am the first British Minister to announce from this Dispatch Box sanctions on Israeli Ministers. I recognise what a Rubicon that was to cross, and I also recognise that I have been supported in doing so by voices on the Opposition Benches and, of course, those of my many hon. Friends behind me. I recognise the gravity of what is happening in the middle east, and we will continue to take the steps we have taken in responding with the urgency required. I hope the House will permit me to say that, when I announced the recognition of the state of Palestine, I felt I was speaking for the whole House, not just the Government.
John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)
Madam Deputy Speaker, may I take 30 seconds to associate myself with the Speaker’s remarks about Sir Alan Haselhurst? He was in the Chair when I seized the Mace, and he expelled me from the Chamber, but he did it with such good grace that we became firm friends and have been ever since. I send my condolences to his wife.
As the Minister knows, I am the secretary of the National Union of Journalists parliamentary group. We are now experiencing in Lebanon exactly what we saw in Gaza, with the targeting and murder of journalists. When he was there in April, Amal Khalil, the famous woman journalist, was hit by an Israeli strike, and the Red Cross ambulance that went to assist her was hit as well. The Lebanese Prime Minister has made it quite clear that these are war crimes. Could I ask that the Government join others in collecting the evidence, so that we can take action against the Israeli Ministers who have perpetrated these war crimes against the Lebanese people, just as they did against the Palestinians?
Mr Falconer
I am familiar with the incident my right hon. Friend describes, and I pay tribute to his work on these issues right across the world. It is appalling that journalists in Lebanon who are reporting on developments in the south have been struck in this way. We made interventions in the United Nations following some of those assaults on journalists both in Lebanon and in Israel, and we will continue to press these points.
Brian Mathew (Melksham and Devizes) (LD)
With the world on fire, with war and climate change and with diseases such as Ebola stalking Africa again, will the Government reconfirm their commitment to returning aid spending to 0.7% of GNI and to not cutting it below 0.3% of GNI?
Mr Falconer
We have discussed these issues on a number of occasions. The Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister have set out why we had to take the difficult decisions we have made, but I would like to assure the House that we have protected Lebanon from those cuts. That is why we are in the position we are of being one of the largest humanitarian donors to Lebanon in the world.
Andrew Pakes (Peterborough) (Lab/Co-op)
I pay tribute to the Minister’s dogged determination, shared by many of us on the Labour side of the House, to get this issue right.
I think I have said prayers every time throughout this crisis when there has been an abuse of human rights—not just in Lebanon, but when Hamas took the hostages, when innocent Palestinians have been killed, when villages have been threatened and when there has been violence in the settlements—and the IDF and the Israeli Government have been involved at many of those times, but I fear I am running out of prayers to make. Beyond the moral outrage we rightly express in this House, what more will it take for a British Government to stand up for sanctions and further actions that demonstrate to the world—and the people in Lebanon, Gaza and the west bank—that we get it and will take the action necessary to stand up for international law, human rights and their freedoms?
Mr Falconer
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for describing my work in gracious terms. I hope Britain’s sustained commitment on the issues in Lebanon has demonstrated that we understand the gravity of what is going on. We will remain deeply engaged in these questions. I have been in contact with the Lebanese Foreign Minister, the Lebanese President and American counterparts. We have also raised these issues with the Israeli Government, and we will continue to do so.
Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con)
I join the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, the right hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry)—she is just returning to her place—in seeking to support capacity building in the Lebanese army, which is absolutely right. I also join the Minister in recognising the courage of the President and Ministers in the Lebanese Government, particularly in their public condemnation of Hezbollah and even, indirectly, of Iran. Could he confirm that it is the view of the British Government that not all those who follow the Shi’a tradition of Islam, in both Lebanon and Iran, necessarily support Hamas, Hezbollah or the evil Iranian regime?
I put on record my condemnation of both Hezbollah and Iran, which have basically caused this latest conflict in Lebanon. It is absolutely clear that Israelis should be able to live in peace, without fear of being bombed by drones or missiles. Does the Minister share the view of the French envoy to the United Nations that Israel needs to learn the lessons of its occupation of Lebanon in the year 2000? Does he also recognise the words of Danny Danon—as the Minister will know, he is the Israeli envoy to the UN—when he said that Israel is not seeking to expand the conflict or retain territory in Lebanon? If that is indeed the position and policy of the Israeli Government, it is welcome, but it does seem at odds with some of the public utterances of the current Israeli Prime Minister.
Mr Falconer
I completely agree with the right hon. Gentleman that Shi’a communities—whether in Lebanon, Iraq, Iran or, indeed, Pakistan—overwhelmingly want peace and human rights like everybody else. This is a small, unrepresentative part of Lebanon that is funded and supported by Iran, and it is bringing the Lebanese into terrible difficulties.
On the right hon. Gentleman’s important point about the Israeli Government’s intentions, if this is a counter-terrorism operation, I can see absolutely no justification for raising the Israeli flag over Beaufort castle. We want to see Lebanese Hezbollah disarmed, and that cannot possibly involve such a flagrant violation of the sovereignty of a neighbour.
Apsana Begum (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)
For years, it has been reported that Israel has been using white phosphorus munitions against civilian targets in south Lebanon’s Bekaa valley. Alongside reports from Human Rights Watch and Amnesty, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon has even reported that UN peacekeepers in Lebanon were injured by white phosphorus munitions. The Minister has confirmed to me previously that the Government are aware of these reports, and they know that the use of white phosphorus as an incendiary weapon in populated areas is strictly prohibited, yet this is just one of thousands of examples of Israel tearing up the laws of war. Can the Minister explain whether the UK’s joint agreement, signed in 2020, on military co-operation with Israel is still in place, and if so, why?
Mr Falconer
To be clear about the position, I think my hon. Friend is referring to the 2020 Israel-UK road map, which is suspended. However, on the very important question she raises about arms exports, as I have told this House on a number of occasions, we take our obligations under international humanitarian law incredibly seriously. That is why we conducted the review we did when we became the Government, and why we took the action that then followed, which has been discussed in this Chamber on a number of occasions.
Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)
I am sure the Minister understands that there can be no sustainable ceasefire for as long as there exists in Lebanon an Iranian terrorist proxy that has as its war aim the complete, final and irrevocable destruction of the state of Israel and the Jews who live there. So we are faced, are we not, with trying to mitigate some of the actions of this terrorist organisation. Would he agree with me that the only viable way of doing that, given this situation, is to do everything in our power to strengthen the Lebanese army, which he will know is a credible organisation, and to support the UN Secretary-General in his stated intention of renewing UNIFIL and making sure it is fit for purpose, rather than simply an observer, as is currently the case?
Mr Falconer
I very strongly agree with the right hon. Gentleman. It is the Lebanese armed forces who, in the end, must be the force that disarms Hezbollah and ends the threats to both the Lebanese and the Israelis that emanates from that malign group, so I completely support the Lebanese armed forces and agree with what he says. UNIFIL will, of course, be a subject of discussion in the Security Council in the coming months and we will play our full part to try to ensure that it can contribute as much as possible. In much of the discussion around Lebanon, there is often a focus on the international elements. We have to be clear that the Lebanese Government, the Lebanese armed forces and the Lebanese President must have control over the use of force in Lebanon. That is the position of the British Government.
Tony Vaughan (Folkestone and Hythe) (Lab)
While we rightly focus on the grave situation in Lebanon, the wider region is seeing an increasing pattern of British nationals being arbitrarily detained and used as leverage by countries including Iran. In light of the news that Craig and Lindsay Foreman have had their appeal dismissed by the Iranian courts, and given their ongoing hunger strike in Evin prison—I think Craig is on his 27th day and Lindsay is on her 18th day—to protest against their conditions and ongoing detention, what further specific steps are the Government taking to secure consular access? Are the Government now prepared to condemn their detention as arbitrary, use international levers against Iran for hostage taking, and show Iran that it cannot keep taking British citizens hostage as pawns in its own games?
Mr Falconer
I was clear yesterday, in response to the news that my hon. and learned Friend refers to, that their continued detention is unjustified and appalling. He has been a doughty advocate for his constituents in this matter. I will continue to meet him directly and with them on all these questions. The behaviour of Iran does not relate solely to British nationals, although they must of course be our focus in this Chamber; it is part of a much wider pattern of detentions which appear to have absolutely no justification of any kind. It is a pattern that extends far beyond Europe as well. We condemn it. It is completely erosive of any trust in Iran, and I have made that point clearly and repeatedly to the Iranian authorities.
Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)
In referring the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, I commend the Minister for visiting Lebanon in April, and for his continuing dialogue with the very good new ambassador here and our ambassador there. He will know that the Lebanese people deserve to be free from fear, persistent uncertainty, perpetual hostility and permanent doubt. The only way for that to happen, as he said, is to support the Lebanese Government and armed forces. We do so already, but to endorse the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison), will the Minister look at what further steps can be taken to communicate that support within Lebanon? The worry people have, which I think is shared across the Chamber, is that, sadly and tragically, the Lebanese people will come to believe that Hezbollah is defending them. In fact, it is doing anything but; it is endangering them. What further steps can he take to reassure the Lebanese people of what he has told the House today?
Mr Falconer
I thank the right hon. Gentleman, my Lincolnshire neighbour, for his kind words and attention to these matters. I take the challenge that there is a completely untrue narrative that is promoted. The idea that either Lebanese Hezbollah or Iran itself is a protector of Lebanon is patently and completely untrue. Iran’s influence in Lebanon over many years has been malign. It has undermined the sovereignty of the country and it has harmed the interests of its people. I take his challenge and will return to him on what more we can do both to make sure of our support and on the malign nature of Iranian influence within the country.
Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)
The reality is that Israel continues to rip to shreds every last line of the international rules-based order. It continues with its illegal land grabs, illegal settlements, war crimes and genocide in Gaza. It is now breaching the ceasefire agreement with illegal military action in Lebanon. In Lebanon, 55 children have been killed and 212 injured since the ceasefire began on 16 April. The Minister will have seen the strength of feeling in this place and I seriously ask him this question: how many more children must be killed in Lebanon and Gaza before his Government stop the empty condemnations and take real action?
Mr Falconer
I recognise my hon. Friend’s engagement in and commitment to these issues. I just gently say back to him that I have met the children displaced by this escalation. We have taken urgent steps to very significantly increase the support that is being provided to them. We have done everything we can privately and publicly, in the way I have described in the Chamber over the course of the afternoon, to try to ensure that there is a genuine, meaningful ceasefire that holds and does not lead to the loss of life, whether children or otherwise. We will continue to do that.
We have changed very significantly our posture towards Lebanon in the last few months. As I said earlier, we are now one of the largest humanitarian donors. I have myself handed over equipment to the Lebanese to try to ensure that they can control the south. That is not to say that progress has been uniform. In fact, it is very clear, as my hon. Friend will have heard and as I am acknowledging, how much worse the situation has got, but we will continue to play our full role here, at the United Nations and with our counterparts in the region to try to bring about a genuine and meaningful ceasefire.
Vikki Slade (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)
Israeli Minister Ben-Gvir said in the last few days on social media:
“Electricity must be cut off to Lebanon, the Zahrani River must be seized, and intensive fighting must be resumed”.
Last week, he said of Dahieh,
“flatten, flatten, and flatten again”,
and that the suburbs must be targeted. The indiscriminate targeting of Lebanese people shows what the Israelis are really trying to do. Does the Minister agree that the time has finally come for a full ban on all arms to Israel?
Mr Falconer
I am almost reluctant to talk any more about that Minister from the Dispatch Box. I am glad, I am afraid to say, that I sanctioned him in the way that I described earlier. We were among the first countries to do so. I am glad to see that others are now taking similar steps. That Minister, whose name I do not really want to say again in this Chamber, brings Israel nothing but harm. He undermines its position in the world. He brings even Israel’s friends to a position of disgust at his actions.
Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough and Thornaby East) (Lab)
I share the Minister’s condemnation of the murderous attacks on Kuwait airport this morning. I am sure he will share with me the condemnation of the murder of two more health workers in Lebanon this morning, at the hands of the IDF.
The Minister referred to the Israelis ordering the war crime of the forcible displacement of around 1 million Lebanese south of the Zahrani and Litani rivers, with 3,500 killed and tens of thousands injured by their actions. This reflects the early stages of the Gaza war, when they told Gazans to move south of the Wadi Gaza river. Since then, the estimates are that 70,000 have been killed and 170,000 injured. Indeed, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz explicitly said that the destruction of villages in southern Lebanon would proceed in accordance with the model of Beit Hanoun and Rafah in Gaza. With the growing Israeli attacks in the west bank in addition to that, when will the Government act on this consistent pattern of war crimes purposefully pursued by the Israeli Government, take action to pressure the Israeli state to stop its military action, end arms sales, stop F-35 supplies, impose sanctions, and utilise the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2018 and the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002? There are tools at the Minister’s disposal. When will he use them fully?
Mr Falconer
We have talked about the F-35 programme at length before. I am usually happy to go back into that debate, but as my hon. Friend has given me the opportunity, I would prefer to comment further on the impact of displacement in Lebanon, which is different in some respects from the impact of displacement in Gaza. As many right hon. and hon. Members know, there is a complicated, multiconfessional balance within Lebanon, and displacing a quarter of the population, often over long distances, has a significant impact on the stability of the country. Exactly as my hon. Friend says, forced displacement is a war crime, but to displace so many people will also have a deleterious impact on the stability of Lebanon in the long term, so it is all the more important that the practice is reversed and that we return to a genuine and sustainable ceasefire. To give one small note of optimism, we welcome the talks that the United States has been convening between Israel and Lebanon, including the talks today, and we want to see them progress.
Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)
I draw attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. Hezbollah has made south Lebanon into an armed camp and a massive arms dump in which it stores rockets and drones that have been used to attack Israeli towns and cities, kill civilians, cause billions of pounds worth of damage, and displace a large part of the population. Does the Minister agree that it is not disproportionate for any Government to take action to defend their own citizens? That can be done only by going into the area the enemy is firing its weapons from and causing that destruction. Would he not agree that Israel does not want to occupy Lebanon and take over territory, but that the answer is to eliminate and disarm Hezbollah, and then there will be real peace in that area?
Mr Falconer
Perhaps the right hon. Member has been to southern Lebanon, as I have recently. I can assure him that it is not an arms dump; it is a place where people are living, where children are living, and where people are displaced. I saw for myself villages that had literally been flattened to the ground. There is no military operation that ends up flattening entire villages to less than the height of this Dispatch Box that does not prompt the question, “What on earth were you trying to do with that operation?” It is absolutely clear that Lebanese Hezbollah must be disarmed. It continues to strike northern Israeli communities, which is absolutely and completely unacceptable. The responsibility to prevent that must be with the Lebanese Government and armed forces, and we must see a genuine and sustainable ceasefire.
Of course the Israeli Government will react with understandable total fury if their nationals are targeted from another state, but as the right hon. Member for The Wrekin (Mark Pritchard) said, Israel has attempted before to occupy southern Lebanon for long periods of time, and it did not lead to safety among northern communities in Israel. We must all support the Lebanese Government to do what is necessary to disarm Hezbollah, but we must ensure that civilians in southern Lebanon are protected in doing so.
Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)
Israel’s bombing of Lebanon has seen yet more war crimes. It is incredibly dangerous for the people there. It is also a direct threat to a peace process being achieved between the US and Iran, in a war that is killing people over there and driving up the cost of living for people here. How many more countries does Israel have to bomb before the Government impose widespread sanctions, as they rightly did on Russia?
Mr Falconer
We have already covered sanctions in these exchanges. I slightly correct my hon. Friend: what will protect Lebanon is not Iran or its talks with the United States of America; it is the Lebanese Government and armed forces, the process that is happening in Washington today between the Governments of Lebanon and Israel, and the efforts of the United States, which I have welcomed, in seeking to ensure that there is no further violence. The President of the United States said earlier this week that the guns must fall silent, and I agree with him.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Ind)
Is not the issue that Israel’s occupation and destruction of so much life in Lebanon at present is a continuation of its genocide in Gaza, of its continued occupation of the west bank, and of its arming of settlers to commit violent acts against Palestinian villages and steal their land and crops? Is not the real issue that Israel is allowed to get away with it because the rest of the world provides Israel with the wherewithal to do it? Will the Minister be very clear about this: what is the British Government’s military relationship with Israel at the moment? Are we supplying weapons? Are supplying parts for the F-35? Are we sharing intelligence information? Are we assisting Israel’s military occupation of the three areas that I have just mentioned?
Mr Falconer
We are not—I have set out to the House on a number of occasions that the steps that we took were to ensure that no bombs and no bullets were being sold to Israel, or were being licensed to be sold to Israel by UK companies. That is because of concerns that we had about Israel’s conduct in Gaza. That applies to Gaza, it applies to the west bank and it applies to Lebanon. The right hon. Gentleman asked specifically about the F-35 programme, so let me reiterate this to the House: the UK does not permit licences for direct sales of F-35 parts to Israel, but we are part of the global F-35 supply chain. We do contribute to the global spares pool—from which Israel may indeed be able to buy parts produced in the UK—but as part of a global arrangement that is vital to our security and to that of our friends and allies, such as Ukraine. That continues to be our policy.
Paul Waugh (Rochdale) (Lab/Co-op)
The US news service Axios reported that this week President Trump held a direct phone call with Benjamin Netanyahu, in which he said that Netanyahu was “effing crazy” for escalating his military action in Lebanon, killing thousands of innocent civilians, adding:
“You’d be in prison if it weren’t for me.”
Netanyahu is also continuing to inflict death and misery on the people of the west bank and Gaza, as we have heard many Members report today. Is it not time for the UK Government to show that we share the global anger and disgust at Israel’s attempt to act with impunity, by imposing our own sanctions on illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied territories of Palestine?
Mr Falconer
I have seen those reports about the language used by the President of the United States in his call with the Prime Minister of Israel—I think the President confirmed that this morning. The language is unparliamentary, so I will not repeat it, but I very much sympathise with the frustration that the President feels with the Prime Minister of Israel and the conduct of the Israeli Government in Lebanon. I reiterate my support for the President’s call that the guns must fall silent, and we must have a genuine and sustainable ceasefire.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I thank the Minister for his answers; he has an incredibly difficulty portfolio.
Israel is not perfect. I am not perfect. The Minister is not perfect. Nobody in this House is perfect. Following Hezbollah’s sustained barrage of missiles and rockets targeting Israeli towns and cities, and the murder of Israeli civilians and soldiers, will the Minister set out the Government’s position on whether they fully recognise and support the IDF’s actions in Lebanon as a necessary and proportionate response to eliminate the terrorist threat and protect Israeli civilians? Surely the duty of any Government is to protect and stop terrorists killing their people.
Mr Falconer
I regret to disagree with the courteous and hon. Gentleman on this question. I do not think that what Israel is doing is proportionate, for all the reasons that we have set out in this urgent question. He is absolutely right that it is the responsibility of the Government to protect their people. That applies to Lebanon as much as it does to Israel, and that is why the talks in Washington today are so important.
James Naish (Rushcliffe) (Lab)
On 2 March, I asked the Prime Minister what steps the UK was taking to prepare for targeted stabilisation and humanitarian efforts in Lebanon and Yemen if the Iranian regime changed. While we are all in support of the dismantling of Hezbollah, the Iranian regime, of course, has not changed, but the Israeli Government have none the less stoked regional instability through these wholly disproportionate attacks. Will the Minister therefore condemn the actions being taken by the Israeli forces and reassure my constituents that nothing is off the table when it comes to the UK’s responses to such actions, including sanctions and further arms and trade embargoes?
Mr Falconer
We keep all those questions under review, and we recognise the magnitude of events in the middle east. I will decline to enter into the hypothetical question, but obviously events in the middle east—whether in Iran or Lebanon—are of real concern to constituents right across the country, including in my constituency of Lincoln and in my hon. Friend’s constituency of Rushcliffe.
Ayoub Khan (Birmingham Perry Barr) (Ind)
All of us in this House know that words have consequences, whether they are spoken in this House or outside. We remember the Prime Minister’s comments about the cutting of vital supplies being fair game. Look at the lack of criticism and calling out of war crimes that we have all witnessed; the specific terminology of “war crimes” is not being used by Ministers of this Government. Recently, Cenk Uygur—someone that even Piers Morgan holds in high regard—was banned from entering the United Kingdom. It is words and actions like those that embolden Netanyahu and his right-wing Government. Does the Minister recognise that words need to change, as well as sanctions?
Mr Falconer
Words do matter. It has been a long-standing principle of this Government, and indeed previous Governments, that it is not for Ministers to say what crimes are—that is for courts to find. That is why we have not used the particular formulation that the hon. Gentleman would like to hear. I do not think anybody in the Chamber could have any doubt about the extent of criticism that other Ministers and I have delivered in relation to Israeli conduct, whether in Lebanon or Gaza. That has been criticism not just in words, but through concrete actions, including sanctions against Israeli Ministers, as I set out earlier in my question. We have a very delicate situation in the middle east, which we are seeking to navigate in the best interests of the region and of the United Kingdom. I sing the praises of many people in this Chamber, but Piers Morgan, I am afraid, is not one of them. We have to make difficult decisions in a serious way, and that is what we try to do day in, day out.
Richard Baker (Glenrothes and Mid Fife) (Lab)
The attacks by Hezbollah must cease, but the wholly disproportionate response in Lebanon by the Israeli military is bringing untold suffering to those least able to bear the consequences: women and children; and older and disabled people. What can UK Ministers do, alongside international partners and agencies, to ensure that humanitarian support and aid reaches those who have been left in desperate straits as a result of the actions of Israeli forces, who are responsible for serious violations of human rights and international law?
Mr Falconer
I thank my hon. Friend for his question and for his commitment to the region and developments in the middle east. We are proud that we are now one of the largest humanitarian donors in Lebanon. Access to that aid has not been impeded within Lebanon. However, as some of my hon. Friends have already set out, there have been terrible incidents involving the death of aid workers—very committed young Lebanese who are doing their absolute best to help people in their own country—and that must stop.
Iqbal Mohamed (Dewsbury and Batley) (Ind)
The illegal actions of Hezbollah and Iran must be condemned, but so must the illegal actions of Israel. Israel carried out 11,518 attacks in Lebanon between 2 March and 11 May, with more than 3,000 further estimated attacks since. Israel has bombed and destroyed or heavily demolished more than 100 villages. As of yesterday, Israel has injured 10,577 people and killed 3,468 people, including 128 health workers. It has attacked and damaged 17 hospitals, destroying three of them. It employs double and triple-tap attacks on civilians. Will this Labour Government do anything meaningful to stop Israel’s thirst for the blood of innocent civilians, its insatiable appetite for the most barbaric violence and its Gazafication of Lebanon and the wider middle east? Does the UK support or condemn Netanyahu’s declared plan for a Greater Israel?
Mr Falconer
I think we have to be a bit careful when we describe the Government of Israel. I do not think they have a thirst for the blood of innocent civilians. We have to be a bit more careful with our language in this Chamber, because that sounds to me like it echoes antisemitic tropes—so I want to take a little bit of issue with the question that I was asked. I have taken clear steps in relation to Lebanon, and indeed in relation to events in Palestine, and we will continue to do so, but I do think we have to be careful with our language in here.
Joe Morris (Hexham) (Lab)
I echo the comments about the need for Hezbollah to cease their attacks on civilians, but it is clear that the tactics being used by the IDF deliberately echo and mirror the tactics being used in Gaza and in the west bank: forced displacement, deliberate targeting of hospitals and other healthcare facilities, and intentional targeting of journalists to try to blind the world to the crimes that are taking place. Does the Minister agree that there is a clear need for further and deeper sanctions against the individuals and organisations responsible in the Israeli Government?
Mr Falconer
I know that my hon. Friend has long been committed to these issues, and that he has constituents in the region who have strong views as well, and I am glad for his continued engagement. I will not provide further comments on sanctions from the Dispatch Box for reasons that people will understand, but we will keep all measures under review as the situation evolves.
Dr Scott Arthur (Edinburgh South West) (Lab)
Last week, France sanctioned Itamar Ben-Gvir, almost a year to the day since the Minister made the same announcement from this Dispatch Box. I thank him for the leadership he has shown over the past months and years. He is right not to pick a side in this war other than the Lebanese Government, because both Iran’s Hezbollah and Netanyahu have shown a disregard for civilian life right across the region. People and organisations in Edinburgh South West want to be reassured that if a ceasefire is established, the aid we are putting into that region is sufficient and scalable.
The Minister started off by talking about Iran, so I have to mention the fact that we have seen the industrialisation of the death penalty in Iran against the Iranian people—often young people who have simply been out protesting. I know that he raised concerns about this—in, I think, November last year. Is there more that we can do? I know it is a really difficult situation.
Mr Falconer
I thank my hon. Friend for his kind words about the leadership we have shown on these issues. He is absolutely right. Let me just reiterate to the House our total opposition to the death penalty everywhere. What has happened in Iran, particularly since the protests in January, has been an absolutely awful cracking down on their own people. The Government have imposed very significant restrictions on communications, so some of the detail of that crackdown is not as accessible to us now as it once was. I have grave fears about how Iranians are being treated within Iran. We will continue to monitor this closely and raise it with the Iranian authorities with the force that my hon. Friend would expect.
