Venezuela
Kemi Badenoch Excerpts(1 month, 1 week ago)
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Mrs Kemi Badenoch (North West Essex) (Con)
I would like to start by associating myself with the condolences expressed by the Foreign Secretary about the awful tragedy in Crans-Montana. I also thank her for her statement on Venezuela, although I am disappointed that it was not the Prime Minister who delivered the statement, because many of us in this House and beyond want to know how he is going to respond to the situation.
Nicolás Maduro was a tyrant who criminally abused the Venezuelan people and destabilised the region. It is no surprise that there is jubilation in the streets, because Venezuelans remember what their country was like before it was ravaged by years of socialist dictatorship. For years, the Conservative Government refused to recognise the legitimacy of Maduro’s horrific regime of brutality and repression, and we were pleased to see the Labour Government follow suit. However, we are in a fundamentally different world. The truth is that while the likes of China have been strategic and aggressive in strengthening their influence across the world, including in South America, the west has been slow.
Foreign policy should serve our national interest. It should be about keeping Britain safe. We should be clear-eyed. The United States is our closest security partner. We must work with it seriously, not snipe from the sidelines. The Opposition understand why the US has taken this action. As the Foreign Secretary said, UK policy has long been to press for a peaceful transition from authoritarian rule to a democracy. That never happened. Instead, Venezuelans have been living under Maduro’s brutal regime for many years.
The US has made it clear that it is acting in its national interest against drug smuggling and other criminal activity, including potential terrorism. We understand that. However, we have concerns about what precedent this sets, especially when there are comments made about the future of Greenland. It is important that the United Kingdom supports its NATO ally Denmark, which has made it categorically clear that Greenland is not for sale, so I welcome the Foreign Secretary’s remarks in that regard.
What is critical now is the stability of the region and the wider world. It is important that we listen to those who have been risking their lives for freedom and democracy in Venezuela. Opposition leader María Corina Machado, when asked about US action, said that Venezuela had already been invaded: by Iran, by Russia, by drug cartels, and by Hamas and Hezbollah. It is clear that Venezuela had become a gangster state.
I am pleased to hear that the Foreign Secretary has spoken to María Corina Machado, but can she also update the House on whether the Prime Minister has spoken to President Trump? I ask that because the Government talk up their relationship with the US, but we keep finding that we are not in the room when big decisions are made.
We should be under no illusions, because a democratic transition in Venezuela will be far from straightforward, so when the Foreign Secretary speaks of democratic transition, what does that actually mean to the Government in practice? Can she also set out what will now happen to the UK’s Venezuela sanctions regime.
In a world changing as it is, we must be serious and responsible about our security and standing. We know what the strategy of the President of the United States is, because his Government set out their national security strategy last year. The US is acting in its national interests, and we need to do the same. We should be working to protect the rules-based order, and we should be standing up to hostile actors that want to undermine us, but what are our Government doing instead? They are giving away the Chagos islands, and paying £35 billion for the privilege, with no strong legal basis to justify doing so.
Last year, the Defence Committee warned that the UK was not adequately prepared to defend herself from attack. The Government are still stalling on defence spending. The Conservatives want to see defence spending increase to 3% of GDP by the end of this Parliament, given the changing world. Why have the Government not matched that commitment?
It has never been more important for the UK to have a coherent foreign policy strategy. Right now, Labour does not have one. If it does, we would like the Foreign Secretary to tell us what it is, because I did not hear anything that sounded remotely like one in her statement. Let us be honest: old strategies will not work. We are living in an increasingly dangerous world, and the axis of authoritarian states seeking to undermine us respects just one thing: strength. Britain must be ready and willing to defend our own interests, to protect ourselves from those who would undermine us, to protect the unity of the western alliance, and to support democracy and freedom around the world.
Yvette Cooper
I must just say to the Leader of the Opposition that, while I obviously welcome her support on Switzerland, Greenland and Denmark and so on, it felt like the tone of her response was very poorly judged. It was really all over the place. Many times when we were in opposition, we set out our agreement with the Government in the national interest and recognised that there are some cross-party issues. I suspect that had the shadow Foreign Secretary, the right hon. Member for Witham (Priti Patel), responded to our statement, she probably would have done that.
In fact, on the different issues the Leader of the Opposition talked about, she seemed to agree with us. On Venezuela, she said that the Maduro regime has been deeply damaging, corrupt and deeply destructive, and therefore that no one should shed any tears for its going. She also—I think this was implicit when she talked about the rules-based order—recognised the importance of precedents, the importance of international law and the complexity of the world we face. She also said that she thought we should show support for Denmark and Greenland. In fact, I could not see in her response a single detailed thing that she disagreed with, except for the fact that she seemed to want to express opposition for opposition’s sake.
