Lord Mandelson: Response to Humble Address Motion

Baroness Finn Excerpts

Tuesday 17th March 2026 Lords Chamber

We must all learn this hard lesson and end a culture that dismisses women’s experiences far too often and too easily. Peter Mandelson should never have been appointed, and the Government will comply with the humble Address. I will update the House further in due course. I commend this Statement to the House”.

[Baroness Finn (Con)]

My Lords, in discussing this matter we must, as always, keep Jeffrey Epstein’s victims and their families at the forefront of our minds. I pay tribute to the brave women and girls who were abused by him who have spoken out and called for justice.

The Prime Minister told the House of Commons on 4 February that Peter Mandelson, when questioned about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, “lied repeatedly”. To date, we are yet to see evidence of those lies, but we do now have proof that the Prime Minister was directly informed that Mandelson had maintained his relationship with Epstein after the latter had been convicted for child sex offences.

Upon receipt of this information, the Prime Minister, a former Director of Public Prosecutions, did not undertake a searching inquiry for the truth but instead left it to two personal friends of Mandelson, Morgan McSweeney and Matthew Doyle—now the noble Lord, Lord Doyle—to engage in a farcical form of due diligence consisting of questions we are yet to see and answers that continue to be withheld. As if that were not concerning enough, it has been reported in the Times that no written record of the appointment of Mandelson exists. I find this extraordinary. As others who, like me, have worked in Downing Street know, there simply has to be an audit trail to transmit the Prime Minister’s decision. The decision, we are asked to believe, was made in an informal meeting with senior advisers.

The House should pause at this stage to recollect that a previous Prime Minister was heavily criticised by the House of Commons Committee of Privileges report of 15 June 2023, when, in making statements to the Commons, he relied on assurances that

“did not emanate from senior permanent civil servants or government lawyers”.

Can the Minister say whether the Prime Minister misled the House of Commons when he gave the assurance that full due diligence was followed? Does she accept that the sole basis on which the Prime Minister gave that statement was the undocumented assurances of two personal friends of Peter Mandelson?

I turn to other matters. Why was Peter Mandelson paid £70,000? The Government’s argument is that not paying him would have resulted in a claim in the employment tribunal, with associated costs to the taxpayer. Can the Minister explain why the Government did not have the courage to stand up to Mandelson to ensure that he would not receive a penny of taxpayers’ money following his dismissal? The Prime Minister has said on the record that Mandelson acted dishonestly to gain the post of ambassador. If that was true, surely Mandelson’s case would not have been successful at the tribunal. Does the Minister understand why the public are so angry about this? He should not have received a penny.

When we last repeated a Statement on the Government’s response to this humble Address, I asked whether the Government would publish a schedule that would show which documents are being withheld and which are being published. I did not get an answer then, but the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister said in the other place

“I would need to take advice from lawyers in the Metropolitan Police before I could say whether these documents are being held for their criminal investigation”.—[Official Report, Commons, 11/3/26; col. 364.].

Yesterday, the Official Opposition reiterated the need for this, given that at least 56 documents are thought to be missing. Has that advice been sought? When will the Government give a formal answer to this important question, which has already been put to Ministers a number of times? For the sake of public confidence in the process that Ministers and officials are following in response to the humble Address, we must be able to see the amount of information that is being withheld and for what reason.

Evidence that we have already seen shows that the Prime Minister knew as a fact that Mandelson maintained his relationship with Epstein after the latter’s conviction. The Prime Minister knew that Mandelson was unfit to be our ambassador but appointed him anyway and allowed two of Mandelson’s personal friends to synthesise an entirely farcical, illusory form of due diligence. At the end of this, the Prime Minister placed into our most prestigious and pivotal diplomatic post a man who is, as a matter of public record, already known to be a serial liar. Surely the truth is that the misplaced trust is not that of the Prime Minister in Peter Mandelson but the trust that the British people placed in the Prime Minister at the last election—a trust that all too many now feel to have been entirely misplaced.