John Slinger (Rugby) (Lab)
I associate myself with the words of the Minister in strongly condemning the Iranian attack on Kuwait airport and the continuing attacks by Hezbollah on Israeli civilians. It has been disturbing over recent weeks and days to see the IDF appearing to engage in a mission to seize land that does not belong to them, exemplified by the hoisting of the Israeli flag over Beaufort Castle, presumably as a symbol of conquest. Will my hon. Friend join me in condemning that act and in reiterating once again that international law applies to Hezbollah and to the Government of Israel?
Mr Falconer
It does. Of course, flags are much less important than the horrific loss of life that we have discussed over the course of this afternoon. However, it is hard to draw the conclusion that the Israeli Government are taking steps simply to deal with a terrorist organisation when they take one of the most historic sites in Lebanon, with a long history of occupation by the Israelis, and raise the Israeli flag in exactly the way my hon. Friend has described. I join him in his condemnation.
Lord Mandelson: Response to Humble Address
(1 week ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Paymaster General and Minister for the Cabinet Office (Nick Thomas-Symonds)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the Government’s response to the House’s humble Address of 4 February 2026.
On 4 February I came before the House to debate the Humble Address motion. I said at the time that it was in the national interest to be transparent and to act as quickly as we could, and with the second publication of documents earlier this week on Monday, the Government have done so. Today’s debate is a further opportunity for Members to put questions and, indeed, debate the content of the documents. My right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister, who is alongside me on the Front Bench, will listen to the debate and close it in due course.
As we debate these issues today, we should ensure that we keep Jeffrey Epstein’s victims at the forefront of our minds. What Epstein did was abhorrent and unforgivable. He was a vile, evil paedophile, and I denounce him and his actions as strongly today as I did on 4 February when I came to the Dispatch Box.
The Prime Minister has taken responsibility for appointing Peter Mandelson as ambassador to the United States. He has said that if he knew then what he knows now, he would never have appointed him, and he has apologised.
I think it is worth setting out the process that was followed in order to publish such a large volume of material on Monday.
Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
As the right hon. Gentleman is going to talk about process, I would be very grateful if he could clear up one matter. I have a high regard for the right hon. Gentleman’s integrity, and so I hope he will not dance around this subject, as has been done by others in the past.
In the first tranche of documents there were a number of notes sent by private secretaries to the Prime Minister. If I were allowed to use a prop, I would open the documents to pages 3 and 8, where Members would see notes discussing the situation as regards how to appoint the ambassador, Peter Mandelson and so forth. Under those notes are big boxes headed “Prime Minister Comments”. The normal course of action when a Prime Minister receives a document of that sort is that he notes down his response to it. These boxes are totally blank. My simple question to the right hon. Gentleman is this: are they blank because the Prime Minister made no notes whatsoever or because any notes that the Prime Minister made have been redacted and removed? The Intelligence and Security Committee deals routinely with even more sensitive material, and every time there is a redaction in a publication, there are three asterisks to show that the redaction has taken place. Have there been redactions of the Prime Minister’s notes on these memorandums that were sent to him for decision?
Nick Thomas-Symonds
The answer is that they are blank now because they were blank then. The formal decision to appoint Peter Mandelson as the ambassador was conveyed by the Prime Minister’s then principal private secretary in a letter to the Foreign Office. I know that the right hon. Gentleman is referring to the empty box notes, and the reason that they are empty is that there was nothing to redact. I hope that is a sufficiently clear answer.
Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con)
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way, because I want to ask about the process of the appointment, rather than the process of the release of the papers, which I think he is about to move on to.
I have previously spoken in this House about the process in the future, and I think the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, the right hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry), has made not-dissimilar comments. Whether we have a future Conservative Government—hopefully—or another Government, we should have pre-appointment scrutiny of senior posts, both ambassadorial appointments and, I would argue, permanent secretaries of Departments. That would be a safer way of doing things.
On senior appointments to the ISC—there are lots of current ISC members present in the Chamber, as well as former members such as myself—the Paymaster General will know that the appointment is made by the Prime Minister, but the double-lock mechanism ensures that the House has a say and can veto appointments if necessary. I am not necessarily asking for that mechanism, but certainly the relevant Select Committee should carry out pre-scrutiny for senior appointments of ambassadors and other senior officials, whether they are political appointees or not. I think that would help the whole House, whatever our politics.
Nick Thomas-Symonds
I am not hiding from the fact that we have to make changes to the appointments process. Indeed, the Government have changed the process for all direct ministerial appointments to make sure that due diligence and national security vetting have to take place prior to appointment. It is absolutely right that that change was made.
Let me turn to the process. The process that was followed was obviously a significant one in order to publish such a large volume of material. When I was at the Dispatch Box on 4 February, I committed to publishing material in scope of the motion—bar that which the Intelligence and Security Committee agreed would be prejudicial to national security and international relations.
At this point, I want to put on record my thanks to the Committee. Members who were in the House that day might recall that even as I was speaking in the Chamber I was making the case for the involvement of the Intelligence and Security Committee. I know that it was not a small undertaking for the Committee. A huge amount of time has been spent on this, and I am very grateful to the Committee’s members for their very careful and—it looks to me—painstaking work in going through the volume of documentation.
On 4 February, and indeed since, Members have raised a range of issues, and it is absolutely right that the Government are held to account on those. As Members will have seen from the material that was published on Monday, the Government have acted on the House’s request for transparency to an extraordinary extent.
Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
On Monday, I asked a question to the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister about the fact that it is extraordinary that there appeared to be no WhatsApp or text messages from the Prime Minister—that was the information available to us at the time. We now know that there are no text messages from the Prime Minister to Mandelson after a few days after the general election, and the WhatsApp messages have totally disappeared.
The answer I got on Monday from the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister was slightly disingenuous, I have to say. He said that Prime Ministers do not operate in this way. Rather like Mr Gladstone, they sit at the Cabinet table and men in frock coats bring them papers. It is complete rubbish. We know that the Prime Minister must have been using WhatsApp all the time. To use disappearing WhatsApp messages is contrary to what the covid inquiry suggested, and it is quite contrary to transparency.
I say to the Paymaster General that these scandals are made much worse by any hint of a cover-up. Everybody knows that a mistake was made, and people are very forgiving of the Prime Minister if he has made a mistake. What they are not forgiving of is some sort of cover-up, where numerous text messages and WhatsApp messages have suddenly vanished.
Nick Thomas-Symonds
I think some Conservative Members would be quite happy to have Gladstonian principles in government.
I really do reject the point about a cover-up, and I reject it for this reason: this process was quite rightly driven by and led by officials without political interference, working with the Intelligence and Security Committee—a cross-party Committee that is very well respected across this House. Not a single redaction in those documents came about because of a ministerial decision, and that is simply because we have not played that part in the process—and neither should we have done, so I completely reject the idea of a cover-up.
Nick Thomas-Symonds
On the subject of someone who might be keen on Gladstone, I will give way.
Sir John Hayes
The right hon. Gentleman knows me well, and he knows of my disdain for Gladstone and my deep admiration for his rival Benjamin Disraeli, who in my judgment was the greatest ever Prime Minister by far.
The key thing about the ISC, on which I sit—I am grateful for the Minister’s comments about its work—is that the House took the view that the ISC should see the whole of the information. Whether that was the right view or whether the Humble Address was too permissive is an open question, but the House took the view that we should see all matters relating to international relations or national security.
An executive decision was taken—I do not know whether it was endorsed by Ministers; it was certainly endorsed subsequently by the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister—not to make the UK Security Vetting file available to the ISC. That is not what the Humble Address says. Subsequently, that has been legitimised by the argument, which I do not buy, that it would have a chilling effect on the whole vetting process. However, the Minister—and by the way, I share the respect of my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) for him—knows that the ISC’s seeing material is not the same as disclosing it. This is about scrutiny, not disclosure, so why was an executive decision made not to make that information available to the ISC? Who made it, and when? Was it made by officials? Was it made by Ministers? Will he explain how he can square that with the remark he just made?
Nick Thomas-Symonds
It was an official-led process. Let me just make that clear, because the right hon. Gentleman points towards a pretty important issue. We had the Humble Address and its wording—hon. Members can read that wording—with the quite extensive list drafted by the shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, the hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Alex Burghart). At the end, it said:
“except papers prejudicial to UK national security or international relations which shall instead be referred to the Intelligence and Security Committee”.
What the Government have done, and indeed were entitled to do so, is take into account the precedents set by previous responses to Humble Addresses—under the Government whom the right hon. Gentleman supported, indeed. The Prime Minister has written to the Chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee on precisely that point.
There were a number of Humble Addresses during the 2017-19 Parliament when I was in opposition. I would not say that they were a constitutional innovation, because they have quite an ancient origin, but I personally played some part in their re-emergence. It is obviously the case that, as those Humble Addresses have been replied to—now by a number of parties in government—principles have been used in approaching them which come from things such as the Freedom of Information Act, the duty of Ministers under the ministerial code, the Data Protection Act 2018 and the general data protection regulation. Those are based on precedents for responses to Humble Addresses.
Tim Roca (Macclesfield) (Lab)
The Minister is being incredibly generous with his time. As an aside, I think many hon. Members in this place—those on the Conservative Benches at least—would like to go back to the 19th century.
It is clear that officials have done a huge amount of work with regard to this process. Will the Minister say a little bit about the independent King’s Counsel, and what assurances it has provided that the Government are complying with the Humble Address?
Nick Thomas-Symonds
That was another important part of what was done, and the House should also take reassurance from that. I made the point about precedents to the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes), and the Government also sought to take that independent legal advice on their interpretation of complying with the Humble Address.
Nick Thomas-Symonds
I will take an intervention from the right hon. Gentleman, but then I need to make a bit more progress.
Sir Julian Lewis
I want to clear up the point about precedents. It may be that I am wrong about this, but I do not think there is any precedent for the House deciding that the Intelligence and Security Committee specifically should look at material that was to be redacted before it went to the public. The Intelligence and Security Committee, as the Minister well knows, was founded in 1994. Since that time, there has never been even one leak from the Committee. So there is no comparison between making things available to the Intelligence and Security Committee—the only parliamentary body entitled to see highly classified material, and one which never leaks—and to any other body. While he says, “This is all led by officials. It is okay for the officials to see it, but not to release it to anyone else,” the reason the ISC was chosen for the motion is that it is within the ring of secrecy, and that is unaffected by any precedents regarding bodies that do not have that special status.
Nick Thomas-Symonds
I agree with the right hon. Gentleman. It is just that if he looks at the wording of the Humble Address, he will see that it lists a series of classes of documents, and then it says, “except papers”—those that were referred to the ISC. That is our compliance with the motion.
Let me turn back to the process, which, as I said, was undertaken by officials. They sought returns from all Government Departments, including material, as has been referred to, on non-corporate communication channels. There were multiple rounds of discovery to ensure that searches returned material relevant to the full scope of the motion. Some documents were assessed as likely prejudicial to national security or international relations—the point I was just making—and, as I committed to the House in February, they were then referred to the Intelligence and Security Committee.
Due to the wide scope of the motion and the significant volume of material that needed to be located and reviewed, the first publication, on 11 March, was focused on the parts of the motion that were of most urgent interest to the House: Peter Mandelson’s appointment, his withdrawal and the severance. The second tranche, which was published on Monday, contains material relevant to the parts of the motion that cover communications and documents concerning Peter Mandelson’s appointment and vetting, and messages between Peter Mandelson and Ministers, special advisers and senior civil servants in the months prior to and throughout his tenure as ambassador. All documents held by the Government have now been disclosed, save those that are being withheld on the request of the Metropolitan police.
Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)
On the point of communication between Peter Mandelson and Ministers, the fact remains that the more documents that are released, the more questions emerge about Peter Mandelson’s reach across Government. Will the Minister tell the House whether Lord Mandelson had any discussions whatsoever with Ministers, officials or advisers about Palantir? Will further documentation with regards to that be released?
Nick Thomas-Symonds
On Palantir, I refer my hon. Friend to the methodology statement at the start of each of the three volumes, where it is made absolutely clear that there is a recognition that Palantir is a matter of interest to the House; indeed, there are references to Palantir within the documents. As I am sure the House will understand, I will not speculate on the contents of the documents that remain with the Metropolitan police, but certainly I invite everyone to look at the references to Palantir in the tranche of documents before the House—indeed, the public can do so as well.
Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)
I am interested in the mitigations, which are the reason we have this great gap between what would seem to be a security threat and Peter Mandelson being appointed. I cannot find any documents about that, but I have found that in written evidence to the Foreign Affairs Committee in September 2025—after the appointment, and when it was about to be withdrawn—Ian Collard said that he had requested a copy of the vetting summary. He made some notes based on the summary as an aide-mémoire, in case it was needed, and submitted them for the Humble Address. I am interested in seeing what the notes are of the mitigations: the man responsible for the mitigations took a note—presumably of what he had seen—and put it in for the Humble Address, yet it is not in the papers.
Nick Thomas-Symonds
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend. Officials leading the process will have heard the exchange—and this exchange—in relation to that specific point about Ian Collard. As the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister set out in his statement on Monday, the documents with the Metropolitan police fall into several categories: internal correspondence relating to Peter Mandelson, and documents in relation to conflict of interest and national security vetting. I appreciate the point that my right hon. Friend makes and officials will have heard the exchange between her and me.
Emily Thornberry
I want to make it clear that the document I referred to is not part of the original decision making; it is an aide-mémoire that Ian Collard made. If I cannot see the original documents, can I at least see that later one?
Nick Thomas-Symonds
As ever, my right hon. Friend makes her case forcefully. I am treading carefully in my language because this process has been led by officials working with the ISC. The officials working on it will have heard the request that she just made.
Sir John Hayes
I will take up the point that the right hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry) raised about mitigation later in the debate—should I catch your eye, Madam Deputy Speaker, which is not a given. Will the Minister address the issue of when the Metropolitan police asked for information on UK vetting? We will not know the granular detail because the executive decision based on precedent was made, although my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) has challenged the precedent. However, there was an assumption that some information on vetting would be made available, perhaps in a redacted form having been considered first by the ISC—I will say no more than that. We now hear that no information on vetting will be made available until the Metropolitan police has finished its work, when it will come back through the ISC according to the process agreed as part of the Humble Address. When did the Metropolitan police begin to take an interest in the vetting part of all this, and why?
Nick Thomas-Symonds
To the right hon. Gentleman’s direct question, I have not been part of the process or been given precise dates for when the Metropolitan police said what. However, I will say this: the documents with the Metropolitan police have been viewed by the chair of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, the hon. Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare), so within the confines of not wishing to undermine the ongoing investigation we have tried to be as transparent as we can be with Parliament at this stage. In addition, the summary document of the vetting has been shared with the Intelligence and Security Committee, so to the extent that we have been able to share documents, we have. The request in this debate from the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington South and Finsbury, will no doubt have been heard as well.
Let me turn to the issue of redactions, which I started to develop in earlier answers to interventions. I will not repeat what the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister said on Monday, nor the methodological note that is available for right hon. and hon. Members to look at, but I want to clarify some issues so that there is no doubt about the process that was followed. As I have said, no material was redacted on grounds of prejudice to national security or international relations without the ISC’s approval. The redactions agreed with the ISC are all triple-asterisked throughout the publication. When you see the three asterisks, that material was agreed with the ISC to be redacted.
On my point about precedent in the earlier exchange with the right hon. Member for New Forest East, the redactions were limited to the names of junior officials, contact details such as telephone numbers and email addresses, the personal or commercially sensitive data of third parties not relevant to the motion, and some cases where there was legal professional privilege. That is in line with the process that has been followed by successive Administrations in relation to Humble Address motions. Those redactions are clearly labelled in the publication. To reconfirm, no Government Minister or special adviser has determined any of the redactions; that was done by the official-led process. I echo the comments made by the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister on Monday in thanking the Chair of the PACAC, the hon. Member for North Dorset, who is not in his place, for reviewing our approach to the third-party redactions and the material withheld, so as not to prejudice the ongoing police investigations and to ensure that we are being transparent with Parliament, as we should be.
Let me turn to the specific point about the Metropolitan police. Everyone across the House will appreciate the need not to prejudice the investigation, and will understand that I am unable to answer questions about certain documents that have been withheld. They include questions to Peter Mandelson by the Prime Minister’s then chief of staff and Peter Mandelson’s responses. The remaining documents, as I said a moment or two ago, fall broadly into the following categories: national security vetting material, conflict of interest process material and relevant internal correspondence with Peter Mandelson. Such information will be published in due course, either at the conclusion of the investigation, or at a point, if there were one, at which publication would no longer be prejudicial to the police investigation.
On 4 February, the House made its will clear.
Emily Thornberry
It may be that I am just lacking in imagination, but I do not understand why the police would not allow us to see the letter from the Foreign Office to Peter Mandelson saying, “You are given this job subject to not having anything to do with x, y and z”, or whatever the mitigations were. At the moment, we just do not have anything at all and so it is very difficult to understand why he was appointed. We are told that we need to wait for some time in the future—there is no date by which that will be disclosed—and at that stage all will become clear. It is as if the central point of the investigation and all these thousands of pages do not amount to anything until the police eventually decide to give us those crucial documents.
Nick Thomas-Symonds
It is, quite rightly, for the police and not for Ministers to determine the way in which they want their investigation to proceed and to identify documents that they feel are reasonable lines of inquiry. However, to give the House reassurance, even that class of documents was viewed by the Chair of PACAC—obviously, under particular controlled circumstances —because we wanted for Parliament the level of transparency that we could provide at that stage, despite the ongoing investigation.
The Government have discharged their duty to the House in complying with the Humble Address motion, aside from that small amount of information that will be subsequently published in a final tranche. As Members will have seen, Monday’s publication complies with the spirit and the letter of the motion, as well as being one of the largest ever publications laid in this House. Members have had some time to consider the document—certainly, since Monday—and I am grateful to the Leader of the House for making further time to debate the issue today. I know that throughout the course of the debate, Members will be conscious of not prejudicing the ongoing criminal investigation. I am grateful to the House for understanding the position the Government have taken and my position on answering questions on that.
I look forward to the debate before the House. The Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister will close and respond to points made during the debate. I commend the motion to the—
Martin Wrigley
I was trying not to interrupt his flow—[Interruption.] Until I did.
Throughout the files there are mentions of Palantir and Peter Mandelson, including a memo in which he tries to introduce Peter Thiel to No. 10 staff in June last year. Even though Mr Louis Mosley has written to me today suggesting that Peter Mandelson was not intervening regarding Palantir business with the Government, does the Minister agree that he still was doing so?
Nick Thomas-Symonds
I reject the suggestion that there is any wrongdoing, as regards Palantir contracts being renewed—I think one was renewed by the Ministry of Defence—in the way that the hon. Gentleman suggests. I reject that absolutely. On the meeting between the Prime Minister and Peter Thiel, to be clear, that did not happen.
Nick Thomas-Symonds
We have set off a surge of interventions. I will give way to the hon. Lady and then the right hon. Gentleman, and that is it.
Kirsty Blackman
I was listening to the reassurances the Minister gave about the material that has been provided, and the fact that this is all the material bar that which is being held back. May I just ask for a further assurance from the Minister that if things do come to light, which were not found in what I appreciate were significant trawls, and which constitute correspondence that would fit the Humble Address terms, he will follow up and ensure that those things are published as well as the stuff that has been held back because of the police investigations?
Nick Thomas-Symonds
I do not expect that to happen, but of course if it did, we would consider it. I will finally give way to the right hon. Member for Islington North.
Jeremy Corbyn
I thank the Minister for giving way; he is being very generous with his time. Is he able to confirm whether Peter Mandelson had divested himself of all his financial interests in companies, including peripheries or actuality of Palantir, while he was ambassador in Washington?
Nick Thomas-Symonds
That of course strays into the conflict of interests class of documents, which is still one of the classes that is with the Metropolitan police.
I conclude by saying again that it is very important that the House has this debate today. From the debate in February to today, I have certainly taken my duties, and indeed the Government’s duties, to the House very seriously, as has my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister—I think today is his eleventh appearance in the House on this matter. He will, of course, close the debate and answer any further questions. I commend the motion to the House.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
I call the shadow Secretary of State.
Alex Burghart (Brentwood and Ongar) (Con)
I thank the Paymaster General for his remarks and look forward to hearing what the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister has to say at the end of the debate.
As we made clear earlier in the week, we are not entirely happy with the way this has come together. However, just because, in the way that these debates take place, it is not automatic that we will get to ask Ministers questions if they decline to take interventions, I am very encouraged by how the Paymaster General has handled that, although Hansard should know that he said that nobody could follow the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn)—he shut down everyone else—and I know that the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister will want to follow his good lead.
I hope that the Paymaster General will accept my sympathies on the loss of his mobile phone. I mean that genuinely, and it is very unfortunate that it was stolen five days after the phone of the former chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, was stolen. This, I believe, is an indication of how dangerous life is in Labour-run London, and I hope those responsible for looking after the Met police are listening to this. I say that genuinely because a lot of us have friends and colleagues who have experienced the same thing and it is a serious matter.
The Paymaster General referred to his resurrection of the Humble Address as a political tool, and I hope that he is still proud of that achievement and that he does not rue it or regret it and that he is enjoying being on the other end of it. I remember this coming up in one of those Brexit years, I forget exactly which one, and I was reminded of it because he spoke about precedent and the Humble Address, and the truth is that his Humble Address breached precedent in a very serious way. It had been the case in “Erskine May” throughout the ages that Humble Addresses would not be used in order to take the opinions of Law Officers of the Crown and present them to the House. That was specifically carved out, yet his Humble Address struck right through it.
When we talk about precedent and Humble Addresses, we must be very careful and be very clear that the instruction given by the House to the Government is sacrosanct. It is more important than anything, and it is not for the Government to redefine what the House has asked them to do. It is simply the Government’s job to comply in order to treat the House with respect, but also to avoid falling into contempt. So I will say again that the idea that potentially large classes of document should be retained and kept away from the House because the Metropolitan police are using them may be desirable, but that should not be done automatically without the agreement of the House.
If the Government wish to change the terms of the motion that was presented to them, they can come back to the House and do that. A dangerous precedent is set when the Government decide they will reinterpret what the House has said, because maybe this has not been convenient for the Government, but it might be for a future Government, so we must be very careful with precedent and very careful with setting new precedent.
Sir John Hayes
My hon. Friend’s point is about the relationship between this House and the Executive and, more than that, the relationship between Ministers and officials. It is time that this House asserted its authority in that respect, and the Humble Address does exactly that—it is an assertion of the House’s authority—and that Ministers use their authority, given their appointment by the Crown, to insist on what officials do and do not do. While it is right that this process has been driven at a logistical level by officials, in the end it is up to Ministers and then this House to make a judgment about what is published, where and how.
Alex Burghart
I am very grateful to my right hon. Friend for his intervention. He is absolutely right: there is no higher authority than Parliament and consequently the Government should bear that in mind when delivering not just on this Humble Address but any future Humble Address.
I do not wish to go over all of the ground that we have already covered, but there are clearly some discrepancies between what has been said in public and what has appeared in the Humble Address. There may be good reasons for some of that, but some is much harder to explain.
I shall start with the information that appeared in The Guardian last week regarding the contents of the ISC’s summary document. Obviously that has not appeared in this return, as the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, the right hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry), and my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes), who sits on the ISC, have pointed out. We now have a situation in which the readership of The Guardian has been privy to the information that a document contained concerns about Mandelson’s relationships with at least four individuals: a Chinese Minister; Oleg Deripaska; a former Israeli Minister; and an unnamed man with whom Mandelson is said to have had “a relationship”. This information has come out of what, by the Government’s own definition, is a highly secure document, which we were previously told very few people had seen. I suggest that if this is so secure, first, that information should not have come out in any form and, secondly, given that it has, there really ought to be a leak inquiry because this is nationally sensitive information. I hope we can get confirmation later on from the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister that that is what is happening. [Interruption.] I hear that from across on the Treasury Bench, but it would be good to have it formally on the record later.
I turn now to the central element that has featured in all of our debates: the Prime Minister’s role and judgment in the process of the appointment of Peter Mandelson. The Opposition established after the first release of documents that the Prime Minister was shown a due diligence document in which he was told that Mandelson had maintained an unhealthy relationship with Epstein after Epstein had been sent to prison. We have often in this House rightly paid tribute to the victims and survivors of Jeffrey Epstein, stating that they should always be in our thoughts, but the Prime Minister’s thoughts were not with the victims and survivors of Jeffrey Epstein after he had read that due diligence document, and I think we should put that clearly on the record.
Sir Julian Lewis
I think it is worth just putting on the record the actual words from that due diligence note, which can be found on page 11 of the first volume. It talks about a 2019 report commissioned by JPMorgan:
“The report cited Epstein’s personal records which showed contact beginning in 2002 and continuing throughout the 2000s.
After Epstein was first convicted of procuring an underage girl in 2008, their relationship continued across 2009-2011, beginning when Lord Mandelson was business minister and continuing after the end of the Labour government. Mandelson reportedly stayed in Epstein’s House while he was in jail in June 2009.”