On the overall approach, I think everyone recognises the leadership this Prime Minister has shown on the international stage: chairing the coalition of the willing, and leading the European and international support for Ukraine against Russia; and agreeing three trade deals with India, Europe and the US, after her Government ripped up the trade and co-operation deal and trashed the UK’s reputation across the world. We have the biggest increase in defence investment since the cold war, properly supporting UK security, and we have had the most successful state visit of the US President, leading to major tech investment in the UK. The Prime Minister talks frequently to the US, and we have deep partnerships on security, intelligence and the military. There is now our close working on Gaza and the peace process, on the crisis in Sudan and, of course, fundamentally on Ukraine.
Many times in the past we took a cross-party approach, and I would expect the Leader of the Opposition to do the same on what really matters for the future of this country. This Government will continue to stand up for Britain’s interests, our prosperity and our values.
Budget Resolutions
Kemi Badenoch Excerpts(2 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Mrs Kemi Badenoch (North West Essex) (Con)
May I congratulate the right hon. Lady on delivering her second Budget? I hope she enjoyed it, because it really should be her last. What a total humiliation—[Interruption.]
Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. Can colleagues who are exiting the Chamber do so swiftly and quietly, so that we can focus on the Leader of the Opposition?
Mrs Badenoch
It is a total humiliation. Last year, the Chancellor put up taxes by £40 billion—the biggest tax raid in British history. She promised that she would not be back for more. She swore that it was a one-off. She told everyone that from now on, there would be stability and she would pay for everything with growth. Today, she has broken every single one of those promises. If she had any decency, she would resign. At the last Budget, she said she was proud to be the country’s first-ever female Chancellor; after this Budget, she will go down as the country’s worst-ever Chancellor.
Today—[Interruption.]
Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. The Chief Whip in particular knows that we do not allow clapping in the Chamber.
Mrs Badenoch
Today the Chancellor has announced a new tax raid of £26 billion, and Labour Members were all cheering. Household income is down. Spending policies in this Budget increase borrowing in every year. That smorgasbord of misery we just heard from her can be summed up in one sentence: Labour is hiking taxes to pay for welfare. This is a Budget for “Benefits Street”, paid for by working people.
This Budget increases benefits for 560,000 families by an average of £5,000. The Government are hiking taxes on workers, pensioners and savers to pay for handouts to keep their Back Benchers quiet. These are the same—[Interruption.] They can chunter all they like. These are the same Back Benchers who cheered last year when the Chancellor taxed jobs and left more than 100,000 people without an income. They cheered because they did not understand the consequences of what they were doing, and they still do not.
It has not been an easy time for the Chancellor. No one liked seeing her sitting on the Government Benches as it dawned on her that her own Back Benchers were going to do to her political career what she has done to our economy. She could have chosen today to bring down welfare spending and get more people into work. Instead, she has chosen to put up tax after tax after tax—taxes on workers, taxes on savers, taxes on pensioners, taxes on investors and taxes on homes, holidays, cars and even milkshakes. There are taxes on anyone doing the right thing. She and this Government have lost what little credibility they had left, and no one will ever trust her again.
What is amazing is that the Chancellor has the nerve to come to this House and claim that this is all someone else’s fault. She has a laundry list of excuses. Labour Members blame the Conservatives as if we have been sneaking into the Treasury under the cover of darkness to give pay rises to the unions. The Chancellor inherited an economy with inflation at 2% and record-high employment. She has tanked it in just over a year. She has endless excuses—she blames Brexit and Donald Trump, but she needs to blame herself.
I have some news for the Chancellor—she did not seem to understand what the OBR was saying. Inflation is up, not down, and that inflation was stoked by her tax and spend decisions. The economic and fiscal outlook says that the OBR expects inflation to stay higher for longer. Everybody else has read the OBR analysis, but she still has not. She blames higher than expected borrowing costs. Where does she think they came from? [Hon. Members: “You!”] Those borrowing costs are driven by the Chancellor’s lack of grip. Labour Members are saying those costs came from us, but she is paying more to borrow than Greece. She is paying more to borrow than at any point under the 14 years of Conservative government—perhaps if Labour MPs read a book sometimes, they would know something—which included an energy crisis sparked by a war in Ukraine and a global pandemic. What is the Chancellor’s excuse? She is taking the public for fools, but they are under no illusions about whose fault this is.