That is from a document which it is not in doubt the Prime Minister saw, yet he went ahead with making this appointment.
Alex Burghart
I thank my right hon. Friend for that timely spelling out of exactly what the Prime Minister read—and yet he went ahead and made the appointment anyway. I take the remarks of the Paymaster General and other Ministers totally at face value and totally sincerely, but it is clear that the Prime Minister was not thinking in that way.
Sir John Hayes
On that particular point raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis), what is not clear, however, is the relationship between the due diligence process, particularly in relation to Epstein, and the vetting process. It is pretty hard to believe that the UK vetting process would not have taken account of what my right hon. Friend just referred to, but we will never know that because the Government have decided not to make that available for scrutiny, even to the ISC. It is surely inconceivable that that would not have been part of the vetting process.
Alex Burghart
I also find that very difficult to believe.
We have these comments about the due diligence documents, and we have these comments about Epstein. We also have the comments about Mandelson’s directorship of a Russian company that owned a defence company that supplied Putin’s war effort in Crimea, and about his business relationships in China, to name but a few things in the due diligence document. It can be no accident that on the same day that the due diligence document was given to the Prime Minister, the then Cabinet Secretary said to the Prime Minister, “If you’re going to appoint this man, get the security vetting done first. Make sure that you have done the security vetting and had his disclosure of interests before you confirm his appointment.” But the Prime Minister went ahead and did it anyway. This was an enormous, historic and really terrible error of judgment.
What we then witnessed in September 2025, when the Mandelson appointment had completely fallen apart and he had been fired, was that the civil service scrabbled to try to retrofit a justification for what had happened. Chris Wormald, the then Cabinet Secretary, did not do a bad job, but it was clearly inaccurate because we have in black and white what Simon Case had set down. We now have the due diligence document and the fact that the security vetting happened after the appointment.
We also now know, thanks to the second return, that in January 2025, Mandelson was sitting in Washington looking at “highly classified” documents—the phrase “highly classified” is used in an email from January 2025— despite not having any security vetting and despite not having special treatment and restricted access procedures, or STRAP, clearance. This is a massive error of judgment and of government. It goes right to the heart of why the Conservative party has been fighting for transparency on this issue: to expose the failings of the senior people in the Labour party at that time.
If we look at the second return, and at document 36 released on Monday, we can see that people such as Sir Olly Robbins were saying, while Chris Wormald was writing his note in September 2025, that they could not comment because they had not seen the relevant documentation. That makes one wonder who else had not seen the relevant documentation, because the relevant documentation is not in this release. Had Chris Wormald seen the relevant documentation, or was he just doing what a Cabinet Secretary in a crisis might do, which was trying to protect the Prime Minister?
What we do know, again from document 36, is that No. 10 itself signed off Chris Wormald’s note. No. 10 itself approved—and had been given an opportunity to edit—the Cabinet Secretary’s note. Again, this feels wrong. It feels as though the process was very obviously being commissioned by No. 10 and interfered with by No. 10 in order to give the answer that No. 10 wanted, rather than the truth. It was a bogus process. It was designed to get the Prime Minister off the hook, but transparency shows that he was very clearly on the hook.
Turning to the broader material, we have some things that have appeared and some things that we can deduce have been retained by the police. We have some things that we know have been destroyed and some things that may have gone missing. I hope that, during the course of this debate, we can get to the bottom of which documents may fall into which category.
In April this year, the Foreign Affairs Committee had Morgan McSweeney before it, and the Chair and my right hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Sir John Whittingdale) asked him a number of questions about his messages. This was some time after the theft of his phone in October 2025. In question 970, the Chair said:
“Are any of your text messages to Peter Mandelson—or not—going to be available in the Humble Address?”
Morgan McSweeney said, “Yes.”
In question 1117, my right hon. Friend the Member for Maldon, fearing that the theft of the phone might mean that information had been lost, asked:
“Can we take it that your phone would have contained quite a lot of communications, either with Peter Mandelson or about Peter Mandelson’s appointment?”
Morgan McSweeney replied:
“Probably not much about his appointment that hasn’t already been available to No. 10, because when he was sacked, No. 10 did its own—I don’t want to say investigation, but its own research on what happened and why it happened and, as part of that process, I was asked to share messages and emails about the appointment and also to be interviewed”.
So we know that, in April of this year, those messages still existed, that they were not affected by the theft of McSweeney’s phone and that they must have been available to the Government, but they are not in this this tranche of releases. We must therefore conclude that this is because they have been retained by the police, so let us assume that the McSweeney emails fall into that category, unless the Minister wishes to tell us that he has received any subsequent information to say that those messages were irretrievable.
We then have the messages from the Prime Minister—or rather, we do not have any messages from the Prime Minister. It seems highly unlikely that the Prime Minister did not exchange any messages with Peter Mandelson at all, at any point. In fact, we must strongly suspect that he did, because there was a report in April in The Spectator by Tim Shipman, which quoted from some of those messages. We might think that those messages would have ended up being retained by the police, but when we look at the quotes that Tim Shipman had, they are incredibly anodyne. It is very unlikely that those messages would have been kept on grounds of national security or because they would be useful to a police investigation. Shipman says that
“there is a text message which Keir Starmer sent the night before he made the announcement. ‘You’ll be brilliant in challenging circumstances,’ he told Mandelson. ‘And after many years of our discussions, we get to work together side by side. I really look forward to that.’”
That did not age well.
Kirsty Blackman
Can I take the hon. Gentleman back briefly to the Morgan McSweeney messages? On page 173 of the third volume, there are some messages that Morgan McSweeney has managed to provide from a group chat, which have been published, but not individual messages between himself and Peter Mandelson. If his phone was stolen, which I have no reason to doubt, how did he manage to provide these messages but not those other messages, unless, as the shadow Minister says, they do exist? Why have they been held back? I cannot imagine that it was on the grounds of national security.
Alex Burghart
The hon. Lady makes a good point. It may be because it was on a group message and somebody else had retained their phone, so he provided it. We have to assume that Morgan McSweeney’s messages have, in some part, been retained by the police. I suspect that we will not know why for some time.
In the case of the Prime Minister’s messages, however, it is hard to understand why the police or the Government would block the publication of simple messages of praise, even though they fall within the scope of the Humble Address. We really do need further reassurances from the Government about their approach to disclosure.
Jess Phillips (Birmingham Yardley) (Lab)
The hon. Gentleman gives me an opportunity to say that in the documents, those who may have had disappearing messages or who deleted their messages are listed almost as nil returns. I was one of those people who was asked for my messages and had an actual nil return. It would be good to have more transparency about those whose messages were lost and those of us who have very clearly never spoken to Peter Mandelson. The hon. Gentleman also gives me the opportunity to say that if there was a gender split of Ministers who had never had contact with Peter Mandelson, I imagine it would skew one way.
Alex Burghart
I congratulate the hon. Lady on taking the opportunity to put that on the record.
This is information that the House deserves to have. In what cases are we dealing with messages that never existed because no messages were sent, as in the hon. Lady’s case? In what cases was there auto-delete, which we know the Prime Minister had, because it was disclosed in the lobby briefing for journalists yesterday? In what cases have phones gone missing and back-ups were not done? In what cases has information been held by the police? It really ought to be possible to know that.
I know that the police and the Government are, to a certain extent, understandably being sensitive about the police investigation. However, it really ought to be possible to say to the House, “X number of messages from the Prime Minister are being held by the police, as well as Y number of emails and Z number of text messages.” There is no way that any of that could possibly interfere with any police investigation, if we know roughly what the police know. We started to move in the right direction on that on Monday, when the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister told us the categories of document that we have, but there must be other ways of giving some guidance to the House on what is being held.
We obviously have a huge amount of material that has been justifiably redacted for reasons of national security and international relations, but that does not mean that we do not have the headings. We often have email headings that say, “There was an email sent on this date from this person to that person.” We cannot see the subject, but we know that the email existed. Why can we not have the same thing for the messages that the Prime Minister sent to Peter Mandelson on this date, that date and the other date? We cannot see them, because they are part of a police investigation or subject to national security concerns. We have a discrepancy between different types of approaches to the disclosure of information.
Edward Argar (Melton and Syston) (Con)
In the context of disappearing messages, is my hon. Friend troubled by the fact that in March 2023, the Cabinet Office issued very clear guidance about the use of non-corporate communications channels by Ministers, special advisers and others? It said that disappearing messages should be used sparingly and that the use of disappearing messages does not in any way supersede the record-keeping obligations of Ministers to communicate to their private office a record of anything on their personal devices that is pertinent to the conduct of Government business.
Alex Burghart
That is entirely true. I believe that the ISC said as much in one of its responses to Government disclosure, saying it was very troubled by the fact that this guidance, which all Ministers are supposed to obey, was routinely being broken.
My right hon. Friend and I were both Ministers at the time when that guidance was brought in, and it was brought in for a very good reason. It was to reflect the fact that there are new communications channels and Ministers will want to use them—some of them are very useful for Ministers—but to make it clear that that should not get in the way of the fact that the system needs to retain a record of how decisions are made and what the decisions are. That has clearly not been done in many cases here, not least, as my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) pointed out, in the fact that we have a lot of empty boxes and no record of the Prime Minister assenting to the appointment of Peter Mandelson, even though we know that he did.
Sir John Hayes
My hon. Friend is right that that was highlighted in the ISC’s statement on these matters, and that is an issue to which it may return. It is not for me to prejudge that, but it is a matter of considerable concern. It was raised during the period of the last Government, actually, so it is not unique to this Government. Indeed, we had issues in that regard with previous Secretaries of State and Ministers—I will say no more than that. My hon. Friend is right that it is entirely unsuitable that Ministers are using insecure means to communicate very sensitive information.
May I press my hon. Friend to challenge a little further in respect of Peter Mandelson? We understand that Mandelson’s own messages have not been disclosed. Will my hon. Friend press the Government on the point at which they became aware—prior to, during or subsequent to Mandelson’s appointment—that Mandelson was withholding information of the electronic kind to which my hon. Friend draws the House’s attention, particularly given that the Humble Address specifically deals with the issue of electronic communications?
Alex Burghart
My right hon. Friend is right. The Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister will have heard his remarks, and I hope he will respond to them.
Further to what my right hon. Friend said, the Humble Address was in February, but it was not until March that the Government asked Peter Mandelson for his phone, and Peter Mandelson then refused. As I and other Members said on Monday, the Government should seek to go after Peter Mandelson’s exit payment if he denies co-operation with the Humble Address. It is totally unacceptable that the House should be denied this critical information. We have some information that is retained, some information that appears to have been destroyed and some information that appears to have gone missing.
I wish to turn to some remarks that the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister made on Monday about his own messages, as he brought them up. I think that will be a useful case study. The Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister said:
“I do recall having some limited exchanges with Peter Mandelson over WhatsApp, including those I have already discussed…but these conversations did not involve transacting Government business and were in line with official guidance on the use of non-corporate communications channels at the time.”—[Official Report, 1 June 2026; Vol. 786, c. 853.]
That is all well and good, but who decided that those messages fell into that category? Did the right hon. Gentleman decide that himself? Did he show them to officials, who then decided? Did he show them to the police? Who made the decision? Again, we must ask these questions of all Ministers who were asked to disclose information. Where is it that people have self-edited? Where is it that people have had auto-deletion on their phones? Where is it that people have refused to hand things over? We deserve to know.
Something that I believe is missing throughout the three volumes we received on Monday is photos, videos, voice notes and, more significantly, attachments. I would be very interested to hear the Minister’s explanation for the Government’s approach to those types of document. Let me draw attention in particular to document 33, from 15 September 2025. The email explicitly refers to an attachment, which is pertinent to the subject of the Humble Address, but that document is not available. I could have been led to believe that that document may have been retained by the police, were it not for the fact that all attachments seem to be missing and all photos, voicemails and videos are also missing. I cannot help but feel that it has accidentally fallen out of the full disclosure. May we have some clarity on that?
Let me turn to Peter Mandelson’s declarations of interest, which are one of the most important classes of document; they are perhaps the most important class of document that we are yet to see. We now know that something definitely does exist—first, because the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister told us on Monday, and secondly, because there are references to a back-and-forth about Mandelson’s contacts in the release. Mandelson pushed back on a number of occasions, saying, “I know a lot of foreign people. I have a lot of contacts. I cannot be expected to disclose everything. There was a suggestion from one official not to worry about it too much, just to get on with it and give them a list.”
We appear also to be seeing an absence of documents, such as the mitigations that the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, the right hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury, referred to—Collard’s document. If we add it all together—the absence of the declaration of interests, the absence of the mitigations designed perhaps to handle Mandelson’s relationships with his business contacts when in office, the fact that the documents of certain members of the Cabinet are entirely absent, and the business interests that we know Mandelson had—I think we can reasonably hypothesise about what the police are looking at. That would be—this is speculation—an abuse of his position in Washington to support the interests of his business relations. It is very unfortunate that we will not see that information for some time, because it goes to the heart of one of the problems with the appointment of Mandelson in the first place. [Interruption.] I think Madam Deputy Speaker is encouraging me to wind up, so that I will do. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”] I can understand why the Government do not want me to ask them any more questions.
In conclusion, there are a number of things that we need of the Government. Most importantly, we need a slightly fresh approach to disclosure where we are told a bit more about what the police have: how many documents in each category, how many WhatsApps and emails of the Prime Minister, Peter Mandelson and Morgan McSweeney, and so on. It is important that the House understands where things have gone missing and can start to put that picture together in its head. I say to the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee that, once the police investigations are complete, it would be interesting for the police officers involved to come before the Select Committee—it may fall to another Committee as well—to discuss what their approach has been and why, and what lessons might be learned for future disclosures to Parliament.
I end by turning, rather unfortunately, to the last speech that Peter Mandelson ever made in the Lords, where he said:
“I feel very deeply that there will not be anything like the systematic undermining of the Civil Service that we have seen in recent years…when government policy was conducted by private WhatsApp, rather than on properly considered Civil Service advice.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 28 November 2024; Vol. 841, c. 830.]
This scandal has taken the jobs of the ambassador to Washington, of the Prime Minister’s chief of staff, of the Cabinet Secretary and of the chief official in the Foreign Office—and, ultimately, it will take the job of the Prime Minister.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
I will now announce the result of today’s deferred division on the draft Agriculture (Delinked Payments) (Reductions) (England) Regulations 2026. The Ayes were 302 and the Noes were 153, so the Ayes have it.
I call the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee.
Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)
We are a very long way from one of the original aspects of this scandal, which was an allegation that the Prime Minister knew when appointing Peter Mandelson that he had failed his developed vetting. We have moved a long way from that, but one thing we have not moved away from is that the man who was appointed was a “best pal” of the world’s most notorious paedophile, that he remained his “best pal” when he was in prison, and that he stayed in his house. Personally, I found it so profoundly shocking when I heard that was what happened. It is a matter of good character to stand by friends when they are in trouble, but when they are convicted of a terrible crime like that, you do not stand with them, you do not stay in their house and they should not be your “best pal”. It is not just that: we have also learned that Peter Mandelson was friends with Russian oligarchs, Chinese Finance Ministers and former Israeli security chiefs; he had a loan of £1 million from an unknown source, which he used to buy shares in a secretive Israeli company; and, of course, there are all the issues in relation to his business dealings.
Given that it is the job of the Foreign Affairs Committee to try to ensure that the Foreign Office is as good as it possibly can be, the Committee has tried to remain focused on why it was that a man like that—when it came to developed vetting, it was decided that he was a case of high concern and that his clearance for vetting should be denied—was nevertheless appointed. There is a lot of gossip and other stuff, the tittle-tattle and things that obviously the Westminster village loves, but the serious point is: how could we have got it so wrong and how did this happen?
Sir Julian Lewis
At the beginning of her speech, the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee said most powerfully that what happened in relation to Epstein should alone have been a sufficient bar for anything to go further, but even if that had not happened, it was already in the due diligence document, purely on foreign policy grounds: the Prime Minister was told that Mandelson gave a speech at the University of Hong Kong where he claimed that the rule of law and independence of the judiciary remain intact there. In November 2024, I personally challenged the proposed appointment on the grounds that Mandelson had said in a radio interview that the basis for a settlement with Ukraine would be that Ukraine should give up to Russia all the land that Russia had so far occupied, and that Ukraine should give up any hope of ever belonging to the NATO alliance. These were political grounds that should have ruled him out. The Prime Minister knew about them, but nothing seemed to prevent him from following through on his intent to appoint such an unsuitable individual.
Emily Thornberry
The right hon. Gentleman tempts me down a path that I was not going to go down, although I have gone down it for quite some length in the Committee hearings. It seems to me that all these papers tend to show one thing: the Prime Minister was not particularly interested in the appointment of the ambassador to the United States. He was certainly not a good friend of his: there is no correspondence between them, there are no chatty messages and there is no attempt to get the Prime Minister to vote for Mandelson when he was standing for chancellor of the University of Oxford—I mean, there is not a friendship at all.
The criticism that I make, and I make openly, is that I think the decision was subcontracted to others who were close to Mandelson. The criticism that one can level at the Prime Minister is that he delegated and he did not watch sufficiently what was going on, essentially giving power to others who then abused it—I think that is central. That is not very flattering to the Prime Minister, but it is an honest assessment of the evidence that I have heard. I think the appointment was being pushed and I think that it was being pushed by his then chief of staff, who has a style—and that style is, “When I want to do something, I will go for it hard, I will go for it fast and I will push everybody out of the way.” Once Mandelson had not been elected chancellor at Oxford, someone who should have been a marginal candidate—and had been, as I understand it, just in November 2024—suddenly, within two weeks, moved from being a borderline candidate to being the main person in the frame.
Sir Jeremy Wright (Kenilworth and Southam) (Con)
The right hon. Lady persuades us that there is a good hypothesis, as she has described, for how this has happened, although we will never know—only the Prime Minister will know. However, does she accept that there is another hypothesis: that the Prime Minister was convinced early that this was the right thing to do, that the system accepted that that was his judgment, and that nobody sought sufficiently strongly to try to persuade him otherwise, until the appointment was finally confirmed?
Emily Thornberry
We may be talking about the same thing. Another way of putting it is that the Prime Minister’s chief of staff had taken responsibility for it on his behalf and was pushing it, and the power that the chief of staff had was because he was the chief of staff to the Prime Minister. It is borderline one way or the other.
Sir Julian Lewis
I disagree with the right hon. Lady’s analysis because the whole point of what we have been saying from the Opposition Benches is that the Prime Minister himself knew about these points: he knew what Mandelson had done in relation to Epstein; he knew what he had said in relation to justice in Hong Kong; and he knew what Mandelson had said in that radio interview because I had challenged him about it. I must say, although it may not meet the high standards of court litigation, that when the Prime Minister brushed aside my challenge to him on 21 November, he sat down with a very notable and ingratiating grin, and I turned to the person sitting next to me and said, “He’s definitely going to appoint Mandelson.” It was his decision.
Emily Thornberry
I will move on, but before I do so, I will say something that I think any fair-minded person will know. Presumably the job of being Prime Minister means that there is so much on your desk, and if someone comes to you and says, “Don’t worry about this, I’ll take it and sort it”, there is a temptation to go, “Okay, you do that, because I have 7,000 other things that I have to deal with today.” I do not know—I have never been Prime Minister—but I would assume that that is the reality of the situation.
The question is how somebody who is so manifestly inappropriate gets appointed. It may be that those behaving in this way did so because they felt under huge amounts of political pressure, but how does someone whose case was of high concern and for whom it was recommended that clearance be denied become interpreted as a borderline case, leaning against? How do we bridge that gap? The only way that gap is bridged is through mitigations, so I spend my time looking for mitigations, and I cannot find any. Ian Collard, who was one of the security men speaking to Olly Robbins—who, at the time, was the permanent under-secretary—mentioned the importance of mitigations 10 times in his written evidence to us, and Olly Robbins talked about it six times. It is at the forefront of their evidence.
I have already referred to an aide-mémoire that Ian Collard made in September. He says that he looked again at the summary. He accepts that UKSV’s statement was
“‘this case presents as a high concern’ with a recommendation of ‘clearance denied or withdrawn’”,
and he
“noted that, as well as the tick boxes”—
red tick-boxes, which were ticked—
“UKSV stated in the final case assessment: ‘Overall, I believe that this is a very borderline case…If a clearance was awarded to the individual by the Department, it is recommended that a very robust risk management model is put in place’”.
I do not know whether that is just Ian Collard’s memory of what he may or may not have read—well, I know that he did not read it, because he says that he did not read it at that stage. I do not understand how the UKSV paper can say, “Don’t give him the job”, and then it can also be believed to be a very borderline case with robust risk management recommended. I suspect that the latter bit is an interpretation—a way in which, it was hoped, the difficulty that Mandelson was essentially being refused vetting could be slid over into “He can be given the job, so long as there are robust mitigations.”
But where are those mitigations? When Sir Olly gave evidence to our Committee, I said to him,
“I do not really follow why you would not know the contents of the UKSV document and their concerns or even that they said that there was high concern about Peter Mandelson. I do not understand how you can not know that if you are considering what the mitigations are. You cannot have the mitigations without knowing what the problem is.”
He said,
“The risks were explained to me, but I have not seen the underlying documentation. That is what I am saying. That obviously strikes members of the Committee as odd”—
well, it certainly did—
“but in all my years as a civil servant—many of them as a relatively senior one—I have never seen a UKSV document, other than the ones that I have filled in myself.”
It is ridiculous. If he is putting down mitigations in order to deal with legitimate concerns and a security threat, he needs to know what that security threat is, and to understand that UKSV is saying that it is very serious and that Mandelson should not be given the job—yet he says, “I didn’t know. I just thought it was borderline, leaning the other way.” I mean, this is Alice in Wonderland.
Alex Burghart
The right hon. Lady is making an important series of points. Does she not also think that the fact that the vetting was not done before Mandelson arrived in Washington, as we now know, means that somebody was in post in Washington seeing highly classified information which he was not fit to see, because there were no mitigations in place, even though the process subsequently threw up the fact that he would need them? Of course, as she is saying, he probably should not have had the job, given that the mitigations were warranted.
Emily Thornberry
I really do not know. The Foreign Office got the UKSV clearance on 29 January 2025, and it says that it did something about it, but we cannot see what that is. An email on page 72 of part I is the nearest thing to mitigations I have been able to find, and Ian Collard referred to it in his evidence. It is an email he wrote on 30 January, and I think it is the mitigations, but I just do not think it is a robust set of mitigations to deal with serious security concerns. The email states:
“As part of the usual clearance policy process, UKSV identified some areas in his application for ESND to review”—
that is the security man.
“I understand that Lord Mandelson’s private sector engagements are being managed by HRD”—
that is human resources—
“and the Legal Directorate through the conflict of interest process.”
Who knows? It continues:
“With regard to personal conduct”—
I think that is hanging out with oligarchs, being friends with the Finance Minister, borrowing money and who knows what else—
“I understand that Lord Mandelson has received a letter from Mervyn Thomas, informing him of his responsibilities as an FCDO employee, including under the Diplomatic Service Regulations.”
Is that it? He got a letter from a man telling him to behave himself! We have not seen the letter, and I do not know what it is. The email continues:
“Matters pertaining to his overseas contacts will certainly be reviewed by the STRAP authorities.”
STRAP is another issue, and we should not be distracted by STRAP. Mandelson needed to follow the developed vetting before getting anywhere near the latest STRAP stuff.
It is important that we take these things in order. We have that email, which is about as pathetic as it can be. There might be something in the nine-page summary that some Members sitting in this Chamber have seen. It might be that that summary showing the security concerns has a page or so at the end—it is a blank page—asking the Foreign Office for its response. UKSV is giving a recommendation saying, “Mandelson should not be given the job, he is a security risk.” The process might be that the Foreign Office has to write something on that form saying, “We have read this. We don’t agree with you. We think he should be appointed, and we’re going to put in the following mitigations”, and then list them. It might be that the Foreign Office did not fill that in properly, and it might be that that bit of the form remains blank. I do not know whether anybody is in a position to be able to enlighten me one way or the other, or whether we will have to wait for the police to give us the document.
Emily Thornberry
I do not think the right hon. Gentleman is one of the people I am referring to, but I give way.
Sir Julian Lewis
Surely that information would be precisely the kind that could be safely entrusted to the ISC, and it ought to have been entrusted with it.
Emily Thornberry
I suspect that the ISC may have been entrusted with it—that is what I am trying to say. I am hoping that if the form is blank, it is not necessarily the case that anything of particular security interest was being disclosed, and it is just a process issue, where the Foreign Office did not follow process as it should have and at least put on that form, “Yes, we have done these things.”
I am just trying to do my job, holding the Government to account. Why did Britain employ a man who was a security risk to this really important job? We did so because of the mitigations, but nobody will tell us the mitigations. After all these thousands of bits of paper, and after my poor right hon. Friend the Member for Bristol North West coming to the Chamber 11 times, we still cannot get to the root of it.
Sir John Hayes
It would be entirely inappropriate for me, or for any other member of the ISC, to say what we have received, which has now been sent to the police, but given that following an urgent question just before the recess I challenged the Chief Secretary on the issue of mitigations, asking him whether there were mitigations in place and whether they would be made known to us, it would not be unreasonable for a diligent member of the House such as the right hon. Lady to conclude that I would not have asked that question if I had known the answer to it.
Emily Thornberry
Well, that is very helpful; I thank the right hon. Gentleman very much.
Let us move on. Is there a record of the decision? When Sir Oliver Robbins appeared before the Committee, and indeed when other people appeared before it, I kept coming back to the same question: “Where is the record of your decision? What was the process that you went through before doing this? Why are there no notes? Why is there no record? How can we hold you to account if you really, genuinely are not making any notes at all?” Given that a decision was made to give Peter Mandelson the job subject to mitigations, where is the record of the decision? Do the police have it? Is it in the papers and I have missed it? I do not think so. Was there never a written record of the decision? Surely someone would have made a record of the action taken—or is that the email? Is that it? Is that the action that they took, or is there something else?
Surely there was a letter written to Peter Mandelson saying, “You have the job, but only if you do x, y and z.” This cannot be dealt with by way of a WhatsApp message or a phone call. This is very serious. This is about the security of our nation, and it should be in a letter. I certainly hope that the reason that I have not seen it is that it exists but the police have it, but I do not know one way or the other.
I know that others will be dealing with this later, and I want to draw my remarks to a close, but the Foreign Affairs Committee has been trying to do its job to the best of its ability to try to ensure that such a mistake does not happen again, and we have been doing that in good faith. It has been difficult. We have been “mandarined”; we have been given partial answers; we have been given nonsense by people believing that it is not for us to know. Well, it is for us to know, and it is for us to know because we are trying to make our Government better, and it is our job as Back Benchers to do that.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.
Ian Sollom (St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire) (LD)
The Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister reminded the House on Monday that he had given 10 updates on the Mandelson affair to Parliament, and, as the Paymaster General reminded us earlier, it will be 11 today. There are more than 1,500 pages of documents in this release alone—the largest Government response to a Humble Address in parliamentary history—but there is still one account that we have not received.
In April, I said in this Chamber that when the Prime Minister simply says that he should not have appointed Peter Mandelson to the UK’s most important diplomatic posting—that it was, in his words, an “error of judgment”—he gives a description of an outcome, not an account of his judgment. I used the analogy of a driver saying, “I should not have crashed the car”, without ever accounting for the actions that led to the crash. That matters if we are to understand properly what went wrong, it matters to preventing it from happening again, and it matters to judging whether the driver should still be behind the wheel.
If the House will indulge me, I will extend that analogy. These 1,500 pages give us the crash scene in more detail than Parliament has ever received on any comparable matter. We have the vehicle’s full mechanical history, we have the account of every passenger, we have what the bystanders observed from the pavement, and we have what the recovery team found when they arrived—but what we still do not have, after all that, is the driver’s account. What did the Prime Minister weigh in making his decision, what did he conclude, and where does he now think he went wrong in his reasoning?
The Prime Minister received the due diligence in December 2024, which documented Mandelson’s association with Epstein and that he had stayed in Epstein’s home while Epstein was serving a prison sentence for sexual offences against a minor. The document described that as a “reputational risk”—not a moral question about what it means to appoint someone who maintained such a friendship, not a question about what message it sends to the victims and survivors of Epstein’s crimes, just a reputational risk to be managed. Did the Prime Minister consider any of those questions? We do not know. All we know is that he proceeded anyway.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne (Josh Babarinde) said on Monday, in these 1,500 pages, Epstein’s victims are not mentioned once in any document dated before Mandelson’s appointment. The only reference to them seems to be in an email written after he was sacked. The victims were not just an afterthought; they were given no thought at all.
The published documents also highlight failures once Mandelson was in post. The due diligence was explicit: Global Counsel interests would have to cease on appointment. During Mandelson’s seven months as ambassador, from February to September 2025, he retained a substantial shareholding in Global Counsel. In February 2025, weeks into his ambassadorial role with that shareholding intact, he accompanied the Prime Minister on a visit to Palantir’s Washington headquarters. No formal minutes of that meeting were taken. In July 2025, he wrote to No. 10 suggesting that the Prime Minister should meet Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel while in London.
Palantir was a Global Counsel client. How was an ambassador who retained a commercial stake in a lobbying firm permitted to accompany the Prime Minister to a meeting with one of that firm’s clients, with no formal record of what was discussed, and then suggest a further meeting with the firm’s founder? The due diligence said those interests should cease. They had not. Nothing in the published documents suggests that anyone asked why.
The documents also reveal that in February 2025 Mandelson advised the then Technology Secretary to include
“more positive language about AI”
in a speech to the Munich security conference. The then Secretary of State replied that it was
“all v good advice which I’ll action”—
in text speak, obviously. This, again, was while Mandelson retained his shareholding in a firm that represented OpenAI and Palantir, and while he described OpenAI’s chief executive as his “chief AI buddy”. My hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove (Lisa Smart) has today written to the independent adviser on ministers’ interests calling for an investigation into that, and she is right to do so.
Those are only the conflicts that Parliament can currently see. The right hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry), Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, asked on Monday, and again today, whether there is any written evidence of mitigations being put in place for the other conflicts identified in the due diligence. Those include the connections to the sanctioned Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska; to Lan Fo’an, China’s Minister of Finance; and to Tamir Hayman, a former head of Israeli military intelligence. They also include a £1 million loan to invest in an Israeli start-up. The Chief Secretary’s response was that those documents are with the Metropolitan police, so Parliament cannot yet see whether those warnings were taken seriously or set to one side.
The Liberal Democrats have consistently called for the reforms that this affair has made unavoidable. Government by WhatsApp must end. These documents show exactly what happens when significant business is conducted through channels that are imperfectly preserved and impossible to scrutinise. One senior Minister told Mandelson in writing that a sensitive matter was:
“A convo for the phone.”
That Minister warned:
“There is a pattern we must get out of.”
The review of non-corporate communications must produce enforceable rules, not just guidance.
The lobbying register also needs root and branch reform. An ambassador retained a commercial stake in a lobbying firm throughout his tenure, arranging meetings between the Prime Minister and clients of that firm, and it seems that the system had no mechanism to prevent it. The ministerial code must be placed in statute. Having a code the Prime Minister can choose whether to enforce is not accountability, but it appears to be, which is more corrosive.
Ultimately, those reforms will only address the system around the decision. The Father of the House, the right hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh), observed on Monday that the Prime Minister has almost no presence in the 1,500 pages, comparing him with “The Man Who Never Was”. The response of the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister was that
“Prime Ministers do not sit at computers, sending emails from Outlook. They have officials who action their decisions on their behalf”.—[Official Report, 1 June 2026; Vol. 786, c. 860.]
That may be true, but officials action decisions; they do not make them. The decision to appoint Peter Mandelson was the Prime Minister’s—his judgment, his decision and his error, as he acknowledges—but the House has never received his account of that decision.
After 10 updates and 1,500 pages, the House might begin to wonder about the reasons for that absence, and I think there are three possibilities. Perhaps the Prime Minister genuinely does not know why he made the decision, and cannot reconstruct the reasoning that led him, having read the due diligence, to proceed. If so, that is alarming. A judgment of this sensitivity—involving national security, a convicted sex offender’s associate and known commercial conflicts of interest—should not be one whose reasoning evaporates without trace.
Perhaps the Prime Minister knows why he proceeded, but believes an honest answer to this House would be embarrassing, and that explaining his reasoning would require him to acknowledge something he would prefer left unexamined. If so, that is a choice to protect himself at the expense of Parliament’s right to hold him to account. Perhaps the Prime Minister may genuinely believe that repeatedly saying, “I made an error of judgment,” constitutes an adequate account of his judgment. If so, it reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of what accountability to Parliament actually requires. None of those three possibilities reflects well on a Prime Minister who promised that integrity and accountability would define his Government.
Before taking up his post, Peter Mandelson wrote to the then Foreign Secretary, the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy), that if appointed, he would make sure the Prime Minister never regretted it. The Prime Minister has now expressed regret, but regret without explanation is not accountability. This House, and Epstein’s victims, deserve more than that: they deserve an answer.
Alex Davies-Jones (Pontypridd) (Lab)
I think what has struck me most about this whole affair is not what has been said, but what has been missing. Over the past week, we have seen endless coverage of private messages, political embarrassment and Westminster intrigue. We have heard discussions about powerful people, powerful networks and powerful reputations. However, amid all this, we have heard far too little about the victims. For all the headlines that have been generated by this story, the people whose lives were devastated by Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse have too often been reduced to a footnote, and that should concern every single one of us. Perhaps the most revealing aspect of the disclosures is not simply who Ministers were meeting, but who they were not. While significant effort appears to have gone into cultivating relationships with influential figures in the tech world, victims were left feeling unheard and overlooked. That is the wrong way around.
I sought to use my position in Government to advocate for victims, but when we are forced to fight tooth and nail simply to have those voices heard, something is not working as it should. That is why I took the difficult but necessary decision to resign. But stepping down does not mean stepping back and that is why I will now voice Lisa’s words:
“My name is Lisa Phillips. I am a survivor of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell’s global paedophile trafficking and abuse network. I respectfully ask that MP Alex Davies-Jones be permitted to speak on my behalf and be my voice in Parliament today, when so many survivors’ voices still go unheard.
I met Prince Andrew on Epstein island on the night I was sexually assaulted by Jeffrey Epstein. Like many of my survivor sisters, I was trafficked and abused over a number of years. I am seeking answers not only about Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, but also about the powerful men who enabled, protected, or benefited from this abuse and trafficking.
This debate is about accountability. Jeffrey Epstein’s powerful network made many victims and survivors feel unable to come forward. When powerful people protect or turn a blind eye to abuse, justice becomes harder to achieve. That must change. Many UK survivors came forward to the Metropolitan police, yet they too were left without the answers and accountability they deserved.
As a survivor, I struggle to understand why Prime Minister Keir Starmer appointed Peter Mandelson when his association with Jeffrey Epstein had long been publicly known. For survivors, this raises serious questions about whether the lessons of the Epstein scandal have truly been learned. I have repeatedly requested the opportunity to meet with the Prime Minister, but those requests have been ignored. Must I now wait for the next Prime Minister to acknowledge me and my survivor sisters?
With respect, Prime Minister, your apology alone means little without meaningful action, so I ask you directly, Prime Minister: do you, and the Government you lead, support a full public inquiry into Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell and those who enabled, protected, participated in, or benefited from their crimes, including those on British soil? The answer is simple: yes or no. Regards, Lisa Phillips.”
The least Lisa, and the many other British brave survivors, deserve is an answer, yet they are being met with silence. Lisa’s testimony reminds us all that this debate cannot be confined to any one individual. It is about a culture: a culture where power protects power, and where influence and connections can matter more than accountability.
The disclosures made available to the House paint a troubling picture: a picture of senior figures discussing how to build relationships with powerful tech billionaires and silicon valley elites; and a picture of a Government seemingly preoccupied with winning over the likes of Elon Musk and maintaining close relationships with figures such as Sam Altman. That raises an important question: what was the priority?
At precisely the same time as those Ministers were discussing how to secure the approval of tech oligarchs, Ministers such as myself and my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Yardley (Jess Phillips), along with campaigners, safeguarding experts and survivors, were all calling for stronger action on online harm. We were calling for action on violent pornography, action on misogynistic content, and action to better protect children online. Yet too often our voices were ignored, sidelined or dismissed. As people who have spent much of our careers campaigning to tackle violence against women and girls, my hon. Friend and I found that deeply frustrating to say the least. The role of Government should not be to seek approval from the world’s most powerful technology companies; it should be to stand up for the people we are sent here to serve.
When people look at these disclosures, they see a Government who appeared more interested in cultivating relationships with tech elites than listening to the warnings about harms being experienced by women, girls and young people every single day. That matters. The public increasingly feel that there is one set of rules for the powerful and another for everyone else. They see the same names, the same networks, the same circle of influence and the same men, and they see powerful institutions closing ranks when difficult questions are asked. That perception damages trust.
What concerns me almost as much as the disclosures themselves, however, is how they came into the public domain in the first place. It was not because the Government chose transparency or Ministers proactively provided answers, but because Parliament forced the issue—because Members in this place demanded scrutiny and this House insisted on accountability. That takes us to a much bigger question: why is transparency so often dragged out of institutions rather than being freely given? Why do victims, campaigners and Parliament so often have to fight for information that should be freely available from the outset?
Perhaps the most striking contradiction of all concerns transparency. While this Government have spoken passionately about the importance of openness, accountability and a duty of candour, the disclosures raise serious questions about whether those principles were being lived as well as preached. The public are entitled to ask how confidence and transparency can be maintained when disappearing messages were being used at the highest level of Government. They are entitled to ask why survivors have appeared to struggle to secure the same level of access and attention that was afforded to some of the most powerful figures in global technology. They are entitled to ask whether the voices that mattered most were truly being heard.
When victims and survivors feel ignored while those with wealth, influence and power are actively courted, something has gone badly wrong. That is not the culture that the public expect from Government, and it is certainly not the culture that victims deserve. That is why this debate—this whole issue—should strengthen our resolve to deliver a genuine duty of candour. Not a slogan, a soundbite, or something invoked only when convenient, but a genuine legal and moral obligation on those exercising power to tell the truth, to preserve information, to be transparent, and to place accountability ahead of any self-protection.
Too often in this country, transparency is not volunteered; it is extracted—painfully. It comes only after leaks and investigations, and after victims’ families, campaigners and parliamentarians fight for information that should have been available from the outset, sometimes for decades. The disclosures before us did not emerge because the Government chose openness; they emerged because Parliament forced scrutiny through Standing Order No. 24. That should concern every Member of this House, because if transparency depends on being forced, then we do not yet have a culture of candour. Until we confront that honestly, we will continue to fail the very people that this House exists to serve—not with words but action; not with promises, but accountability.
Sir Jeremy Wright (Kenilworth and Southam) (Con)
It is a genuine privilege to follow the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones). Knowledgeable and passionate Ministers are a huge asset to any Government, and she is a significant loss to this one. If I may say, the same can be said of the hon. Member for Birmingham Yardley (Jess Phillips), who sits next to her. The hon. Member for Pontypridd makes important points about the victims of Epstein, which I will not repeat, and she has added considerably to this debate.
I also take the opportunity to join in the tributes that were made earlier to Alan Haselhurst, Madam Deputy Speaker, who occupied your Chair with immense dignity and considerable rigour, but did so with deep warmth and kindness. He will be missed in both Chambers of this place.
Turning to the motion, I will say something about the process that has led to the publication of the documents we are now considering, and then something about their contents. On the process, I start by offering thanks to the officials of the Cabinet Office and the staff of the Intelligence and Security Committee. The whole House will now be conscious of the sheer scale of the task that lay before both those groups of people and the immense work that they all had to put in to turn the process around as quickly as they did. The House will also now appreciate that, given their nature, it was inevitable that a large number of those documents raised questions of either national security or international relations.
On behalf of the Intelligence and Security Committee, I want to make it very clear, as I have before, first that we are very grateful for the words of the Paymaster General, and indeed the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister on previous occasions, on the work that we have done. Secondly, I want to reassure the House that throughout the process, we were rigorous in our view that Government embarrassment was not sufficient cause for redaction of these documents. I hope the House can now see that that is the case, as there is plenty of Government embarrassment left unredacted.
The prejudice that we sought to establish in relation to international relations or national security needed to be real prejudice, and not the vague possibility of that prejudice. That is the way in which we approached the task. I am confident in the redactions that we agreed to make, and indeed in the decisions we took not to support the redactions that we refused to consent to.
In the process that we undertook—I have spoken about this before—two issues of process have arisen. The first is the question of who checks proposed redactions for reasons other than national security or international relations. I am very glad that the Government have agreed that my hon. Friend the Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare) should fulfil that role, as he has now done. The second concerns the grounds for redaction beyond the protection of national security or international relations. As many who have heard these conversations before know, I have been and remain critical of the way the Government have maintained the unilateral right to redact for other reasons. I do not propose to go through all those arguments again. I take that position not because I do not think the Government have a good case to do so, but because I think it is wrong for the Government to assume Parliament’s consent to that case.
Jeremy Corbyn
For clarity, is the redaction done in Downing Street—in Government—and then sent to the right hon. and learned Gentleman’s Committee, or is it done by the Committee on grounds of national security and international relations?
Sir Jeremy Wright
I am happy to give the right hon. Gentleman that clarity. The documents that we received were unredacted documents marked with the proposed redactions the Government sought to make for reasons of protecting national security or international relations. Where we agreed with the Government, we agreed that those redactions should be made; where we disagreed, those redactions were not made. We saw all the documents unredacted, and we decided whether to accept the Government’s proposals for redaction or not. The House made it clear that it wanted the final word on those redactions—yes or no—to be ours as a Committee, and not the Government’s. I hope that is of assistance to the right hon. Gentleman.
Sir Julian Lewis
For the sake of completeness, will my right hon. and learned Friend explain whether the Committee saw the third category of documents—those redacted or withheld because of the police inquiry—or whether the Committee labours under the same degree of ignorance as the rest of us?
Sir Jeremy Wright
I think we may have to wait for the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister to explain the position from the Government’s perspective. I can say only that what was put in front of us did not, I think, include the documents that the police had sought to have withheld. I cannot say that that is the case in every instance, but we do not believe that there has been complete disclosure yet. We think there will be further documents put before us, which the police currently have in their possession, so it may well be that there is further work for the Committee to do. My right hon. Friend will recognise from his long experience that we will apply the same degree of rigour and impartiality to any further documents put before us as to the documents we have already seen.
Kirsty Blackman
I just wanted to ask one more question for clarity, because this is incredibly useful. On the redactions that were made because of personal information, for example, did the Committee see the unredacted version of those documents, or had they been redacted by the time they got to the ISC?
Sir Jeremy Wright
The answer to the hon. Lady’s question is that we will have seen only the documents to which there were proposed redactions for the purposes of either national security or international relations. However, we may well also have seen other proposed redactions to the same documents. The reason that I have raised concerns in the past about the breadth of those proposed redactions for other reasons is that the Committee has seen some of those proposed redactions, but, of course, we have no way of knowing what proportion of such proposed redactions we have seen—if a document does not contain within it redactions that the Government have proposed for either international relations or national security reasons, the document would not have come before us at all.
Kirsty Blackman
The Paymaster General said that those redactions marked with three stars are the ones that were redacted with agreement from the Committee. Can the right hon. and learned Gentleman confirm that redactions marked by three stars relate to the ISC and that other redactions are marked differently?
Sir Jeremy Wright
Yes, I can—and this is an important point. The Intelligence and Security Committee wanted to be extremely clear that we took responsibility only for the redactions that we had considered and agreed. The Government, to be fair to them, have always accepted that those redactions that the Government made without the involvement of my Committee would appear on the documents differently, and they do. The House will be able to see exactly the difference when the documents are considered.
I need to make it clear that I am not an enthusiast for the use of Humble Addresses to demand disclosure of documents at all, whichever party may choose to use them. That is simply because I think it is inappropriate to involve the monarch in a political argument, but if we are to have them, or indeed any other motions that demand the disclosure of material, we should be clear about the grounds on which the Government are entitled to redact that material.
Hannah Spencer (Gorton and Denton) (Green)
I have had the privilege of meeting some of the women who survived Epstein’s abuse, and I pay tribute to them and to those who are no longer with us. Does the right hon. and learned Gentleman agree that as we rightly discuss the processes that took place, we must also highlight the sheer bravery of those women, and that that should be front and centre in this debate? Does he agree that this appalling episode, in which the victims were overlooked and Mandelson was still appointed despite his links to Epstein, must lead to a fundamental change in political culture?
Sir Jeremy Wright
I do agree with the point that the hon. Lady makes, and I think that that argument was put very forcefully and eloquently by the hon. Member for Pontypridd, which she may have heard a moment ago.
I want to return to the grounds on which the Government are entitled to redact material under a Humble Address motion or similar motions. It seems to me not only that Parliament should have clarity about the grounds on which the Government seek to redact such material but that the proper time to have that clarity is when such a motion is first agreed, not as documents begin to be disclosed in response to it.
I want to make a suggestion, and I hope that the Government will see it as a helpful one, because it is genuinely meant as such. I suggest that this House agrees standard rules by which a Government may make a redaction and the reasons for it, and that those should be used in all similar situations in the future so that we have clarity. The Government have relied on a variety of legislative and common practice routes to support their right to redact, or in some cases even to withhold documents altogether, in relation to this Humble Address. I think that the process would benefit from consolidation of those reasons into a single document that the House can then endorse. It would save this argument being rerun, or at least limit it to a discussion of any specific grounds for redaction that the Government seek to rely on beyond the agreed reasons.
I will turn to the content of the documents and what they tell us. I have said very little about them so far in order to, I hope, preserve the integrity of the process that the ISC has been conducting at the House’s instruction. There is, of course, lots of interest in the documents—in how, for example, the ambassador to the United States steadfastly refused to stay in his lane as a diplomat and instead offered his advice on almost every aspect of the Government’s activity; in the fact that he was held in such high regard, not to say awe, by so many members of the Government; and in the slapdash approach to secure communications, to which the Government, and perhaps also my Committee, will return.
It is important to remember that this whole exercise, as I think the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee said, was supposed to be about interrogating how Lord Mandelson’s appointment as US ambassador came to be made. It would be churlish not to accept that Lord Mandelson had successes in the role. That indicates that he had merits as a candidate for the job that the Prime Minister was entitled to consider, but considering someone for a role is very different from appointing them to it—especially someone who had such obvious and well known risks, and especially to an appointment of such evident importance and sensitivity. That is why I find the process of making the appointment so concerning and so surprising.
I accept that it is unfashionable or even heretical to say it these days, but I have a soft spot for the Prime Minister. I do not think it is just because I like the idea of lawyers with knighthoods being in charge, though I do; it is really because I am an enthusiast for good government. The question of whether one supports a Government’s policies is one thing, but we should all be in favour of good government none the less. I want to see responsible decision making, considered judgments, a preference for evidence over instinct, and flashy ideas properly tested to ensure that they will actually work. That is good government to me, and I thought that in this Prime Minister’s Administration I would see it, but good government requires that where a sensitive appointment carries considerable risk, extra work is done to understand that risk and mitigate it. These documents do not show that.
Peter Mandelson’s letter to the then Foreign Secretary—now Deputy Prime Minister—has become famous for his assurance that the Government would not regret his appointment, and ranks up there with “peace for our time” and Michael Fish’s pre-hurricane weather forecast in the pantheon of poor predictions. But there is something else interesting about it, and that is its date—18 November 2024—which makes it clear that Lord Mandelson was at the very least under serious consideration for the ambassador position in mid-November. The vetting process did not begin until late December, with everyone then being told—this is very clear—that it should be completed in time for Mandelson to begin work in January. There are several mentions in the documents of the urgency of that from officials. We know already that the National Security Adviser considered the process strangely rushed, and in the latest drop of documents, we see that in volume II, part I, page 21 it says:
“The SPAD work has shown just how slick this can be when needed.”
Page 66 says:
“We have had quite a bit of senior interest in the processing of this case (not the details merely that it goes smoothly)”.
If officials had been asked to start that work earlier, they could have taken longer over it, and surely more time and consideration would have been beneficial in this complex and controversial case.
Indeed, the haste with which things were being done was apparent elsewhere. In another document, an official points out that the Prime Minister had announced his choice for ambassador before agrément had been granted. In other words, the United States had not agreed to accept Lord Mandelson as ambassador at that point. That, the official says, should not have happened.
It is, and was, clear to everyone that this was a controversial appointment: perhaps high reward, but definitely high risk. There were substantial reasons to worry about it—we have heard several of them—and almost all of them were very public knowledge. That should have given everyone—perhaps especially the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office as the appointing Department—pause for thought, yet we know from page 106 of part III of this volume that UK Security Vetting informed the FCDO of its recommendation in the last week of January 2025 and the FCDO granted the developed vetting certificate on 29 January 2025. Not much pause for thought there. Worse still, as others have pointed out, we have not seen mitigations—ones that were clearly agreed to be necessary—evidenced anywhere. Good government this was not.
It has been said by many on the Government’s behalf that mistakes can be made, and that is of course true. When in opposition, the Prime Minister pointed out more than once that Prime Ministers are accountable for the tone and character of the Governments they lead and for how those Governments transact their business, and he was right. These documents show that in the making of this very important and sensitive decision, there was much wrong with the tone and character of this Government.
Ian Byrne (Liverpool West Derby) (Lab)
The latest Peter Mandelson scandal epitomises everything that my constituents in Liverpool West Derby detest about the political establishment and why so many are losing faith in this place. Here was a man who brought Government into disrepute on multiple occasions—a man who repeatedly placed personal interest and profit ahead of public service—yet instead of being consigned to political history, he was rehabilitated by senior figures in my own party and elevated through a position of extraordinary, unelected influence. Why? Because his value to the political establishment was never rooted in principle or public service; it was rooted in his history of brutal, factional manoeuvring, his network of powerful contacts and his ability to pull strings behind the scenes. Even his association with one of the world’s most notorious paedophiles was seemingly outweighed by the usefulness of those connections and—shamefully, for those responsible for his appointment—with no apparent regard for the victims of Jeffrey Epstein. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones) for her speech, which outlined that so powerfully.