The fact is that the bad choices the Chancellor is making today—choices to break promises, choices to put up taxes, choices to spend more of other people’s money—are because of the bad choices she made at the last disastrous Budget. If you want growth, you need to start with knowing what kind of country you want to be and make a plan to get there. You need to create certainty for the people and businesses who will drive growth. There is no growth and no plan, because Labour focused on settling scores and scratching the itches it had while in opposition.
The Chancellor promised stability. She delivered chaos. Just look at the circus around this Budget: first, the leaks—then more leaks to try to undo the damage; calling panicky press conferences and U-turning on her U-turns; rolling the pitch one day only to plough through it the next. She had the cheek to talk about stability, but she has become the first Chancellor in history to release the whole Budget ahead of time. This is extraordinary, and it tells us everything we need to know about her grip on the Treasury. She is making the UK a shambolic laughing stock to international investors, and if she does not resign for breaking her promises, she should sure as hell go for this.
What have we got for all this chaos and disorder? There are 1 million more people claiming universal credit than there were at the time of the last Budget. Government spending? Up. Welfare spending? Up. Universal credit claimants? Up. Unemployment? Up. Debt interest? Up. Inflation? Up. And what about the things that we want to go up? Growth? Down. Investment? Down. Business confidence? Down. The credibility of the Chancellor? [Hon. Members: “Down!”] Not just down, but through the floor.
These figures are shocking. Does the Chancellor really think that anyone will be confused by the sleight of hand in her speech? Her speech today was an exercise in self-delusion. Today she had an opportunity to apologise and show some humility; instead, we have been fed puff pieces in The Times and the FT showing a woman wallowing in self-pity and whining about mansplaining and misogyny. Let me explain to the Chancellor—[Interruption.]
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
Order. Colleagues need most definitely to simmer down: just breathe a little and allow the Leader of the Opposition to be heard.
Mrs Badenoch
All we have had is wallowing in self-pity and whining about misogyny and mansplaining, so let me explain to the Chancellor, woman to woman, that people out there are not complaining because she is female; they are complaining because she is utterly incompetent. Real equality means being held to the same standard as everyone else. It means being judged on results. Take the Chancellor’s bright idea: the Office for Value for Money. It has been closed down because it did not save a penny. In fact, it cost the taxpayer £1.6 million. You could not make this stuff up. I have identified a way to save taxpayers huge amounts of money, by sacking just one person: the woman sitting opposite me.
The ex-chief economist of the Bank of England was not mansplaining when he said that the uncertainty around today’s Budget is
“the single biggest reason growth has flatlined”.
What did the Chancellor think would happen when she went on breakfast telly to do an emergency public service announcement: “I interrupt your Cheerios to bring you this frightening message about income tax”? Then, unbelievably, she changed her mind three days later. No wonder people are in despair. She says she wants people to respect her—[Interruption.]
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
Order. Conservative colleagues are drowning out the Leader of the Opposition’s speech, so just be mindful that nobody at home will be able to hear her.
Mrs Badenoch
The Chancellor says that she wants people to respect her, but respect is earned. She apparently told Labour MPs this week, “I’ll show the media, I’ll show the Tories—I will not let them beat me.” Show us what? Making stuff up at the Dispatch Box, incompetent chaos and the highest tax burden in history? She said to them, “I’ll be there on Wednesday, I’ll be there next year, and I’ll be back the year after that.” God help us! She is spineless, shameless and completely aimless.
Talk to any business and or anyone looking for a job—unemployment is up every single month since Labour has been in office. [Interruption.] Labour MPs do not want to hear it, but it is true. They are shouting and complaining, but they cannot create jobs. It is the worst year for graduate recruitment on record. Are they proud of that? [Interruption.]
Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. If you are on the Front Bench, I can obviously see you, Mr Kyle. There is no need for you to be chuntering this loudly. Everyone else can see and hear you as well.
Mrs Badenoch
Labour MPs do not want to hear the truth, but I am speaking for all those people out there who are sick of this Government. Companies like Merck and Ineos are slashing investment plans. The construction sector has shrunk. How is that house building target going, by the way? I will tell you, Madam Deputy Speaker: the Government are miles behind and will not even come close to what we achieved. Business confidence is at record lows. No wonder that today future growth was revised down for every year of the scorecard. The papers are reporting that one in eight business leaders is planning to leave Britain. Even one of Labour’s biggest ever donors, Lakshmi Mittal, has fled the country.