Though the latest documents reveal moments of embarrassing sycophancy, they tell us little that we did not already know. Mandelson’s fingerprints are all over this Government. His involvement stretched from Ministers and advisers to the very centre of power. Just yesterday evening, we learned that the Chancellor asked Mandelson to visit her at the Treasury to advise on trade matters while he was chair of the private lobbying firm Global Counsel. No record of the meeting was disclosed.
Mandelson’s influence, exercised through figures such as the Prime Minister’s former chief of staff Morgan McSweeney, was vast, unaccountable and entirely undemocratic. Based on the great lengths that McSweeney and others went to ensure that Mandelson was given the job as US ambassador, including by applying pressure on civil servants, it is very reasonable to conclude that Mandelson’s influential position was reward for his support of the Labour Together faction. The damage that organisation has done to my party and this Government cannot be ignored, so I once again reiterate my call to the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister for a full, transparent and independent inquiry into Labour Together and all those involved in the organisation.
The question many of my constituents are asking is: how could an unelected figure, whose public record is so controversial, wield such influence over the decisions of Government while facing so little scrutiny or accountability? That lack of accountability also helps to explain why the latest disclosures were not far more uncomfortable for Mandelson and those around him. As we know, despite requests to do so, he refused to hand over his personal phone as part of the evidence-gathering process. That speaks to a wider problem of culture in Westminster and Whitehall, and is exactly why we need a duty of candour that a Hillsborough law would introduce. There can be no more exemptions from transparency for the powerful; there can be no special rules for those at the top. Public confidence depends on accountability applied equally to everyone.
I, like many others, await Government actions on the progress of that crucial piece of legislation, and I hope that the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister can shed some light on its stalled progress when he winds up the debate. The ongoing police investigation means that Mandelson may yet face further scrutiny. However, the absence of so much correspondence, together with the significant redactions in material already published, means the true extent of his influence over Government decision making may never be fully known.
My particular concern centres on the relationship between this Government and the US technology firm Palantir, a former client of Global Counsel. The documents reveal that Mandelson arranged meetings with Palantir’s founder Peter Thiel—historically a supporter of Donald Trump—and Louis Mosley, the company’s UK head. Those meetings followed the Prime Minister’s visit to Palantir’s Washington headquarters in February—a meeting reportedly brokered by Mandelson, for which no official minutes or transcript were produced.
Following this, later in the year, in September, during the state visit of Donald Trump, there was a pledge by Palantir to expand its work with the Ministry of Defence to a value of £750 million over five years. I and many others in this place and beyond do not believe a company associated with military operations in Gaza and the facilitation of aggressive immigration enforcement in the United States should be entrusted with expanding influence over any public services in this country.
My greatest concern is Palantir’s growing role within our national health service—a matter that the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee today described as
“an unacceptable point of weakness”,
which could leave our data “at the mercy” of hostile actors. I first raised concerns about this company in 2023 when the federated data platform contract was awarded. Since then, I have repeatedly called on the current and the last Governments to exercise the 2027 break clause and end this relationship. Yet despite widespread concerns from parliamentarians, healthcare professionals and members of the public, for some reason Palantir’s presence within our NHS and access to patient data has only continued to grow.
That expansion comes despite significant concerns being raised elsewhere. NYC Health + Hospitals withdrew from its contract with Palantir earlier this year, while a proposed Metropolitan police contract was blocked last month. Those decisions reflected principled leadership and a recognition that public trust must come before corporate influence, and I thank Mayor Khan for showing that desperately needed leadership, which is a real example to others. The concerns that were acted on are shared by many NHS staff and many of my constituents, who are deeply uneasy about the growing role of Palantir in managing sensitive personal data. That is why I was particularly concerned when the former Health Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting), ruled out ending Palantir’s contract earlier this year, citing efficiency gains, despite evidence that many NHS trusts using the platform had not reported clear benefits of the software.
For me, it is here that the missing documents become extremely significant. Just months after Mandelson sought a meeting with Palantir UK’s Louis Mosley, the former Health Secretary, who we know was in regular contact with Mandelson, held a private meeting with Mosley himself, as reported by The Guardian among others. A legitimate question arises: did Mandelson facilitate that meeting in the same way he appeared to broker discussions between Palantir and the Prime Minister?
While many in Westminster are preoccupied with the gossip, personal exchanges and political intrigue contained within these documents, I am far more concerned by what is absent: the gaps, the redactions, the missing correspondence that may never come to light because relevant material was withheld or “phones were stolen”. Those missing pieces would not simply demonstrate that Peter Mandelson was embedded within the machinery of government; they would reveal the consequences of that influence. They would show how decisions affecting our public services, our NHS and our democracy may have been shaped by unelected power, corporate interests and private relationships operating beyond public scrutiny. Until there is full transparency and genuine accountability for how decisions of national importance are made, public trust in this place will continue to erode, and that is a very dangerous place to be going.
That principle should have applied to Peter Mandelson, but it clearly did not, and what a catastrophic mistake that was and continues to be. Moving forward, it must also apply to all those currently exercising power within this Government and anybody seeking to lead this Government in the years ahead.
Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)
This House stands tall when those across it find common cause in speaking for the people. Our authority is derived from just that. There is immense wisdom present in the House today, and probably even greater wisdom that is not present, but that is not the essence of the root of our authority which is derived from our election, and when the House finds its feet in the way personified by the speech of the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones), the message broadcast from this place more broadly is that MPs do not merely dance to the tune composed and conducted by the Treasury Bench, or indeed the Opposition Front Bench, but are capable of making judgments of the kind that she epitomised in making her contribution earlier.
I have been part of this process. I will not say that I have sweated blood, but I have certainly spent a great deal of time on it, as has my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Sir Jeremy Wright). Over the past weeks, I have seen more of my fellow members of the Intelligence and Security Committee than I have of my own family, as we have trawled through immense numbers of documents.
Following that process, I want to make five points. The first is that the Humble Address—there is a debate to be had about the appropriateness of Humble Addresses; we have rehearsed parts of that debate today—was absolutely explicit in its instructions to the ISC. It empowered the ISC in a unique and unprecedented way to examine those documents concerning international relations and national security pertaining to the appointment of Peter Mandelson as the ambassador in America. I do not accept the arguments about the withdrawal of documents and about precedent, because this particular Humble Address empowered the ISC in an unprecedented way.
It did so on 4 February, in expansive terms. There is a case to be made that the Humble Address was too permissive, but that is not for us to debate now, for that was the debate that took place then. For example, it talks about all “electronic communications”, yet we have seen nothing of the videos, recorded messages or other kinds of electronic communications that clearly might be salient to our consideration of whether Peter Mandelson should have been appointed at all, and why he was appointed.
The Humble Address gave the ISC that instruction, and so it is important to make it crystal clear that the ISC is a Committee of Parliament with unique and special legal powers, and those legal powers extend beyond any other Committee of the House and enable the Committee to look at the most sensitive matters of all, such as STRAP documents. I would argue that such documents are as sensitive as, and in many cases more so than, anything that we might have been offered as a result of the Humble Address providing that instruction to us, yet the Government took the decision not to make available to the ISC the vetting file associated with Peter Mandelson. The argument used was that if they did so, it would have a chilling effect on the whole vetting process.
I regard that as specious because it confuses scrutiny with disclosure. The ISC was never going to disclose any of that material—a point made by its former Chairman, my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis). It was a matter for the Government to have faith in the ISC—as the House clearly did—or at least for the Government to reflect the faith of the House in providing all the relevant material to the ISC. But let us leave that to one side.
The Minister might want to come back to this, because my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kenilworth and Southam, who sits on the ISC with me—indeed, he is the deputy Chairman of that Committee—came to the House with an urgent question, explicitly requesting that the Government return to the subject of the Humble Address to see whether they wished to amend it, to legitimise their decision not to provide that information. The Government chose not to do that. In other words, they chose not to ask the House for consent. That is a highly questionable decision and, frankly, I think the Government will come to regret not coming back to obtain that consent.
Let us move on to my second point. I will not say too much about this, but it is now known—it is in the public domain—that the ISC did receive a summary document. Indeed, some of that summary document has found its way into the public realm by means of a national newspaper, the Manchester Guardian, which clearly had access to information. We heard earlier that there may be an inquiry into how that information found its way into the press, but we were told that that information would not be available in the second tranche of information, even in redacted form, because it was required by the police. However, we do not know when the police made that inquiry or when they decided that the information was vital to their investigations, and we have been given no rationale as to why they might have come to that decision so late in the process. Had they made the decision earlier, we would have saved a lot of time, and the expectation that we might have seen more about vetting would not have been fixed in the minds of Members of this House.
It is important that the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister is crystal clear about when that request from the Metropolitan police was made, and it would be helpful if he could give us some indication of why. Clearly he could not compromise the investigation or any subsequent legal action, but giving the House some indication of when and why the police changed their tune, as it were, in respect of the summary of the vetting file would be highly desirable.
Let me move on to my third point, which concerns mitigation. I said that there were five points, and I know you are counting them, Madam Deputy Speaker.
Sir John Hayes
Indeed, you will chastise me if I do not stick to my chronology precisely, Madam Deputy Speaker.
As the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, the right hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry) said, there is some confusion about the character of mitigation. We certainly know that nothing has been provided in respect of mitigation or about the reaction to the flags about Mandelson’s associations with senior figures in foreign states or his personal circumstances, yet Sir Oliver Robbins gave evidence to the Foreign Affairs Committee in April—its Chair has made this clear—in which he said that clearance could be approved if
“risks identified as of highest concern…could be managed and/or mitigated.”
Such mitigations were meant to have been noted in an email from Ian Collard, the Foreign Office head of security, noting the decision to grant Mandelson’s clearance. According to Sir Oliver Robbins, that email recorded
“the ways in which we would manage”
Mandelson’s clearance and “the mitigations”. Sir Oliver Robbins’s claim was supported by the top official in charge of gathering the Humble Address material, Cat Little. She told MPs that she had seen an email that
“sets out the decision to grant DV and some mitigations.”
There was certainly a stated need to manage the risks associated with Peter Mandelson’s appointment and an acknowledgment that that might be done through some process of mitigation, but we have heard no more. It may be that no detailed mitigation plan was drawn up. It is perfectly possible that that might have happened, for the very reason that these risks were so great that they could not have been mitigated. However, even if that were the case, surely there would have been box notes or communications in emails making all that clear between the Foreign Office and the Cabinet Office, between UKSV and the Cabinet Office, and between Ministers and officials, yet we have seen nothing.
Sir Jeremy Wright
Does my right hon. Friend agree that, in addition to the concern he has expressed that there is no evidence of mitigations being put in place, there is a concern that there was not much time to do those mitigations between the point at which UKSV recommendations were received and the decision by the Foreign Office to grant vetting? There really was not much time for mitigations, as well as very little evidence that they were provided.
Sir John Hayes
That is true. Indeed, that might have been reflected in some of the messages that I have suggested to the Department that it might, even at this late stage, make available to our Committee—perhaps that is the most sensible thing given the terms of the Humble Address—and subsequently, in a redacted form, more widely. Even if it were true that because of the pace of the appointment, a full plan could not be drawn up, I find it inconceivable and—I would go as far as to say—unbelievable that there were no communications of any kind associated with the measures referred to by Sir Olly Robbins and Ian Collard.
Emily Thornberry
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way—I hope this is helpful. In the written evidence that Collard gave to us, on point 6 in answer to the question, “When was the report received by the department?” he said that they had
“received an email from UKSV at 1.52pm on 29 January informing PST that the report was ready for the FCDO to review.”
That was the date he heard about the developed vetting. The email, which is the nearest thing we have to anything that has any mitigations, is dated 30 January at 10.12 am.
Sir John Hayes
The right hon. Lady will know furthermore that Ian Collard, through a letter sent on his behalf to the Foreign Office, told MPs that he had sent an email
“recording the fact of the decision (but not any of the underlying discussions or reasons for doing so) and mitigations”.
She is absolutely right, and when she said earlier that she was unknowing of why this had occurred, I think the whole House would share her view. None of us quite know why on earth that material does not exist or, if it does exist, why it is not being made available.
My fourth point—I am coming to my exciting conclusion; I know you will be pleased to hear that, Madam Deputy Speaker—concerns the declaration of interests form. We know from the first tranche of documents that were relayed to the House that a blank template on declaration of interests for Peter Mandelson to complete was made available, but the completed declaration of interests, from which presumably detailed actions could be derived, has never been made known. I understand that this is another document that may have found its way into the hands of the Metropolitan police. If so, when did that occur, when did the Metropolitan police request it and, again, why? Greater clarity from the Government on the declaration of interests would be most welcome.
Finally, thanks to the learning of the Paymaster General, we were able to speak a little earlier of Gladstone and Disraeli. I carry a picture of Benjamin Disraeli with me at all times. Many people carry pictures of their children or grandchildren; I carry a picture of Disraeli—
Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. Regardless of whichever picture Mr Martin would wish to carry, it is always decent for Members to ensure that they are in the Chamber long enough before intervening on someone who is giving a speech.
Sir John Hayes
I will say no more except this: Disraeli said that circumstances are beyond our control, but we all have control of our conduct. Of course it is true that the context in which the appointment of Peter Mandelson was made was beyond the control of the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister who is responding to the debate, but the conduct of the Government, as described by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kenilworth and Southam, is a matter for which he and other members of the Treasury Bench are answerable. The conduct of this affair seems to me to be, at best, highly questionable and, at worst, something much more serious.
I simply say to the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister: there is still a chance to put to rights some of these wrongs in what happens next. Some of the questions posed from across the House, as it found its feet earlier today, can and still should be answered. We will not get the full detail until the Metropolitan police have conducted their own inquiries and I understand that, but there is much that can be done to provide further explanation about the things we have not seen and why.
Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)
I start, as I must, with the victims of Jeffrey Epstein. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones) for raising the testimony of Lisa Phillips and naming one of Epstein’s victims. Those victims have names, they may be listening to the debate and they will find this whole process retraumatising and painful again and again.
Everything that has happened seems to have been because of an ultimate boys’ club situation: a boys’ club that surrounded Epstein, a boys’ club that surrounded Mandelson and a boys’ club that was in No. 10. Even today we have been drawn into its vortex. I do not like the fact that we are still having to be part of it and still saying his name when he did such dreadful things to so many people. I also pay tribute to the women and girls who were abused and exploited by him and his associates. They deserve truth and accountability, and to know that public institutions have learned lessons. Their bravery in speaking out is why this House keeps returning to questions of standards, judgment and transparency.
I ask the House to stand back a bit and look at the Humble Address process. As a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, I have been following the process very closely. I join the right hon. and learned Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Sir Jeremy Wright) in saying that I am not an enthusiast for the Humble Address process. I think that it should be used but I have questions about it.
I have been very critical of the appointment of Peter Mandelson from the moment that appointing him was even thought about—it should never have gone further than that—through the due diligence process, the vetting process and the final decision. My constituents expect Ministers to be held to the highest standards and when those standards fall short, they expect answers.
Some areas about which I have particular concerns have already been raised by Members during the debate. There need to be changes to the appointment system. This process tested that system to the limit. It was an extreme circumstance, with a new Government, a high-profile position, an appointment made very quickly and a rare political appointment to an ambassador role, but a system needs to be tested to the utmost for such a situation. In future, I hope the Foreign Affairs Committee will be given the opportunity to meet candidates who are being considered for political appointment. There may never be any more political appointments after this one, but if there are, they need to be made differently and we need to hear that that will happen.
I have questions about the due diligence process. I have asked officials whether it is a pass or fail process. Due diligence is just a part of the process and it cannot be failed, and I think that should be looked at. If there are enough red flags in the due diligence process, why would we go ahead with vetting? In this case, there were a couple of red flags: Epstein, and Russia and China. To me, those are pretty big red flags, so that part of the process should be looked at.
The Humble Address process is an important tool for the Opposition to gain transparency. It is an appeal to the King over the Heads of Government, once used for ceremonial messages but now more commonly used as a tool to gain information. In February, the Humble Address process was used for the publication of papers relating to Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. When in opposition, the Labour party unsuccessfully requested Humble Addresses on the cost of the Rwanda plan and the asylum system and on the safety of school buildings, for example, and successfully asked for Humble Addresses on Brexit in 2018 and on Lebedev in 2022. It is a useful tool, but seeking answers is not the same as backing any process regardless of cost or consequence, and so far in this debate, there has been no mention of the cost—the financial cost, and the time cost to civil servants.
I would argue that this Humble Address has not been a good process—it has been disproportionate. The Humble Address was drafted so widely that it has become a catch-all, not a focused request for information, which is why many of us are finding the process very frustrating.
Sir Jeremy Wright
I am extremely grateful to the hon. Lady for giving way, and I agree with the case she is making. She is right that wide Humble Addresses are deleterious, both because there is an opportunity cost—while civil servants are looking at that, they are not looking at something else—and a real financial cost. However, does she agree that the right moment to push back on an excessively broad Humble Address is when it is being decided on? The Government have a majority; it is there so that the Government can get their way. Would it not have been better for them to have said on 4 February, “This is too broad. We will only agree to something narrower”?
Fleur Anderson
I will come to that point later in my argument. I hope that my speech today will be something we can learn from, to learn the lessons from this Humble Address and try to make future ones better.
Sir John Hayes
Following on from the point made by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Sir Jeremy Wright), I would add, “or later”. He is right that the Government could have said, “This is too broad,” at the outset, but they were provoked—encouraged—to look at it again several times later. Even later on, it would have been wise to have amended the Humble Address in exactly the way that my right hon. and learned Friend and the hon. Lady have suggested.
Fleur Anderson
This Humble Address has been worked on by Ministers and civil servants very diligently, independently and scrupulously, but that has led to some huge costs, which I am going to outline. Maybe that is a lesson that should be learned for future Humble Addresses. As the Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Bristol North West (Darren Jones), said earlier in the week, £1 million has been spent by the Cabinet Office alone. A further £1 million has been spent by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, and there have been further costs, including the cost of the independent King’s Counsel; the 16 to 20 civil servants entirely dedicated to this role; the time that the Intelligence and Security Committee has spent on this matter; and the many other civil servants from all the Departments involved in this. Those are huge costs.
My constituents in Putney want Government money to be spent on making their lives better, so we should always question whether this inquiry is making their lives better. When we use parliamentary powers, we have a duty to use public money responsibly and proportionately. I want full transparency, but full transparency must be smart, targeted and proportionate. A Humble Address should be a power of last resort, not a blunt instrument. Because this one was drafted on the hoof and without limits, it is taking up huge resource and time, and in doing so risks making future scrutiny harder, not easier. Most Humble Addresses ask for papers relating to a specific decision; this one asked for
“all papers relating to Lord Mandelson’s appointment…including but not confined to”
nine wide-ranging categories spanning from pre-appointment to post-departure, plus all electronic comms and minutes. The breadth of that request is why the Government said:
“Given the breadth of the motion, this process will clearly take some time”—[Official Report, 23 February 2026; Vol. 781, c. 41.]
It will obviously take even more time because of the police investigation. Meanwhile, the cost is now £2 million and rising.
I reiterate the need to be able to use Humble Addresses as an Opposition tool. Maybe one day, Labour will be in opposition, and we will want to be able to use it. I absolutely agree with that, but I think that some guardrails should be put in place. I ask the Procedure Committee, alongside the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, to review how Humble Addresses are used.
Chris Vince (Harlow) (Lab/Co-op)
My hon. Friend is making an important and well-thought-out speech. She has talked about guardrails, and my constituents in Harlow will feel the same as hers about the time this process is taking and the amount of Government resources that are being used. It is really important that we get transparency, but does my hon. Friend agree that one of those guardrails should be to protect minor officials? That is what the redactions—which, of course, there has been some discussion about—are seeking to do. What should happen in this process is that those who are guilty should be punished, but those who are innocent should not be.
Fleur Anderson
My hon. Friend raises another good point. The rules around redactions were mentioned earlier, and we should ensure that they are consistent between inquiries. We can learn many things from this, and we should build in those things for the future.
I will make three points—only three. First, we need scope and limits. Motions should set out the subject, the time period and the type of documents sought much more rigorously than this Humble Address did. Secondly, we need a proportionality check. When we voted on this Humble Address, we were not given financial information. Before the House votes, we should have an estimate from the Government of the likely cost, staff time involved and how long compliance will take. That should be part of our measured judgment. We can weigh that against the public interest and use that information when voting. Thirdly, we should use the right tool for the job. There are Select Committees, as we well know—the Foreign Affairs Committee has been rigorously looking at this issue—as well as written questions, freedom of information requests, police investigations, as there are in this case, and evidence under oath. There are other routes to transparency, too. I am not saying we should have used those things in this case—this is the right one for this matter—but we should be prepared to check with future Humble Addresses whether those other routes should not be used.
Emily Thornberry
I congratulate my hon. Friend on her thoughtful and important contribution. We need to ensure that if we use a Humble Address again, we use it as effectively as we can. We have talked about the amount of money, but will she also highlight the opportunity costs? We heard in the Committee from the Foreign Office and the Cabinet Office about the amount of time that civil servants were spending on this. One particular gentleman had come back from Iran and was an expert on that, but he was spending his time on this issue, rather than being able to give the right sort of assistance to the Foreign Office on what we should be doing on Iran.
Fleur Anderson
I absolutely agree with my right hon. Friend the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee. Foreign affairs money is being spent on this, when it could have been spent on humanitarian aid or ensuring that our systems and processes are supporting those worldwide to make sure that we are all safer. The Intelligence and Security Committee has been looking at this issue a lot, but we face many other intelligence and security issues in the world. Huge amounts of senior civil servant time has been spent on the Humble Address, too, and those people have been reflecting on the process. I am sharing some of the frustrations that they are feeling, because they have had to look through an enormous amount of papers that are well outside the focused questions we are asking, such as, “Why was Peter Mandelson ever employed in the first place?” We should be looking at that with a laser-like intensity, but we have wide-ranging other bits of paper. I accept that we can never know what we do not know until we have looked at it all, but the civil servants—the ones in the middle of the process—have seen that there could be a far better process.
Alex Davies-Jones
My hon. Friend is making an important contribution about the effort, time and amount of documentation involved. She has also spoken about the cost and suggested a number of things that the money could have paid for. Does she agree that one thing could have been an inquiry? That is what the victims and survivors are calling for, and reams of information could have been included in that that would not necessarily have been included in this Humble Address, as they would not necessarily be relevant to the appointment of Mandelson as the ambassador to the US.
Fleur Anderson
I absolutely agree. My hon. Friend talked about the inquiry during her speech, and I thought exactly that: should there not be one so that, with all this money being spent, we can look at the victims and the necessary justice?
In my constituency, I am working the victims of the PIP breast implant scandal. Some 47,000 women are affected, and they have never had any amount of parliamentary money spent on any inquiry. They would look at what we are doing here and want us to look at the proportionality. I always like to raise their case, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I hope you will allow me to do so. We have to have those comparisons in our mind all the time, and as constituency MPs, we do.
Moving on from my three points about the Humble Address, which I hope the Procedure Committee will take up, I will briefly address the idea of publishing the full internal vetting document. I understand why Opposition Members want it published, and I share their frustration about the way in which the appointment was handled, but I must emphasise that I cannot support the publication of the raw vetting documents, because it would do lasting damage to our vetting process.
Sir John Hayes
I do not think that anyone wants to publish that document. The point is that it was a document that could have been made available to the ISC not for publication, not for disclosure, but for scrutiny, because it might have informed our understanding of the whole process.
Fleur Anderson
I thank the right hon. Member for that pushback, but, having spoken to those who carry out the vetting process, I know that understanding that anything you say may be disclosed to a parliamentary Committee is itself a hugely chilling factor. Vetting only works if civil servants can give the frankest, most professional advice without fearing that anything they say will be published or shared with Committees.
Sir Julian Lewis
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for giving way again. She could still develop her case if she talked about parliamentary Committees in general, but I chaired the ISC for four years, and, as I said in an earlier intervention, the ISC has been in existence since 1994. The ISC never leaks. If it did leak, the person who leaked anything would be criminally prosecuted. There is no question, if these vetting documents were shown to the ISC, of its having a chilling effect on anything, because the ISC is hermetically sealed. It does not leak about far more important things than the miserable private life of Peter Mandelson.
Fleur Anderson
I thank the right hon. Member for his comment about the ISC. I will continue to take advice from that vetting process: it needs to be even more hermetically sealed. We need to take real care over this. Any over-sharing will have an effect on everyone who is asked to sit down and give the frankest and most private information, and we need to make sure that they are doing that so that their potential risk to our security as a country is very well known. We cannot allow self-censoring because of this process. We do not need those far-reaching unintended consequences.
Emily Thornberry
Is there not another argument? Certain people are thinking again about applying for jobs for which they may need to undergo developed vetting. Those people may well be women, people from ethnic minorities or people who are gay, for whom any disclosure would be so profoundly embarrassing that they would rather just not get the job.
Fleur Anderson
My right hon. Friend has made the point very well. There are minority groups. There are people who do not know whether what they are worried about in respect of their past will be an issue, and they will not share that. They will not even go for the developed vetting, which means that they cannot rise within the Foreign Office. They may not even go for the job for fear of it.
We cannot allow that to be the unintended consequence of this process today. We cannot hear about it in 10 years’ time. There have been other issues that may have compromised our national security because they have not been shared, or have robbed us of serious talent and opportunity from across the country because people have not joined the ranks of our civil servants because of the things that we are sharing or not sharing within this process. It is not about more transparency; it is about less. It could potentially leave Ministers with less honest advice. It could potentially weaken accountability, and put unfair pressure on civil servants who serve Governments of all colours with impartiality. What the public need is the outcome of the vetting.
Mike Martin (Tunbridge Wells) (LD)
I agree with the hon. Lady, as someone who has been through the vetting process repeatedly in the past. Those who attend a vetting interview are told, “The information that you are going to give me is between you and me”—between the subject of the interview and the vetting officer. Of course the ISC is hermetically sealed, but if the person going through the process knows that the information will be given to anyone other than the vetting officer, it makes that person think, “Should I be giving this information?” and that compromises the entire vetting system.
Fleur Anderson
I thank the hon. Member for that intervention—it is helpful to understand what happens inside the process. It has to be between the person and the vetting officer, and they must not think that it will be shared further. That is absolutely at the heart of it.
Sir Jeremy Wright
I am extremely grateful; the hon. Lady is being very generous with her time. I want to develop the point from a slightly different angle. What we are really interested in are the conclusions of the vetting process, not the material that leads to the conclusions. It is therefore entirely possible that we could give all the reassurances that she and the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Mike Martin) have made clear are important to those who contribute to the vetting process, but also make sure that, in the interests of disclosure on occasions such as this, the House can be clear about the conclusions of the vetting process without being told the raw information on which those conclusions are based.
Fleur Anderson
I thank the right hon. and learned Member. I have honestly enjoyed these interventions and I appreciate the spirit of dialogue in the House today. We are tackling a very difficult issue and we want to get it right.
I agree that the public need the outcome of the vetting: who was consulted, what risks were identified, what decisions were taken, whether a proper process was followed, and what on earth the mitigations were. The Cabinet Secretary or relevant permanent secretary can be called to a Select Committee to answer those questions directly, as the Foreign Affairs Committee has done. That is scrutiny, but publishing the raw documents is counterproductive.
To conclude, I remain appalled by, and very critical of, the Mandelson appointment. My constituents deserve full answers, and I await the documents being released by the Metropolitan police after its investigation, but we need to review this process that has cost so much, financially and in the opportunity cost. We also need to put some guardrails around the use of the Humble Address for any future requests, so that they stay focused on the issues that are meant to be investigated. We must make sure that when we demand accountability, we do it in a way that is effective, responsible and sustainable.
Kirsty Blackman (Aberdeen North) (SNP)
This has been an interesting and wide-ranging debate, but at times it has been painful to listen to, because we are talking about a really terrible decision that was made by the Prime Minister, and about the retraumatising of victims, who have to keep hearing about this issue without seeing justice. If we were talking about a way to get justice, that would be different. The hon. Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones) made an excellent speech, and I agree that she has been a consistent champion of women’s safety, particularly online, but these issues have been constantly raised.
Throughout the debate, hon. Members—not the hon. Member for Pontypridd—have waved or thrown around a significant number of dead cats. In fact, for anyone who has spent a lot of time going through the documents, perhaps it should be red boxes that have been waved around, especially ones with “President of the United States” written on them. An awful lot of time seems to have been dedicated to getting a red box for the President of the United States—that is civil servant time that could have been better spent being more transparent, rather than chasing the specific maker of red boxes and getting them to print things on one.
One of the dead cats, or red boxes, is about the mitigations. It is important that there should have been mitigations, and that point was made when the Prime Minister was first given a document about whether Peter Mandelson should be appointed. Its advice was that mitigations would need to be put in place. The problem is not that mitigations were not put in place—I am not saying that they were put in place, or that we know or do not know which ones were put in place; the problem is that the Prime Minister made the decision in the first place.
The information on the bit of paper that was given to the Prime Minister talked about the “reputational risk” of appointing somebody who was friends with Jeffrey Epstein. It was not a reputational risk; it was just a risk—a risk of retraumatising victims and a risk of giving somebody who had close links to various companies and to Russia a position of power. The Prime Minister knew about those problems, and it was incredibly cute of the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee to try to say that the Prime Minister really was not responsible for this, because he delegated it to other people. The Prime Minister made the decision—the Prime Minister has held up his hands and said that he made the decision—and nobody in the House can say that the fault was that the mitigations were not put in place. The fault is with the Prime Minister for making a political appointment and choosing somebody he knew—he was told it—was friends with Jeffrey Epstein.
Sir Julian Lewis
I entirely agree with what the hon. Lady is saying. Does she agree with me about this? We have established clearly that those blank boxes, in which the Prime Minister could have made a comment when he was given the crucial information and the options leading up to the appointment of Mandelson, were intentionally blank. They are there precisely for the Prime Minister to record his response and, indeed, his decision. The fact that they were not redacted, but were genuinely blank, suggests to me—I cannot think of any other explanation—that the Prime Minister did not want to fill them in because he knew that there was something shameful about the appointment he was about to approve, and he did not want it on the record.
Kirsty Blackman
It is also clear that the Prime Minister had made up his mind, and it almost did not matter what people said. There was an awareness of the article that had been published saying that Peter Mandelson stayed in Jeffrey Epstein’s house while Jeffrey Epstein was in prison—it does not get much worse than that. The Prime Minister had made the decision, as we can see from a whole lot of this documentation.
I appreciate the reasons for how the redactions have been made, and I appreciate that this massive amount of work was pulled together by a significant number of people dealing with things in all different formats. However, there is a significant lack of consistency in this document that makes it really difficult to work out what is going on. For example, there are spaces in the document. If we look at page 199 of part III, Jon Garvie apparently sent a blank message, to which Peter Mandelson replied, “Quite”. I do not know how he could have replied “Quite” to a blank message. The document does not have stars, it does not say that the message has been redacted and it does not explain what the message was. At other points in the document, it does say what the messages were and what the redactions are—a certain picture, or something. As I have said, I appreciate the amount of work that was put in to pull this document together, but we are not getting the full picture. We are not seeing everything because the document has in some places been put together in a not very helpful way.
I turn to the Morgan McSweeney messages. As I have mentioned, Morgan McSweeney has lost his phone and therefore cannot provide WhatsApp messages. However, on page 173 of part III, he has provided group WhatsApp messages. The document specifically says that the
“messages were provided to the Cabinet Office by Morgan McSweeney”.
As the hon. Member for Birmingham Yardley (Jess Phillips) said, it would be really nice if there was an explanation of why the information that is not there is not there. She gave back a nil return: she was asked for her messages with Peter Mandelson, and she replied that there were no messages with Peter Mandelson. On the Morgan McSweeney stuff, for example, it would be helpful if it said against these group chat messages that he could access only these group chat messages through another method, and he could not access his own personal messages, which is why we do not see them, or that he had disappearing messages on, and that is why we cannot see them. We do not know the reason: we do not know if it is because there is nothing, or because there was something, but it has now gone. I think that the level of transparency we are getting is deeply unhelpful.
On the speech by the hon. Member for Putney (Fleur Anderson), I have never had a constituent say that they would like less transparency. I have never had one say that they would like to know less about why the Prime Minister appointed Peter Mandelson; they want to know why the Prime Minister appointed Peter Mandelson. Today is perhaps the wrong day to make a call for there to be less information. I think that our discussions about this decision should be centred on the victims. The fact is that the Prime Minister made these decisions knowing about the victims, and knowing that Peter Mandelson was friends with Epstein and continued to be friends with Epstein.
It did not matter what red flags were shown up by the processes; the political decision had been made. We know that. We know that the appointment was announced in advance of these things taking place. We know that the decision had been made. We know that—for some reason that I am still not totally clear about—the Prime Minister thought Peter Mandelson was the best person for the job and the person who would do the best for national security, the people of these islands and the Labour Government. That was the decision-making process that the Prime Minister must have gone through.
The Liberal Democrat spokesperson, the hon. Member for St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire (Ian Sollom), said that we do not know what was in the driver’s head. We do not have that really key piece of information. We can have the driver apologise and say, “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have done it,” but until they explain why they did it, we are not going to understand it, and the apology sounds hollower than I think the Prime Minister would like it to.
On transparency, we know that, even though there has been a significant amount of work and there is a significant number of documents, we do not have everything. Some things have been held back because of the police investigation or because of national security. I completely understand and accept that that is the case. However, there are other things that we do not have. On 4 February, the day the Humble Address went through, I submitted a number of freedom of information requests to the Cabinet Office. I received an acknowledgment of those FOI requests and, on 9 March, I received an email telling me that there was a delay in responding. I have received nothing since. Despite submitting an FOI request on 4 February, I have received nothing but an acknowledgment and then one update from the Cabinet Office, on 9 March, telling me that it was very sorry about the delay.
It would be very helpful if those on the Government Front Bench could ensure that I get a response to my FOI requests, because it is a legal requirement for Governments and the Cabinet Office to provide responses to such things and to make it clear if there is a delay why there is a delay, or if they are not going to provide a response why they are not going to provide a response. I would be interested to know how many members of the public have submitted FOI requests relating to the decision-making process or messages about Peter Mandelson, and have not received adequate responses from the Cabinet Office. I do not know why the Cabinet Office has not responded to me, but I would be concerned if it was doing exactly the same thing with members of the public, who do not have the ability to stand here and criticise the Cabinet Office.
The last thing I want to talk about is where things are with the Prime Minister and his currency at the moment. The Prime Minister is not standing here defending himself. The Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister is once again having to fill that role—I do not envy him. We have heard a defence of the Prime Minister’s decision from very few Members on either side of the House. I do not think anybody is trying to defend the Prime Minister’s decision. That brings us back to the Prime Minister’s judgment and to the fact that he made this decision. It was not, as some have tried to say, some civil servants or special advisers who made the decision. It was the Prime Minister who made the decision, however much his arm may have been twisted.
Perhaps, as was suggested by the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, it was others who really pushed this appointment and did the decision making. Maybe it was down others, in which case why would you have a Prime Minister who can be so easily led by others that they are willing to appoint somebody who was friends with a convicted paedophile to the most senior role in the ambassadorial service? We must assume that the Prime Minister is not that easily led. We must assume that the Prime Minister cannot have his arm twisted by officials or special advisers, in which case he made the decision. He is not standing here explaining why he made that decision. He is not meeting the victims. The worst thing that has been uncovered today is the fact that the Prime Minister has had requests from those victims and not met them. That is despite the fact that we can see in the mass of documents before us the people who the Prime Minister did meet—people who my constituents would be much less keen on him meeting than the actual victims of Epstein.
The Prime Minister has a significant number of questions to answer. This is not the change that he promised when he stood on his manifesto in 2024. This is not a Parliament that is working for the benefit of people. It is a Parliament that is continuing to hide things, and to duck away from having the difficult conversations and from listening to the people it really needs to listen to the most. The Government need to take a long hard look at themselves, change their priorities, and listen to the requests that are being made by the people who have been harmed the most by this complete shambles.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Ind)
I originally thought that a large number of Members would want to attend this debate, because it goes to the heart of so much about the political system of this country, and the power and influence of very wealthy people around the world. I am sure that this is not the only time we will debate the issue, and I hope there will be a more thorough public inquiry into it later down the line.
We should also thank the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones) for what she said in her speech, the way she put it, and the way she placed centre stage the victims—some of whom are nameless—of the depravity of Jeffrey Epstein and the whole golden circle surrounding him, as well as the fact that one of those victims took her own life as a result.
The victims were young women who were trafficked and exploited by very wealthy men who felt that they could get away with it. Even after Epstein’s initial conviction, those men carried on gravitating towards his golden light, the money and influence he exuded, and the way he made his money, which was all about helping the super-rich in the United States avoid paying tax by relocating their resources to the US Virgin Islands. The millions that Epstein made, and the millions that were not paid in tax by those very rich people, are millions not spent on health, housing, education and all the other things that working-class communities need.
Somewhere along the line, Epstein was apparently almost forgiven for his crimes, and then they came back much later on. We can now begin to see the whole, horrible story unravelling. Surely there is an object lesson here about unaccountable power, unbelievable levels of arrogance, supreme levels of wealth, and the way in which politicians—probably less wealthy than Epstein and some of his mates—were seduced by the super-yacht, the private island, the private jet, the big dinner, and so on. All of that is a corruption of our political system.
Unless we do something about the influence of big business, super-wealth and money in politics, then everything that Bernie Sanders says about the USA having the best democracy that money can buy will soon apply to this country as well. We have got to be much stronger about needing a purer form of democracy and accountability within our society.
This is a debate on Peter Mandelson. I remember, when Mandelson first appeared in this building as the media director of the Labour party, discussing him with Tony Benn in the Tea Room. Tony had met him at the meeting of the national executive, where he was introduced to the Labour party. I saw Tony that evening and asked him, “What was it like?”, and he said, “Well, this guy Mandelson is going to give us all a lot of trouble.” He then wrote in his diaries that evening:
“I find Mandelson a threatening figure for the future of the Party.”
Tony recognised that Mandelson’s whole objective was a political one: to take the Labour party away from its roots—away from its trade union connections and the working-class communities—and to turn it into a party of business. As the hon. Member for Liverpool West Derby (Ian Byrne) and others pointed out earlier, that eventually ended up with Labour Together and the huge amounts of money it spent trying again to subvert the whole principle behind the Labour party.
The results of all that are being paid for day in, day out—in hospitals spending 15% of their expenditure on private finance initiatives, in schools having to pay debts related to Building Schools for the Future and so on. The whole idea was that the state should become an arm of business rather than providing services that are necessary for the people of our society. Mandelson was successful in many ways in turning things away from their original purpose. All the contracts that are now being agreed upon are a consequence of that sort of philosophy and those sorts of political dealings that went on.
In an earlier debate on this subject, I said that there has to be a serious and open public inquiry into the influence of business, money and corruption on our political system. I understand the limitations of the Intelligence and Security Committee and its work, which is why I intervened on the deputy Chair, the right hon. and learned Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Sir Jeremy Wright), earlier on. I am sure—he may well agree with me—that this will not be done and dusted by his Committee and that it will actually go on for a very long time, because it goes to the heart of democracy within our society.
I hope that at the end of this, we do have an open public debate about money and politics, and a serious open inquiry that will get to the heart of everything that is going on, because if we do not, we will all be the weaker for it. As the hon. Member for Pontypridd pointed out, the victims here are known to be those young women who had such a terrible experience and terrible time at the hands of the rich and powerful. If we do not have such an inquiry and debate, there will be other victims of the rich and powerful further down the line.
I know that time is of the essence, so I will just talk briefly about Palantir. On 22 July 2025—less than a year ago—Peter Mandelson sent an email to Morgan McSweeney. The subject was a name: Peter Thiel. Mandelson wrote:
“This celebrated techie is in London til Aug 9. I don’t know whether you have been approached already,”
saying it would be good for the PM to meet him—so the ambassador to Washington starts trying to set up meetings with a tech entrepreneur who happens to be a friend and supporter of Donald Trump. Contained in the second tranche of the so-called Mandelson files laid before Parliament, the email is one of a series in which Mandelson personally connected the UK Government to Palantir, the data analytics and surveillance firm co-founded by Thiel, and to the wider network of investors around it, at a time when his own consultancy firm, Global Counsel, still counted Palantir among its clients. Is that corrupt or what? The ambassador to Washington owned a company whose client he was trying to introduce to the head of the British Government via a series of private emails using connections that he had obviously obtained through the Labour party over a very long time. Mandelson did not divest himself of his significant financial stake in 2024 despite official advice that he should do so before taking up his appointment. That advice stated:
“the retained role and interest in Global Counsel would have to cease”,
if Mandelson were appointed His Majesty’s ambassador. But it did not. Mandelson carried on with that, as we well know.
We also know that the Prime Minister met representatives of the firm with Peter Mandelson in Washington. That was the mysterious meeting that apparently nobody was at, although it did happen; of which there is no record, and yet everybody was there; and during which no discussion went on because nothing was reported, and yet we all know that it took place because they were filmed going into it. That took place only a fortnight after Mandelson had started the job.
Days later, on 5 March 2025, a partner in the silicon valley venture firm 137 Ventures—an investor in both Palantir and the defence company Anduril—emailed an invitation for Mandelson to attend the Hill and Valley Forum, a Washington gathering that brings together defence technology executives and Congress. The sender’s name was redacted, but the file notes that Mandelson was attending “with Louis”, who we understand to be Louis Mosley, the head of Palantir’s UK business. And so, this very tight connection of people goes on.
According to Ethan Shone of openDemocracy, Mandelson’s security “mitigations” forbade such one-to-one meetings with former clients like Palantir—a restriction which, like divestment from Global Counsel, the former ambassador assiduously ignored. He did not fulfil the requirements to divest himself and not to follow up those connections, and, as others in the debate have pointed out, he was very generous and free with his email advice to just about everybody, trying to set things up all the time.
Kirsty Blackman
I am wondering whether the right hon. Gentleman remembers the issues around covid money, when many Conservative Ministers or peers made introductions to companies that they were linked with. Does he remember the Labour party jumping up and down about how people should not be using their power and connections to get preferential access, and does he see anything ironic about the situation with Peter Mandelson?
Jeremy Corbyn
There are many ironies surrounding Peter Mandelson. The most useful thing he ever said was that he hated me, wanted nothing to do with me and woke up every morning trying to get rid of me when I was leader of the Labour party. I take that as a badge of honour, actually, because I wanted absolutely nothing to do with him and the politics that went with him.
Mandelson managed to land a deal for Palantir. That was his achievement, and in his farewell letter to embassy staff, he singled out that one achievement. He wrote that the UK leaves the relationship with the United States
“in a really good condition, with a magnificent state visit and the new US-UK technology partnership—my personal pride and joy that will help write the next chapter of the special relationship—set for next week.”
Obviously the visit went ahead without him.
Palantir confirmed that it would invest £1.5 billion in the UK and expand its Ministry of Defence contract to £750 million over five years, replacing a £75 million, three-year arrangement. The deal was folded into the technology prosperity deal that Trump and the Prime Minister signed at Chequers the next day. In only a short time as ambassador, he embroiled us in all this stuff with Palantir and set up this technology agreement with the USA.
As we all know, because we hear it from our constituents, people who use the NHS are alarmed that Palantir will get hold of their medical records. They are concerned that the company will get hold of the entirety of the NHS and social security records—in other words, crucial personal information on every single person that has lived or died in this country since 1948.
Are we seriously saying that we, as a society and country, are incapable of setting up our own technology arrangement? I do want data sharing within the NHS. I want it to be the case that when someone goes to the doctor, they can access that person’s records quickly and sort out what is wrong with them. I want that technology in place for A&E departments, but I do not want those records to be shared with a company that is busy advising Israel on how it will go about its bombardment of Gaza and trying to get hold of other contracts all around the world
Do we have to mortgage ourselves to an American multinational that will have control of and access to vast amounts of data? Surely to goodness, we have enough ambition and ability to develop our own systems within the NHS. We are all proud of the NHS, but let us not destroy it by handing it over to the private sector. Let us not destroy the whole philosophy behind it by giving it over to those who will make money out of it rather than deal with the obvious health issues that so many people face.
I hope that the lesson from all this is that when the political system becomes corrupted by lack of principle and the amounts of money made available to people—the private donations that are still made by private health interests and others to Members and the parties represented in this House—we are all the losers; democracy is the loser, and ultimately the price is paid by the poorest and most vulnerable people within our society.
Jerome Mayhew (Broadland and Fakenham) (Con)
It is a great pleasure to be the last Back-Bench contributor. I actually mean that, because unlike some debates which we have all been in, this one has been characterised by knowledge and a really serious approach to the subject in hand. I have learned a lot, and I am grateful for many of the contributions made.
The right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) made quite a good point when he said that he was surprised there were not more people in the Chamber to take part in the debate. Perhaps one of the reasons why the Chamber is relatively sparsely populated is that this feels like old news. It is easy to lose the sense of wonder and shock at the seriousness of the allegations that led to the Humble Address.
It is old news that Peter Mandelson was grossly unfit for public office—we have known that for decades. Tony Blair knew it, because he sacked him for dishonesty not once but twice. We have known for years that Peter Mandelson was a byword for double-dealing—after all, his nickname was the Prince of Darkness, and that did not come from nowhere. We have known for years, unfortunately, of his continued friendship with his best pal, Mr Epstein—that they were such close friends, and that Mandelson was so on Epstein’s side that he stayed in Epstein’s house even when Epstein was in prison for child sexual offences. We say that too often without stopping to realise what it actually means. It is an extraordinary statement. We knew that. The Prime Minister appointed Mandelson despite knowing those things and despite having advice on vetting from his then Cabinet Secretary. He ignored that advice. This, of course, is the Prime Minister who famously said that he was going to put “country before party”. On this occasion, he appeared to put party before national security. It is pretty serious.
Some months ago, we had the unedifying spectacle of the Government attempting through obfuscation to cover up this scandal. They whipped their Back Benchers to vote down the release of relevant documents, which was such a grubby move that it fomented such revolt among Labour Members that the Government were forced into a climbdown.
Then there were not one but two stolen phones. I accept that perhaps that happened, but there were also no messages from the Chancellor of the Exchequer, no messages from the Deputy Prime Minister—although we know that no one tells him anything, so perhaps we have not missed anything there—and no messages from the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister, either. We also had the use of disappearing messages, with no record kept by the Prime Minister, in direct contradiction of Cabinet Office guidance for the retention of records. All that was found out drip by drip, one painful and damning piece of evidence after another, as a result of the Conservative-led Humble Address.
Yet we are still not at the end. It is clear from the documents that have been released that there are obvious continuing gaps in disclosure. Messages have been leaked to the press, including The Guardian and The Spectator, which are not included in the release to Parliament, even though they were ordered to be. The Intelligence and Security Committee—an organisation of eminent Members of the House from across the parties—has given its opinion that the Government are interpreting exclusion of material on the grounds of prejudice to national security or international relations “far too broadly”.
I am sorry to say this, but it feels that the Government are still at it, because they are withholding documents. We have talked a lot about the vetting file. If that file is too difficult to disclose, at least its conclusions should be shared with the ISC, as my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Sir Jeremy Wright) suggested. It is important that the Government have no legal authority to take decisions not to disclose. As the Intelligence and Security Committee said,
“while Government may believe that there is good reason to withhold certain documents, it does not currently have the authority to so do.”
It is not for officials to decide what is released to Parliament; Parliament decides. If the instruction—a direction from the high court of Parliament to officials—is thought by officials to be too widely framed, it is the responsibility of Ministers to come to this House and persuade Parliament to change its mind. They have not done so.
One of the things that really worries me about this Administration is that officials appear to think that they can decide what is and is not supplied to Parliament. That undermines the administration of this country by democracy. Parliament is where decisions are taken; we are the people who decide what authority is granted to the Executive. For officials to then decide, perhaps for good reason, that they will not comply with the direction of the high court of Parliament undermines our entire democratic process. They do not have the legal authority to make that decision. It is for the Government to stand up for Parliament, and if they think that Parliament has made too wide a direction, they must come and persuade us of that, and they will no doubt get a vote to correct it.
Richard Foord (Honiton and Sidmouth) (LD)
The hon. Member will recall that the Conservative Humble Address motion required the sharing of all communications
“between ministers and Lord Mandelson, in the six months prior to his appointment”,
and all communications among
“ministers, Government officials and special advisers during his time as Ambassador”.
That was a hugely broad scope. Does the hon. Member think that when the Government amended that and proposed to exclude any of those things subject or prejudicial to national security and international relations, they were serious in wanting all that information to be shared with the ISC? Or does he think that the Government were trying to be too smart and too clever by half, suggesting that His Majesty’s Opposition were acting against national security and international relations?
Jerome Mayhew
I would never accuse the Government of being too clever by half, and I am unable to put myself in their heads. However, I hear the hon. Member’s concern.
We have this drip, drip, drip: the failed cover-up, the partial disclosure, the embarrassing exposures and the continued unauthorised retention. When will the Government realise that this is not going to stop and that this painful, weeping sore will remain open until they finally deliver what the Humble Address requires of them?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
That brings us to the Front-Bench contributions. I call the shadow Secretary of State.
Alex Burghart (Brentwood and Ongar) (Con)
I open my remarks by paying tribute to Sir Alex Younger, the former head of MI6, who we learned had passed away during this debate. He was an incredible public servant who gave an enormous amount to his country. He was incredibly wise and generous, and I know that everyone in this House will miss him very much.
In all these parliamentary encounters, we have been talking about a seeping of a great poison. The evil of Epstein seeped into his relationship with Peter Mandelson, which seeped into Mandelson’s influence on Government, which is still seeping into the way in which the Government have allowed themselves to behave. It is time for that to stop. Although we are approaching the point when we might be able to draw a line, that point is still quite a long way away, because we are dependent on the police releasing their documents.
With that in mind, I ask the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister to try a new approach: for us to build on what has already happened and go further, so that the House can be more reassured about what it is and is not being given sight of. As far as anyone can see, there is no good reason why the Government cannot tell the House more at the high level. As I said earlier, on Monday the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister gave us something more high-level in the four categories, but we can go further.