What we have in front of us is a Budget littered with broken promises. The Chancellor stood on a manifesto that promised better returns for UK savers. Today she is putting up taxes on savings and on salary sacrifice even. She promised to give pensioners the security in retirement that they deserve. Today she slapped higher taxes on people saving for their pension. She promised to make Britain the best place in the world to invest and do business. Today she has raised the dividend tax rates. She and the Prime Minister had already broken their promise to freeze council tax, but today she has decided to go even further, introducing a new property tax clobbering family homes that will only raise small amounts. This is Labour’s Britain: people who work hard and save hard to buy their homes get taxed more, while those who do not work—those who, in some cases, refuse to work—get their accommodation paid for by taxpayers.
To top it all off—because taxing your home, your car, your savings and your pension was not enough—the Chancellor has, by her own admission, broken her manifesto promise on income tax. In the last Budget, she said:
“I am keeping every single promise on tax that I made in our manifesto, so there will be no extension of the freeze in income tax…thresholds”.
She also said that
“extending the threshold freeze would hurt working people. It would take more money out of their payslips.”—[Official Report, 30 October 2024; Vol. 755, c. 821.]
But today she has done exactly that. Why should anyone believe anything she has promised in this Budget?
Where is the money going? There are small changes to rail fares and prescriptions. Those are distractions while the Chancellor steals your wallet. The real story is that Labour has lost control of welfare spending. Not only will working people have their tax thresholds frozen while benefits go up in line with inflation, and not only has Labour abandoned reforms that would have saved the taxpayer £5 billion after pressure from its own Back Benchers, but today Labour has added another £3 billion to the bill by scrapping the two-child benefit cap. We introduced that cap, because it means that people on benefits have to make the same decisions about having children as everyone else. Even Labour voters know that it strikes the right balance between supporting people who are struggling and protecting taxpayers who are struggling themselves.
Just this summer, the Chancellor admitted that lifting the two-child benefit cap was not affordable, but that was before the Prime Minister accidentally fired the starting gun on the race to replace him. Now he and the Chancellor are buying the votes of their own MPs with taxpayers’ money. If she wants to reduce child poverty, she should stop taxing their parents and stop destroying their jobs. She congratulated herself on a new tax on landlords. Let me tell her this: hiking tax on landlords will only push up rents. It will push landlords out of the market, and the people who will suffer are the tenants. Then she talks about taxes on electric vehicles. Those changes will hit rural drivers the hardest, but we know that Labour does not care about rural people.
All this Budget delivers is higher taxes and out-of-control spending. Nobody voted for this. The Chancellor must take responsibility. She chose to impose the jobs tax, driving unemployment higher month after month. She chose to abandon welfare reform, meaning that the benefits bill is spiralling. She chose to spend more and more money she did not have, leaving taxpayers to foot the bill. She is out of money, out of ideas, out of her depth, and she has run out of road.
The country simply cannot afford a Chancellor who cannot keep her own promises. Her position is untenable, and she knows it. [Interruption.] She is talking to the Prime Minister. Is he mansplaining to you, by the way? Is he mansplaining? Would you like some help? The Prime Minister should grow a backbone and sack her, but he will not, because he knows that if she goes down, he goes down with her, so we are stuck with them both, Laurel and Foolhardy.
Does the Chancellor have any sympathy for the people facing Christmas without a salary because of her jobs tax, or for the retailers suffering sleepless nights because of their plummeting Christmas sales? People out there are crying. Last year, we had the horrors of the Halloween Budget. This year, it is the nightmare before Christmas. As for her, she is the unwelcome Christmas guest. Ten minutes through the door and she has eaten all the Quality Street.
Let me tell the Chancellor something she has forgotten. Behind every line in today’s Red Book is a family, a home, and a lifetime of work and sacrifice. People are frightened, and they have every reason to be—the Chancellor has spent the last year terrifying them. Every decision that she and the Prime Minister make puts more pressure on the people who keep this country going. If Labour is the party of working people, why is it that every day under this Government, thousands more people are signing off work and on to benefits? It is the Conservatives who are the party of work. The Labour party should be renamed the Welfare party.
The Government are making a mistake. The British public do not want higher welfare spending; they want people in work, providing for themselves. They want to live in a country where hard work pays—where what you put in reflects what you get out, and we agree with them. There is an alternative, and we Conservatives have set it out. This Budget could have saved £47 billion, including £23 billion from welfare. The Chancellor could have applied our golden economic rule, allocating half those savings to cutting the deficit and using the rest to cut taxes. [Interruption.] Oh, they are all pretending that they are not listening. It is the shame of the mess that they have made—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
Order. Mr Vince! And Mr Thompson, you are so enthusiastic that I was worried a moment ago that you would knock Mr Waugh off his seat. We need to calm down and breathe, and we need to ensure that we can hear the Leader of the Opposition.
Mrs Badenoch
Even the dog is laughing at the Chancellor, Madam Deputy Speaker.