There is no good reason why the information that has been given to the police cannot be given to the ISC. The Government could unilaterally decide to do that; they do not need to ask anyone’s permission. As has been raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) who used to be Chair of the Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes), who is not in his place, who is a current member of the Committee, and my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Sir Jeremy Wright), who is still on the Committee, this House has complete trust in the ISC. It entrusts it with the most confidential material that the state has on offer—STRAP-level material—so I do not think anyone here would believe that sharing the material given to the police with the ISC would in any way run the risk of prejudicing a trial. Consequently, I genuinely invite the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister to give the House that.
All of us, even those who are not members of the ISC, should be entitled to know a bit more. We should be entitled to know about the number of messages being withheld. We should be given a degree of detail, because there is no reason why that would prejudice an investigation or a trial. I will go through a few points and then I will sit down and let the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister respond.
I want to return to the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister’s own messages, not because I think he has done anything wrong—I do not believe he has—but because he disclosed to us the other day that he had messages that he did not feel were relevant and I wonder if he could tell us about them. They are obviously not in the returns, but because the Humble Address required the disclosure of messages between Ministers and Peter Mandelson, we need to know the process that was gone through with messages that were not in the Humble Address returns. Were they deleted? Were they deleted after they had been shown to officials? Were they shown to officials and it was decided they were not to be disclosed? It would be very good to have clarity, because it might give us insight into how other such messages were treated.
Secondly, on the question of Morgan McSweeney’s messages, which we know still existed in April this year when he talked to the Foreign Affairs Committee about them and said that they were already in the possession of the Government because of the inquiry that Wormald had done in September last year, will the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister confirm that the process discovered those messages and consequently that Morgan McSweeney was telling the truth to that Committee? Do those messages exist? I do not think it prejudices an investigation or trial to know that those messages exist.
Similarly, with Morgan McSweeney’s messages, the Prime Minister’s messages, the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s messages, and so on, we deserve to know how many messages are being withheld. There is nothing in that data that would prejudice an investigation or a trial. That is what we care about—I know that is what the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister cares about—and if the Government were to co-operate in that way, it would show a willingness and a transparency that we have not previously had.
Related to that is the issue that I and several Back Benchers raised about other forms of electronic communication, particularly pictures, videos, voice recordings and attachments, none of which have made their way into the Humble Address returns. It seems very unlikely that all of them have been retained by the police, particularly when the messages they are related to are in the Humble Address returns. It feels like they have slipped through the net. Can the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister tell us a bit more about that?
Lastly, to return to the point made by the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, the right hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry) and by my right hon. Friends, during the course of this debate I believe we have ascertained that the ISC did not see the mitigations. The Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee has not been able to detect any mitigations. I think we deserve to know whether there were any mitigations. Even if we cannot be told what they were, and even if we are told that they are being retained by the police, there is no good reason why we should not be told whether or not they exist. There is nothing in that information that would prejudice an investigation or a trial.
It is time for the Government to take us to the next level of transparency. I very much hope that that is what the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister wants to do, because ultimately, all of this will come out in due course. If it does, and it turns out that the Government were unnecessarily withholding information, the scandal will continue again and again and it will infect more and more people. It does not need to do that. Let’s clear this up now.
The Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister (Darren Jones)
I thank Members from across the House for their contributions this afternoon and for sharing the condolences expressed by the shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, the hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Alex Burghart), on the news that we learned during the debate that Sir Alex Younger, the former director general of MI6, had passed.
As I have said to the House before, while it is right for Members to discuss process and how the Government have responded to the Humble Address, we must not neglect to remember the women and girls who are at the very heart of this matter. Their suffering cannot be forgotten in this pursuit of justice—a pursuit that has been denied to them for too long. On that point, I want to start by paying particular thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones) for her powerful speech this afternoon and to take this opportunity to thank her for the work she carried out so diligently as part of this Government as the Minister for Victims.
The accounts that my hon. Friend has shared with this House this afternoon from victims such as Lisa are harrowing and should remind us of the anger and suffering that they rightly continue to feel each time we have one of these debates. But my hon. Friend’s speech has made me think that just reading the words on this page alone feels insufficient in the context of the cultural challenges that she raised, and with your permission, Madam Deputy Speaker, I would like to take a moment to take this opportunity to ask myself questions about my relationship with Peter Mandelson.
Did I consciously ignore the stories that followed Peter Mandelson, or indeed know about many of them, from many, many years ago? I do not think that I did. Did I ever ignore warnings that were put to me about Peter Mandelson? I did not receive any, to do so. But as I reflected on my hon. Friend’s speech, it made me think: did I at best subconsciously treat Peter Mandelson differently because I believed him to have influence and power within the Labour party? I think the answer to that question is yes, I did. Have I benefited from that relationship in the time I have been an elected politician? I think in part the answer to that question is yes, I did. For that I would like to apologise to the House, to the victims, to Lisa, and commit to then doing something about it.
In the first instance, I hear my hon. Friend’s request for a meeting with the victims of Jeffrey Epstein. I know that there is a request with No. 10 for the Prime Minister to do so, but if she thinks it appropriate, I make myself available for that meeting to discuss the issues that she has raised. I know that she will continue to be a strong advocate from the Back Benches for the action this Government are taking to halve violence against women and girls, as well as to pursue the duty of candour on which I know she worked so hard, and I look forward to continuing my work with her on these important issues.
Sir Julian Lewis
The Minister has shown once again what a decent man he is, and he is doing a very difficult job in defence of somebody who knew a lot more than he did. He was not chief of staff at the time that the Mandelson appointment was being carried out. On page 8 of the first bundle, we have the note from the private secretary to the Prime Minister, which says:
“We have sought a due diligence review…and your Chief of Staff”—
Morgan McSweeney at the time—
“has discussed Peter’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein which we will go through with you, but your Director of Communications is satisfied with his responses to questions about contact.”
However, we also know from earlier in the bundle that the Prime Minister specifically knew that Mandelson had stayed in Epstein’s flat while Epstein was in in jail for the abuse of an under-age girl. The Prime Minister knew all that at the time. What is the purpose of having a box at the end marked for the Prime Minister’s comments on the alternatives he has been given when in fact, as we now know and as has been clearly explained by the Paymaster General, there has been no redaction—the Prime Minister did not comment? Why did the Prime Minister withhold any remarks on this highly contentious matter? Where did he comment? Where did he give his decision? He certainly did not do it in the place that he was supposed to do it.
Darren Jones
In relation to the first part of the right hon. Gentleman’s question, he will know, because I have confirmed it to the House at the Dispatch Box previously, that questions were put by the Prime Minister’s former chief of staff to Peter Mandelson following the due diligence report to seek further information about the stories reported in the newspaper. He will also know that Peter Mandelson replied to those questions, and that information was then considered by those in No. 10.
As I have confirmed to the House, that document—the question and its answers—is one of the documents being held by the Metropolitan police. I have been advised repeatedly that I am not permitted to disclose what I have seen in that document on the Floor of the House, so I am afraid it will have to be one of those questions that remains until such a time as the Metropolitan police publishes its documentation. In relation to the second part of the right hon. Gentleman’s question, I refer him to the Paymaster General’s answer earlier today. That is the answer to that question.
This is my 11th update to the House on this matter, and I am grateful for the opportunity to answer Members’ questions. I will speak to a number of issues first, before turning to some specific questions from Members and setting out what the Government intend to do next.
Since the Humble Address motion was passed on 4 February, the House will know that a huge disclosure exercise has been undertaken by Government officials. The motion called for the disclosure of documents in respect of the appointment and dismissal of Peter Mandelson as His Majesty’s ambassador to Washington, alongside relevant communications. The publication of documents on 11 March, followed by the second tranche on Monday, has done that, in the Government’s view. I hope the Government have provided the House with the reassurance it needs that, with the exception of the small number of documents withheld at the request of the Metropolitan police, which we intend to publish when we are allowed to do so, the Government have discharged their duties to the House in relation to the Humble Address.
Sir John Hayes
In those terms, at what point did the Metropolitan police ask for the vetting summary? Clearly it is now a known fact that there was an assumption that that vetting summary, but not the granular detail, was likely to be published, albeit in a redacted form, having been through the normal process.
Darren Jones
If the right hon. Member will forgive me, I have noted that question from earlier in the debate, and I will come to it in a grouping shortly.
I note the comments and questions today from Members on the process that officials have led to support the Government in responding to the Humble Address. As I have said each time I have been at the Dispatch Box, the Government have taken their obligations to comply with the Humble Address seriously and, in their view, have done so in full.
I hear the calls of some Members for the Government to provide further detail on Peter Mandelson’s vetting. As I told the House on Monday, we have shared the vetting summary and recommendation with the Intelligence and Security Committee. However, the vetting inputs collected as part of those investigations would never be published, because if the Government did so, people would feel unable to answer those questions honestly and frankly in any UK Security Vetting investigation in the future—a point that was made by the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Mike Martin), who has been through that process. That would undermine our national security—not just in this instance, but the very basis of the national security system itself. It would have far-reaching impacts that no responsible Government rightly should entertain.
On that basis, I welcome the comments from the Chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee, Lord Beamish, on Monday night. He said that he
“agrees with the Government that the larger vetting documents shouldn’t be released to the Committee”
because of the potential impact on the vetting system. The former National Security Adviser, Lord Sedwill, wrote in a letter published in The Times today that
“the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) has seen a summary of the issues that vetting inevitably raised. That should be sufficient for Parliament to judge the Prime Minister’s handling of this episode. Any Humble Address requiring disclosure of Lord Mandelson’s detailed submissions or vetting file would be a serious mistake.”
In the other place yesterday, Baroness Manningham-Buller, the former director general of MI5, said:
“I know that security vetting is very detailed—I have been subjected to it many times myself. It goes to your school, education, employers and friends, and people speak frankly. If for one moment they felt it was going to be published, security vetting designed to protect the most secret information would be of little value. Whatever else we do, we must hold on to that. However tempting it would be, for whatever reason, to know the full contents, they must not be revealed. I am talking not about this case but about a general principle.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 2 June 2026; Vol. 856, c. 764.]
I hear the arguments put by right hon. and hon. Members in the House today, but I do say that not just the Government’s position, but the advice from the Chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee, a former National Security Adviser and a former director general of MI5 should be taken seriously.
Kirsty Blackman
I have been here through the debate and not one person has asked for all that information to be published—not one. People have been asking for the summary at the end, the outcome. Did it say “Red—he should not be granted clearance”?
Darren Jones
I have said repeatedly that the summary has been given to the Intelligence and Security Committee. I think the hon. Lady may be confusing the summary and the recommendation from the interview information that was collected between the UKSV official and Peter Mandelson. This is important because, as the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells said, when someone goes into an interview with a UKSV specialist and they say, “You must tell me everything, and it will go no further,” if that were to be handed over to a politician—even a politician on the Intelligence and Security Committee—it would undermine the very basis of that work.
Sir Jeremy Wright
We need to be very clear about this: the arguments the Minister is making are right, but as the hon. Lady points out, they are not a response to the arguments we are making. The argument that has been made to him by the Intelligence and Security Committee, as he knows, is that there is no harm to be found in the disclosure of the conclusions of the vetting process. We accept absolutely that the contributing material that led to those conclusions should not be disclosed. I need him to be very clear that it is our view that the conclusions could be disclosed, and there is no harm to be done to national security, which there would be if the contributing material were disclosed, by the disclosure of the conclusions. Will he confirm that?
Darren Jones
Again, it is important to distinguish between the notes and information collected in the interview process, which some Members have called to be given to the Intelligence and Security Committee, and the interviewer’s recommendation and summary and conclusions, which, as I say, the Government have already given to the Intelligence and Security Committee. The fact that documents that have gone through the ISC have not appeared in the bundles of this week must be in relation to the fact that categories of information given to the Metropolitan police are relevant to this question.
Moving to the documents that Members may have expected to see in the second tranche, as I said on Monday, some messages may not have been captured where people may have previously changed their phones without having backed up their messages or where they had disappearing messages turned on, and I noted to the House on Monday that that included myself. In my circumstance, to answer the questions from the shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, it is not that I took a unilateral decision about messages that I felt were in scope or not in scope of the Humble Address; it is merely that I have access to no messages to disclose.
That is an important distinction because the disclosure process that took place involved the Cabinet Office writing to every Department, to permanent secretary and principal private secretary level for all relevant Ministers, special advisers and officials, to set out the guidance on which the disclosure process should take place—that is, for example, to include WhatsApp and other communication services, emails, personal devices, work devices and other messaging platforms—and a clear set of guidance about what would be in scope and not in scope. Permanent secretaries as the accounting officers to Parliament for each of those Departments were individually made liable for ensuring that that disclosure process took place in line with the guidance. The Cabinet Office did not go to each person in each Department and conduct that itself; it executed it through Departments in line with the process that I have set out.
Alex Burghart
I just want to make sure that I understand—I hope the Minister will forgive me if I do not. In his case, was it his permanent secretary as the accounting officer who verified that the messages he had were not admissible to the process?
Darren Jones
The hon. Gentleman misunderstands: there were no messages to consider and that is different.
Alex Burghart
The reason I brought this up is that on Monday the right hon. Gentleman said:
“I do recall having some limited exchanges with Peter Mandelson over WhatsApp, including those I have already discussed in the media”.—[Official Report, 1 June 2026; Vol. 786, c. 853.]
I do not wish to push this point too far, but I do wish to understand: there were messages, so who decided that they were not to be submitted under the Humble Address? Please can he explain?
Darren Jones
I have tried to explain the answer to that question a number of times. There was no decision to disregard any messages because there are no messages to consider. What I confirmed on Monday was that I have had WhatsApp exchanges with Peter Mandelson, but I have not saved them on my devices to be able to share with my principal private secretary. The only person who could release those messages, if they have them, would be Peter Mandelson, who has refused to disclose his phone to the process—[Interruption.]
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
Order. Mr Burghart, please can you observe the courtesies of the House and ensure that the debate continues in an orderly fashion?
Darren Jones
As an extension of that question, the shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster asked me to comment on how this relates to Morgan McSweeney’s messages. I am afraid that I did not conduct that conversation or investigation, so I cannot answer on the specifics of that question.
I will now turn to some of the specific questions raised by Members during the debate, which I have grouped in a way that I hope is satisfactory to the House. The first group relates to vetting information, information on mitigations, both commercial and related to national security, and the question of attachments. I have already addressed the issue of vetting information. In relation to mitigations, I confirm to the House that I have not personally seen any of the UKSV information nor the summary, recommendations or any mitigation information that was put in place, so I cannot speak to this question from personal experience. However, I note my comment on Monday that the Metropolitan police have permitted us to confirm that the categories of documents that they are holding include vetting information and conflict of interest process material. Unfortunately, that is all I am able to say on the matter.
Emily Thornberry
Does the Minister appreciate that there may be a difference between conflict of interest information and national security mitigations, and that he may be able to tell us about some of that information but not able to tell us whether or not there were mitigations to defend national security?
Darren Jones
I share the expectation of my right hon. Friend that there would be a difference between commercial mitigations—for example, what investments there may be in particular companies—and mitigations that may have arisen from national security considerations. What I do not know is whether that was the case and how they were dealt with in any particular instance, because I do not have that information to hand.
Lastly on this first group of questions, the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) asked me to confirm the relevant detail in relation to the Metropolitan police dates and documents. As I have set out previously, I have been advised that I am not permitted to put that on the public record, but I am happy to go back to the Metropolitan police to see if there is anything further that we can add in due course.
Sir John Hayes
When the Metropolitan police have concluded their investigation, all of that material will return to the ISC, and presumably the Government will then want to publish the information, albeit in an appropriate and redacted form.
Darren Jones
Again, I do not know which documents the Metropolitan police have, so I cannot speak to them specifically, but I share the sentiment of the right hon. Gentleman’s point.
The shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster asked me to confirm that there was a leak inquiry under way in relation to what appears to be information from UKSV being in the hands of Guardian journalists. I can confirm that that leak inquiry is under way but has not yet concluded.
Questions of judgment and due diligence have been put to me. I have already answered the point about the follow-up questions to the due diligence report and can only reiterate to the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, the hon. Member for St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire (Ian Sollom), the words of the Prime Minister when he said that he regrets the appointment and has apologised for it.
The deputy Chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee, the right hon. and learned Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Sir Jeremy Wright), made the helpful suggestion that we should think about codifying the precedent on which the Government rely when making redactions for the future. I commit to taking that away and taking advice, not least on what that might mean in terms of House business and Government business.
My hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Fleur Anderson) made some interesting points about how Humble Addresses may be used in the future, given that the House seems to have decided that it wants to use them more often than has been the case in the past. I was then asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool West Derby (Ian Byrne) to confirm the Government’s continued commitment to the duty of candour legislation, which I can confirm. As he knows, there have been discussions with families and others about refining some of the final points in that legislation. The hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman) asked me about freedom of information requests, and I commit to taking that question away and asking officials to try to respond as promptly as possible.
As the Prime Minister has set out, there are clearly significant lessons to be learned from the issues that arose from Peter Mandelson’s appointment, so while the Government consider that they have now duly discharged their obligations in respect of the Humble Address, they will none the less continue work on a number of important areas. Those include our commitment to bring forward legislation to ensure that peerages can be removed from disgraced peers, noting that Peter Mandelson has already been removed from the list of Privy Counsellors, and changing the process for direct ministerial appointments so that due diligence and national security vetting must take place prior to announcement.
Kirsty Blackman
I was expecting and hoping that the Minister would come on to Morgan McSweeney’s messages, which were asked about by the Opposition spokesman, the hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Alex Burghart), and be clear about whether those messages exist and where they are. If they are with the Metropolitan police, for example, will the Minister commit to going to the police and asking if he can tell us that those messages exist?
Darren Jones
I say politely to the hon. Lady that I have already answered all of those questions.
The Government will continue their review with Sir Adrian Fulford, looking at recommendations for the national security vetting system arising from the lessons of the Peter Mandelson case. We are ordering an examination of any security concerns raised during Peter Mandelson’s tenure as ambassador, which the Government Security Group in the Cabinet Office is now taking forward. We are commissioning an independent review of how non-corporate communications channels, including WhatsApp, are used in Government. In addition, the Cabinet Secretary has written to all heads of department to clarify the rules on record keeping and ensure they are being properly applied across Government. The Government have also noted the Intelligence and Security Committee’s comments on the management of sensitive information; I share those concerns, and have expressed them at the Dispatch Box. The Government are committed to raising information security standards, and will take further action on this issue.
As I have committed to previously, I will return to the House to update it on the progress of this work in due course, but on the basis of my statements today and on Monday this week, the Government now consider that they have duly discharged their obligations in respect of the Humble Address. I thank the Intelligence and Security Committee, the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, the Foreign Affairs Committee, and right hon. and hon. Members for their work on this matter and their contributions to today’s debate.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered the Government’s response to the House’s humble Address of 4 February 2026.
General Strike Centenary Commemorations
(1 week ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Laurence Turner (Birmingham Northfield) (Lab)
It is a great honour to bring this Adjournment debate before the House to mark the centenary of the general strike of 1926. Twelve years after the general strike, the Welsh miners’ poet, Idris Davies, asked,
“Do you remember 1926? That summer of soups and speeches,”
which was a reference to the bitter months endured by the miners and their families after the general strike ended. He also referred to the strike itself, which he called
“The great dream and the swift disaster”.
I am really grateful to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and to Mr Speaker for granting parliamentary time so that we can answer that question in this place and do so in the affirmative, just as it has been answered at events across the country during the past month.
The general strike remains the most extensive confrontation in our national history between organised labour on the one side and employers and Government on the other, and it remains contested history.
Emma Foody (Cramlington and Killingworth) (Lab/Co-op)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on bringing this important debate on the general strike before the House. Does he agree that when we remember the general strike as the national event that it was, we should also reflect on the countless local stories of solidarity, mutual support and sacrifice that defined so many communities, such as those in my constituency, home of the train wreckers? A local group of miners derailed the Flying Scotsman and suffered severe consequences as a result. It is such an important part of our labour movement and our national story that we remember those local actions as well.
Laurence Turner
I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention and for sending me a copy of the documentary on the Cramlington train wreckers ahead of this debate. It was moving to see those men in their later years. It is telling that the general strike tends to be remembered as local history, and there will be much to say throughout this debate about the general strike in Birmingham and elsewhere.
Warinder Juss (Wolverhampton West) (Lab)
Speaking of local history, Wolverhampton, Bilston and District trades unions council has prepared a book on the 1926 general strike. In my hon. Friend’s experience, has he found that workers usually go on strike only as a last resort? Does he agree that the right to protest and to withdraw labour are part of the important civil liberties that we enjoy against abuses of authority and power, and that they should therefore be protected?
Laurence Turner
I agree with my hon. Friend, and it is only right to say that he, through his role on the GMB executive and as one of the delegates to the national policy forum in opposition, was one of the people who helped draw up the reforms to employment rights that have been passed by this Parliament.
The general strike raised profound questions about the proper balance of state power and the rights of dissenters at times of civil contingency, and we should ask them again and with urgency in each generation. It is difficult to capture the essence of the world that created the strike: the depths of poverty in the older mining districts; the extreme social control exercised by employers in the villages put up around the more lucrative and newly exploited seams; and the critical dependence of the nation’s economy upon a coal industry that killed one in 1,000 of its workers each year and seriously wounded one in 10.
When working people rallied across occupational boundaries to defend the miners in 1926, they showed extraordinary solidarity, and their unions channelled national power to a degree perhaps unseen before, even if they were unsteady in exercising it and uncertain of its limits.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I commend the hon. Gentleman on bringing this debate forward. I spoke to him beforehand to ascertain his focus, and I will outline my focus and why I wished to be here. I remember when I went for my first job, which was at Henry Denny & Sons in Belfast. The manager brought me in and said, “Jim, here’s the job, but now you have to join the union.” When I heard that, I said, “Oh, but I don’t think I want to join the union.” He said, “No, you have to.” Here is the reason why that is important. I joined my union, and my union fought my corner when I was with Henry Denny’s. I realised then the impact and importance of being a union member. I was glad to be a member of that union, which helped me on many occasions.
The 1926 strike set the scene in stone for me when I joined Henry Denny’s, but the strike is more than that. Does the hon. Member agree that workers’ rights have evolved at pace and that the determination to ensure that people are paid a fair wage for a fair job is a foundational principle in every area of this great United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland?
Laurence Turner
I thank the hon. Member for his intervention, and I truly welcome the cross-party support he has demonstrated for the principle of trade unionism and for workers’ rights. It is only fair to note that right now, additional enhanced employment rights are being considered in Northern Ireland, as well as in the rest of the United Kingdom.
In interpreting the general strike, it is important to note that union members were, as they remain, fiercely defensive of the independence of their individual organisations, and those factors militated against planning for the national confrontation that fell upon them. Ranged against the unions were a Government determined not to repeat the humiliation of the so-called red Friday a year before and whose preparations had been meticulous over the nine months that followed.
Chris Vince (Harlow) (Lab/Co-op)
I thank my hon. Friend not only for bringing this debate forward, but for the interesting speech he is giving. He will know that my passions include not just Harlow, but my interest in the 1924 Labour Government, and in particular the Prime Minister and leader of the Labour party at the time, James Ramsay MacDonald. My hon. Friend and I have had a conversation about this, and he will know that James Ramsay MacDonald wanted to speak on the BBC to provide an alternative narrative to the Government about the general strike, and he was blocked. Will my hon. Friend reflect on that?
Laurence Turner
My hon. Friend has displayed his customary ingenuity in mentioning Harlow. I believe that, as a new town, it did not exist at the time of the general strike—but I will come on to the points he made.
Ranged against Ramsay MacDonald was, of course, Stanley Baldwin, a Conservative party leader who convinced many of his natural critics of his sincere desire to bring about industrial reconciliation, summed up by his famous declaration in this Chamber a year earlier:
“Give peace in our time, O Lord.” —[Official Report, 6 March 1925; Vol. 181, c. 841.]
That apparently heartfelt plea masked a hidden ruthlessness, and an extraordinarily singular capacity for political calculation.
In 1926 the Government made, not altogether comfortably, common cause with the coal owners who, taken together, could have been the archetypes of Baldwin’s famous description of
“hard-faced men who look as if they had done very well out of the war.”
The British coal owners, unlike their counterparts in America and Europe, mostly represented small concerns that had failed to adapt, amalgamate and modernise, and they would go unmourned when Parliament obviated their role 20 years later.
Opponents of organised labour sometimes claimed that union leaders sought national confrontation, or that they wished to supplant the authority of Parliament with that of the TUC general council, but those wild words had foundation only in the imagination of their accusers. As Jonathan Schneer’s brilliant and evocative new history of the strike shows, they spent the weeks before the strike exhaustively, even desperately, trying to prevent the breakdown of talks and searching for some compromise, some new formula, and a negotiated path through. The way in which they convinced themselves that settlement was possible, as they masked their private doubts of the likelihood of victory and tried to balance what were probably irreconcilable internal and external forces—often in the small hours, and often in rooms not far from this Chamber—as the clock ran down, will feel familiar to many who have had the privilege and responsibility of trade union office.
But such doubts cannot have been at the forefront of the minds of the great majority of the nearly 3 million men and women who answered the stoppage call on 3 May. They did so at great personal risk to their livelihoods and pensions. In that hot spring, many of them wore their war medals as a conscious rebuke to those who charged them with a lack of patriotism, and even with falling under the influence of a foreign power. It is easy to see why so many strikers thought that victory was imminent and assured. In Birmingham—then, as now, inland transport’s great, interlocking heart—it was said that neither bus, tram nor train moved on that first day. “Every man in every union involved is out,” the city’s trades council enthusiastically, if somewhat improbably, reported to the TUC. That claim, incidentally, committed the sin of omission, because many women joined the strike. At the Joseph Lucas factory they were led by Jessie Eden, an imaginative version of whom was immortalised as a character in “Peaky Blinders”.
Some officials actually had to coax members who had not been called out to remain at their work, with mixed success. Most strikers could see neither the depth of their opponents’ preparation nor the lack of their unions’ own. In truth, most union leaders and the members of their executives expected the Government to resume negotiations swiftly, and extend the subsidy until the mining industry could be reorganised along the lines of the Sankey and Samuel commissions. They did not perceive, until it was too late, the Government’s hidden determination to force not settlement but surrender. While the TUC and the newly constituted local committees attempted to resolve profound logistical problems on the fly and to adapt sometimes confused central instructions to local circumstances, the well-resourced and carefully attuned Government machine sprang into action. In Birmingham—the city of a thousand trades, where general unionism and the centralising and organising tendencies that it represented had long struggled to prosper—the response to the strike was uneven from the start.
Gordon McKee (Glasgow South) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is being typically generous in taking interventions, and I congratulate him on securing a debate on such an important topic. Will he join me in recognising the tradition of the Red Clydesiders in Glasgow, who were a huge part of the trade union movement and its history in this country, and in particular Jimmy Maxton, whose nephew ended up becoming one of my predecessors as the Member of Parliament for what was then Glasgow Cathcart?
Laurence Turner
That was an important intervention, and it is absolutely right that we remember the role of the Red Clydesiders and the members of the Independent Labour party, among whom Jimmy Maxton was so prominent not just in responding to the strike but in shaping the course of Labour history.
In Birmingham, production continued throughout the strike at such employers as Fort Dunlop and the BSA, despite a strong response from members of the Amalgamated Engineering and Electrical Union. At Cadbury, more than 1,000 workers walked out. Although the firm’s Liberal owners were relatively sympathetic to the strikers’ cause, differences in turnout within the workforce were apparent from the beginning.
The position at the Austin Motor Company’s works in Longbridge in my constituency was instructive. Herbert Austin had been a Conservative Member of Parliament. He had lost the King’s Norton seat two years before, but the factory remained a bastion of what has been called “cloth-capped Chamberlainism”. The universities provided many middle-class volunteers, who tried their hand at skilled manual work—sometimes with comically inept consequences; sometimes resulting in tragedy—so the factory swelled the ranks of the strike’s opponents. It is likely that more workers did strike than the company claimed, but they were comfortably outnumbered by the 400 men who volunteered as special constables.
The politicisation of policing and the justice system during the strike left broken heads and bitter memories in many areas. For every account of friendly relations, which were real enough—in many districts, the police and strikers took pride in the fact that no violence occurred during the strike; the most famous example is probably the football match between strikers and the constabulary at Plymouth where the strikers won 2-1—there were more cases of police overreach and the denial of freedom of speech.
The chief legal weapon ranged against the strike was the set of regulations expedited under the Emergency Powers Act 1920, which were debated in Parliament only retrospectively. It is necessary to quote regulation 21 to bring home just how loosely some of those powers were worded. It was made an offence for a person to cause, or attempt to cause,
“disaffection among any of His Majesty’s Forces, or among the members of any police force…or among the civilian population”.
Further, it was made an offence to possess “any report or statement”, the publication of which would cause such disaffection. The term “disaffection” was never defined, however, and the police had the power to raid premises on the basis that they might contain such documents.
Although those powers were affirmed by Parliament mid-way through the strike, they were established by an Order in Council—that is, under the royal prerogative—and were in force before Parliament had a meaningful chance to debate or scrutinise them. It is no wonder that the then Home Secretary, William Joynson-Hicks, could reflect that the powers practically “made the Government dictators”.
Many strikers were brought before magistrates simply for making statements of political opinion. As Miliband—Ralph, that is—put it:
“Large number of arrests were made…often on the flimsiest of pretexts, and sentences to short terms of imprisonment were freely handed down by magistrates little disposed to sympathy with those brought before them.”
To give one example, in Cumbria, a lead miner and branch secretary of the National Union of General and Municipal Workers posted handbills that encouraged members to refrain from enlisting as special constables. He was sentenced to three months’ imprisonment with hard labour. The headquarters of the Daily Herald, the only Labour-supporting newspaper of the day, were raided on the basis that seditious literature might be discovered. The Government attempted to prevent the publication of the TUC’s improvised news sheet, the British Worker, by commandeering paper stocks.
The nascent BBC preserved its technical independence, following consultation with Ministers, through the expedient of denying its platform to critical voices, as my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Chris Vince) noted. As John Reith put it in his diary:
“They”—
that is, Ministers—
“want to be able to say that they did not commandeer us, but they know that they can trust us not to be really impartial.”
In Birmingham, after the local strike bulletin contained an erroneous—but, it seems, innocently arrived at—report that the Government had suffered a defeat in this House, the union’s entire emergency committee in the city was arrested, and the printing presses held at the Birmingham Labour party’s offices on Corporation Street were seized. One Labour councillor, Percy Shurmer, was dismissed and blacklisted by the Post Office on account of a speech made during the general strike, although he was later elected to this place as the Member of Parliament for Birmingham Sparkbrook.
I can do no better than quote Dr David Torrance, who somehow manages to combine writing histories of this decade with his role as a subject specialist on the constitution in the House of Commons Library. In his excellent recent book on the politics of the strike, he put it this way:
“If anything, it was the…government rather than the TUC which came close to behaving ‘unconstitutionally’ during the general strike.”
The strike’s end and the final rift between the Miners’ Federation and the rest of the general council has been covered elsewhere, and I cannot do it justice in the time available tonight. It is sufficient to say, I hope, that the trade unions, having lacked a theory for winning the strike, also lacked a plan for ending it. At some firms, the unions were able to secure a return to work on the same terms as prevailed before and without victimisation, but other employers took the opportunity to reduce wages and settle scores. Some strikers never worked in their chosen occupation again. The Economic League, a professional blacklisting organisation, found new reach and strength, often in collusion with public bodies.
An even harder fate awaited the miners, as they struggled on during those hot and hungry summer months, until they too were eventually forced to concede. In the most hostile districts, principally south Wales and Nottinghamshire, their independent associations were all but broken by the so-called non-political miners’ industrial unions—better known as Spencerism—which owed their position to the coercive enforcement of the colliery companies and the quiet backing of a fund instituted by Baldwin. It left a legacy of division that I think is comparable with the aftermath of the 1984-85 strike, which has still not entirely faded. If the House will indulge me, I have in my pocket a token of the Nottinghamshire Miners’ Association. It was a small token that hung around the neck of miners, and it is stamped “1925”. They were never made again, because it was too dangerous for men to identify themselves as members of a free union.
In the months that followed the general strike, the defeated issued pamphlets and the victors issued commemorative truncheons. If the trade unions conducted inadequate soul searching before the strike, they made up for it later, asking themselves many inward questions. By contrast, the Government perhaps asked themselves too few.
At the time of the 80th anniversary, we could still meet women and men who stood in their youth on the picket lines. Now, the strike has all but passed out of the outermost limits of living memory. The collieries are gone, the Austin works are gone, and so is much of the world that they sustained.
It has sometimes been argued that the general strike had little long-term effect on industrial relations or political life, as great as the consequences for some individuals may have been; that the response of the Government was surprisingly restrained; and that the conflict, in its own peculiar way, represented a very British form of moderation. I think this is a misreading. The severity of the blows dealt to many of the strike’s participants disqualifies the last claim, and the strike fundamentally altered politics and industrial relations, too. It drove the unions closer to the Labour party, and it seems to have hastened Labour support in some working-class areas.
For the ageing leaders of the new unionism, the strike marked the end of an era. It might be said that the spirit of 1889, already dampened by the war, was finally extinguished in 1926, giving way to a paternalistic and deferential internal style that dominated union politics and shaped the post-war consensus, until that too broke on the rocks of the prices and incomes policy 50 years later. Let us look at the official response. The Trade Disputes and Trade Unions Act 1927 imposed restrictions on the political levy, and consequently upon political funding, despite the issue being of no relevance to the strike. That was undone in 1946 and reimposed in 2016, but we repealed those provisions again in December. In that sense, we are still contesting the battle lines drawn up 100 years ago.
I think the best way we can remember the general strike’s participants—and I make no apology for placing the emphasis on the nearly 3 million coalminers, transport workers, printers, dockers and more who answered the TUC’s call—is by carrying forward some lessons from their times to our own. It seems to me that the strike raises questions for us that are immediate and vibrant. What should the roles and limits of the police and the courts be in the settlement of industrial disputes? What obligation does the state owe to its dissenters’ liberties in times of civil contingencies? Do our laws provide sufficient protection from the potential abuses by the Executive of prerogative powers? Those questions must be asked and answered another day. Tonight, it is enough to answer the question put at the start of this debate. In Idris Davies’s words:
“Ay, ay, we remember 1926…
And we shall remember 1926 until our blood is dry.”
Siân Berry (Brighton Pavilion) (Green)
Huge thanks go to the hon. Member for Birmingham Northfield (Laurence Turner) for leading this important debate with such an important speech. It is great to speak today. It is right that we honour our local struggles when we talk about the general strike and ensure that we cement them in our own local history.
Last month, in my constituency, I had the great honour of unveiling my very first blue plaque. It was to mark the battle of Lewes Road, which took place on 11 May 1926. The plaque has gone up at the site of the old tram depot in Lewes Road in Brighton, where 4,000 Brightonians stood strong against hundreds of police on foot and 50 mounted special constables to stop the training of strike breakers. The courage shown by thousands of local residents, workers and protesters who stood up to state intimidation, and who faced immediate imprisonment and hard labour as a result, is one of the many stories of Brighton and Hove’s proud and principled history.
I praise and celebrate the work of Brighton and Hove District Trades Union Council and all those involved in campaigning and fundraising to get the plaque up on the wall in time for the centenary, and for hosting such a brilliant event recently to mark the centenary celebrations and to discuss the lessons.
Let us be clear and never forget that the unprecedented working-class mobilisation of the general strike shook the establishment to its core—its reaction shows that. By recognising and honouring our local struggles for workers’ rights alongside this history of national collective action, blue plaques such as the one in Lewes Road can act as a permanent reminder to us all of the power of solidarity, and the importance of the right to strike and protest.
To today’s workers and unions in Brighton Pavilion I have pledged that I will always honour the values and spirit of our city and the battle of Lewes Road, and stand with them when they make the hard choice to strike in their own struggles. As the debate has shown so far, the lessons of the general strike are as relevant today as they were a century ago.
Tim Roca (Macclesfield) (Lab)
I am really grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Northfield (Laurence Turner) for securing this important Adjournment debate. I was very excited a few weeks ago when he told me that he had secured it. He has spoken really eloquently about the importance of the general strike to labour history. I was reminded, when he told me he was applying for the debate, of the quote from AJ Cook, who said:
“Not a penny off the day, not a minute on the day”.
As my hon. Friend powerfully pointed out, the defeat of the miners in that strike led, effectively, to an attempt to crush working people in this country. That is very powerfully illustrated in “The Road to Wigan Pier” by George Orwell, who paints the picture of what the consequences of the failure of the strike were for working people. It reminds us that many of the freedoms and liberties we enjoy today hang on a timeline of solidarity that was won by the trade union movement. I am proud to be a Labour MP, from a party that was born from the trade union movement, as I know are many of my colleagues.
I want to take a moment to honour a woman whose name deserves to stand alongside others who might be mentioned today: Mary Turpin of Macclesfield. When the marchers passed through Macclesfield on their way to London during the general strike, she did not watch from the sidelines—she got stuck in. She organised soup kitchens, set up feeding centres for children and prepared thousands of family parcels for the locked-out miners in Biddulph. This was a woman who at nine years old had worked in one of the Macclesfield silk mills, so she knew in her bones what it meant to go without. It was not an abstract political cause for her; it was a real calling.
Mary went on to become Macclesfield’s first female magistrate, its first female alderwomen and almost its first female mayor. We owe it to her memory, and to the countless ordinary women like her whose quiet, relentless solidarity held communities together, to speak of them in debates such as this one today.
Ian Lavery (Blyth and Ashington) (Lab)
I declare an interest, as I spent most of my life—31 years—in the coal industry before I became a Member of Parliament. I believe I am the only coalminer in the Commons who worked under the North sea. In this place, we had 70 to 80 miners representing the Labour party at one time—it is strange how things change.
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Northfield (Laurence Turner) on securing this debate and the eloquent way he presented a fantastic contribution. It is important that in this place we recognise that it has been 100 years since the famous general strike of 1926. People have different views on what it was about—they really have—but as my hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield (Tim Roca) said, the issue can be summed up in one sentence:
“Not a penny off the day, not a minute on the day”.
That is the crux of the 1926 dispute.
We have to think about and remember the conditions of the miners. The conditions were atrocious and poverty was rife. We then had, after the first world war, the mine owners reducing the wages of the miners by almost 50% because of what was happening globally with coal trading. The owners wanted to maintain their huge profits, and the only way they could do that was by taking it off the miners, who could not actually feed their kids. That was what the strike was about.
People say the strike was about the Labour party—the party I have been a member of for more than 40 years —but history shows that it was really about the Government worrying about the miners; that they were revolutionaries who wanted to change the Government. That might have been partially true, but the real reason for the 1926 dispute was that miners, working seven days a week, had money taken off them—up to 50%—and there was a further attempt to reduce their wages by 13.5%. The rich coal owners used global issues to sustain their profits on the backs of the hard-working miners. It was not for lack of negotiations; plenty of negotiations went on at national level with the TUC and the Government, but they failed.
The Government had prepared well. It was similar in many ways to the dispute of 1984-85, of which I am apparently a veteran, because I was on strike for the whole duration of the dispute, as were my family and friends. When you get classed as a veteran, you really understand how old you are getting. It is not just the grey hair; it is the sore knees and the bad fingers—all of it. What did the Government do in 1926? They prepared. They set up an organisation for the maintenance of supplies, which was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Northfield. They recruited hundreds, if not thousands, of special constables, and ensured that there were months of coal reserves available. The Government were ready to take on the miners.
What the press and the Government said—which was what the TUC and the Labour party were frightened of—was that they were revolutionary miners, but those miners were fighting not even for decent wages, but to maintain what they had and to ensure that the coal owners paid people correctly. What is interesting is that King George V said:
“Try living on their wages before you judge them.”
I am not a monarchist—the House knows that I am not—but it is very interesting that the King was actually supporting the miners at that point in time.
While the great strike itself lasted just over a week, miners stayed out for months. In the north-east, Chopwell miners in Gateshead were famously locked out for 17 months. In rural Northumberland, in the forgotten community of Plashetts—now below the Kielder reservoir —the miners lasted for months and months longer.
I want to refer to a key moment in my area, which my hon. Friend the Member for Cramlington and Killingworth (Emma Foody) has also mentioned. It was in her constituency; I can see it from my bedroom window. I represented the people who derailed the Flying Scotsman because they were part of my union, the Mineworkers’ Federation of Great Britain. I was proud to be the general secretary of the Northumberland area of the National Union of Mineworkers, and I was proud to be the president of that union. These are my people.
We have to remember these people. I will mention their names shortly. On 10 May 1926, the miners at Cramlington accidentally derailed the Flying Scotsman, a coal train that they believed was being powered by blackleg labour. The crash resulted in only one minor injury, some spilt milk churns and a goods van was damaged, but it became national news. Warnings, including the waving of a red handkerchief, were given, but the inexperienced crew were unable to respond. The train was actually able to slow down. The miners themselves decided that they would sabotage this blackleg truck of coal. They took a few rails from the line, and the train skewed off it. There is a great play, by the way, called “The Cramlington Train Wreckers”, produced by a chap called Ed Waugh, who is from the north-east. If anybody gets the opportunity to see the play, they should do so.
The situation was untenable. There were desperate consequences. The Government, looking for answers, launched an investigation that swiftly escalated into what can only be described as a witch hunt. On the night of 5 June 1926, miners were unceremoniously dragged out of their beds and homes and arrested. The Mineworkers’ Federation of Great Britain was very much unaware of this, and the eight mineworkers who were arrested were put on trial without any defence at all, while the Government had professional prosecutors. The witnesses admitted to lying to police at first, calling into question their reliability. In fact, one defendant was partially deaf and could not even hear what was going on in the courtroom.
Despite that, the eight defendants were sentenced to up to eight years in a first offenders prison. They were separated and sent to Maidstone Prison, more than 300 miles away from their homes. There was an instant campaign for their release, which was partially successful. However, innocent men were jailed. Even now, a hundred years later, no apology has been given whatsoever. These people were Labour men. They were hard workers. They were grafters. They did not want anything other than fairness and dignity in their lives—decent wages and terms and conditions. Many of their families still live in south-east Northumberland. I want to ask the Minister tonight to commit to a posthumous pardon for these men who were so badly treated more than 100 years ago. They were William Gordon Stephenson, Robert Harbottle, Joseph Wallace, Oliver Sanderson, William Muckle, James Ellison, Arthur Wilson and Thomas Roberts. They all lived in the Cramlington area and ranged from age 21 to 29.
Remember, colleagues, that they did not demand the world. These were humble individuals who only wanted dignity—
Ian Lavery
All they wanted was dignity, an existence, food and a roof over their heads:
“Not a penny off the pay, not a minute on the day.”
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade (Kate Dearden)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Northfield (Laurence Turner) on securing this debate on commemorations for the centenary of the 1926 general strike—a moment in our nation’s history that is not always recognised as I believe it should be.
I thank Members across the House for their moving contributions about the background, events and impacts of the strike. My hon. Friend’s brilliant contribution painted an evocative picture of those events and the particular experience in Birmingham. He reminds us that what this Labour Government are trying to achieve in protecting and strengthening rights in the workplace is a case of not only unpicking recent anti-worker legislation, but building on the struggles and sacrifices of previous generations who were often fighting against brutal tactics by their employers and the Government. While he is right that many of the questions he posed are for a different debate, I hope that I can start to answer some of them today by outlining the Government’s approach to workers’ rights in the 21st century.
As we have heard, the general strike was called by the TUC on 3 May 1926 in response to 1 million coal miners being locked out of their mines by owners who wanted them to work longer hours for less money. This was against a backdrop of declining wages, the severe dangers of working underground, and difficult economic conditions in the aftermath of the first world war.
In solidarity with the demands of the miners, more than 1.7 million workers took strike action from industries including bus, rail, printing, gas, electricity, building, iron, steel, chemical industries and the docks.
Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)
I just want to add to that list the 19,000 members of the National Society of Pottery Workers, which now forms part of the GMB, who, even when the strike ended, still found their jobs at risk because the supply of coal was not available to power the kilns. The local community came together at the time to form solidarity and support committees to ensure that the workers’ families were fed while alternative sources of coal were being found. I think the Minister would agree that that is a testament to the strength and power of the solidarity of the labour movement when it comes to supporting not just the workers but the families of those workers as well.
Kate Dearden
I thank my hon. Friend for that important intervention. I will come on to exactly that point about the importance of solidarity.
The next nine days became the largest expression of worker solidarity in British history. Some of the strongest support for the strike was found in industrial heartlands, such as the area that my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Northfield represents, where unions had a strong presence. Those areas included south Wales, the midlands and northern constituencies like mine of Halifax, where 10,000 people attended a mass meeting in Savile Park on 9 May 1926 to support the strike. The trains stopped running, and the Halifax Courier, itself impacted by some of its workers joining the action, reported that even the clock at Halifax station stopped ticking during the strike. This was a pattern experienced across the country: public transport stopped, newspapers could not be printed, and many parts of the economy stood at a standstill.
The Government responded with emergency measures to break the strikes, deeply dividing the country. After nine days, the TUC called off the strike action, though the miners continued their struggle for several months, with many returning to work, though on worse conditions than before.
Emma Foody
I wonder if the Minister will indulge me in paying tribute to a particular striking miner who was born in Hirst in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Blyth and Ashington (Ian Lavery). His name was Robert Wallace Pringle. He was one of the striking miners, and he died the following year in a horrendous accident as an assistant lamplighter, after catching on fire as a result of the fuel-soaked rags. He was my great-grandfather, and I wanted to take this opportunity to get his name on the record.
Kate Dearden
I sincerely thank my hon. Friend for bringing that story to the House and commemorating the memory of her family member. What an incredible story to share with the House.
Although the strike did not achieve its immediate aims, it became a defining moment for the British labour movement. For many workers, it was a stand against falling living standards and a system that was stacked against them. The strike brought workers from across different industries together to demand a fairer deal.
The events of 1926 changed the relationship between workers, employers and the Government, helping to shape the labour movement for the next century. It reinforced the importance of trade unions as a collective voice for workers and sparked debates about workers’ rights, industrial relations and the role of the state. Those debates, as we have heard, continue to this day.
Over the decades since 1926, union campaigning and collective action have secured many of the rights that people now rely on at work, from paid holidays to safer workplaces, protections against unfair dismissal, maternity and parental rights, and the national minimum wage. Those gains were not inevitable; they were the result of workers organising together and demanding change.
One hundred years on, it is clear that many workers in this country feel, as they did back in 1926, that the system does not work for them. After 14 years of Tory austerity and attacks on rights in the workplace, I understand why so many people feel angry and left behind. That is why this Labour Government are working to change that. Our plan to make work pay has brought employment rights legislation into the 21st century, ensuring that workers are paid fairly, have secure work and are protected from discrimination and harassment, extending the protections that many of the best British companies already offer their workers.
My hon. Friends will know that we will not build a robust and growing economy by rewarding the minority of businesses that offer insecure work and predatory environments; instead, we must build an economy based on job security for workers, fair pay for hard work and fair competition between businesses. That is the path to greater productivity in the workplace and our wider economy.
The Employment Rights Act 2025 is the first phase of delivering our plan to make work pay, supporting employers, workers and unions to get Britain moving forward. Alongside the new industrial strategy, the Act supports this Labour Government’s mission to increase productivity and create the right conditions for long-term, sustainable, inclusive and secure economic growth.
For too long, employment rights legislation has only protected some of our workforce—not all. The Act changes that, delivering stronger rights, greater fairness and more security for more than 18 million more people, providing a new baseline of protection from sexual harassment, strengthening statutory sick pay, introducing the right to guaranteed hours, tackling fire-and-rehire and reversing previous Governments’ laws that restrict workplace democracy.
As a lifelong trade unionist, I am proud that this Government champion the vital work of unions in protecting and representing workers across the country, ensuring that they are listened to, supported and heard. By tearing down barriers to trade union activity and ensuring that industrial relations are carried out in good faith, the Government are empowering working people to organise collectively, helping to settle disputes and secure a fair deal in their workplace.
As part of that, the Act repeals the majority of the Trade Union Act 2016 and the entirety of the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act 2023, undoing the Tories’ damage to our workers and our economy. By simplifying the statutory trade union recognition process, strengthening trade unions’ rights of access to workplaces and introducing a duty on employers to inform all new employees of their right to join a union, we are enabling unions to recruit and organise.
We are also delivering new rights and protections for trade union representatives, alongside tackling the illegal blacklisting of trade union members through predictive technologies. This is the biggest increase in trade union and collective rights in a generation, but we know that legislative change alone is not enough; we need attitudes to change, too. That is why we are committed to introducing a new framework for industrial relations, setting out the Government’s vision for a new approach: one that is fit for the challenges of the 21st century, based around the principles of collaboration, proportionality and accountability, and which balances the interests of workers, businesses and the wider public.
My hon. Friends posed questions and raised some important points in the debate. I thank my hon. Friends the Members for Cramlington and Killingworth (Emma Foody) and for Blyth and Ashington (Ian Lavery) for raising the issue of the Cramlington derailment of the Flying Scotsman. I know that the memory of the incident still inspires strong feelings in the region, and there will be a range of opinions on how that memory should be marked. I pay tribute to the Cramlington community hub in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Cramlington and Killingworth, which has done some brilliant work in commemorating the incident. My hon. Friend the Member for Blyth and Ashington mentioned pardons, and I direct him to the process to submit a petition to be considered by the Ministry of Justice.
Once again, I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Northfield for bringing this important debate to the House and allowing parliamentary time to commemorate the events of the general strike. Many Members who were unable to make the debate have shared their stories with me, as I am sure they have with other Members in the Chamber. We must never forget these important parts of history, and we must take the time to reflect on how we can work across Government, industry and the union movement to deliver a stronger, fairer future for working people.
Question put and agreed to.