The Chancellor could have abolished stamp duty on homes to get the housing market moving, and she could have abolished business rates on shops to breathe life into our high streets. She could have introduced our cheap power plan, which would save a lot more money than what she announced, and would bring down energy costs for homes and businesses. That is what she should have done.
The Chancellor should be on the side of people who get up and go to work, people who take a risk to start a company, and people working all hours to keep their business afloat. She should be on the side of the farmer trying to hand something over to the next generation, and the investor deciding whether to spend their money in the UK or elsewhere. She should be on the side of the young person looking for their first job, the saver doing the right thing and putting money away for a rainy day, and the pensioner trying to enjoy a decent retirement. This country works when we make the country work for those people. Only the Conservatives are on their side, and our plan for them is simple: bring down energy costs, cut spending, cut tax, back business, and get Britain working again.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
Order. Members who are leaving the Chamber should do so quietly and quickly before we come to our first Back-Bench contribution. Other Members who are trying to catch my eye should resume their seat; I have noticed them bobbing. I call the Chair of the Treasury Committee.
Ambassador to the United States
Kemi Badenoch Excerpts(4 months, 4 weeks ago)
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Mrs Kemi Badenoch (North West Essex) (Con)
Thank you, Mr Speaker, for granting this important emergency debate, and I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Goole and Pocklington (David Davis) on securing it.
My right hon. Friend made a series of excellent points, as did the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, the right hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry). I agree with all those points. It is extraordinary that, on the eve of the President’s state visit, we are talking about the US ambassador who has been sacked in scandal.
There are many unanswered questions, and I will be asking many of them, but today the Prime Minister needs to do three things. The Prime Minister needs to come clean about what he knew and when he knew it—not send his junior Ministers to cover for him. The Prime Minister needs to publish the Mandelson-Epstein files in full. The Prime Minister needs to take responsibility for the appointment of Lord Mandelson as ambassador to Washington. But the Prime Minister is not here, because he is hiding from Parliament and hiding from questions. I know that he is a busy man, but confidence in him and in his Government rests on him being able to account for what happened, and so far no one is taking any responsibility.
We have had our ambassador in the US sacked over his relationship with a man convicted of child sex offences. What is more—this tells us everything we need to know—this was an appointment apparently forced through by the Prime Minister and/or his chief of staff. We have seen a political ally pushed ahead of qualified candidates because the Prime Minister and Morgan McSweeney admired his talent for mixing with the rich and powerful, despite his known links to a man who was publicly known as a convicted paedophile and a convicted sex trafficker.
Given the speeches we have heard and everything that is in the public domain, it is now very clear that Peter Mandelson should never have been appointed. It is now also clear that the Prime Minister knew that there were major concerns when he came to this House just last Wednesday. Instead of taking action, the Prime Minister expressed confidence in him. Why on earth did he do so? Was he poorly advised, or was it just his own poor judgment?
In every single one of his Government’s scandals to date, far from being the decisive man of conscience he promised to be, the Prime Minister has shrivelled from leadership, he has dodged responsibility, and he has hidden behind others, just as he is doing today, and he has come to this House and hidden behind process and lawyerly phrases. The Prime Minister has shown no courage, no judgment, no backbone. If he cannot see it and Government Members cannot see it, I can assure them that the British public can. The Prime Minister has turned out to be everything he claimed to abhor. This is a Government of sleaze and scandal, and Labour MPs know it. I will be interested to see how many of them stand up to defend their Government.
The British public and, especially, the victims of Jeffrey Epstein deserve the Prime Minister, for once, to be straight and honest with us. He must immediately do three things. First, he must apologise to the victims of Jeffrey Epstein for ever having appointed Peter Mandelson as ambassador. How is it that this has still not happened? There has been no apology. Secondly, as I said, he must publish the Mandelson-Epstein files in full—all the information he had at his disposal, both when he made the appointment and when he came to the House last week to express full confidence in Mandelson. Thirdly, he must make sure that someone takes responsibility.
Everyone now agrees that Peter Mandelson should not have been appointed. We have heard so much from my right hon. Friend the Member for Goole and Pocklington about endless scandal and conflicts of interest with China and Russia, so why was he appointed? Was it a failure of vetting? Was it that advisers hid information from the Prime Minister? Or was it that the Prime Minister knew and made the decision anyway? Someone needs to take responsibility.
Sir Julian Lewis
Does my right hon. Friend agree that we have seen a rapid transformation from the Prince of Darkness into a grovelling Lord Yum Yum? One has to ask, why was the British Prime Minister surprised? Had he never heard the tale of the turtle and the scorpion that meet at the side of the river? Should the Prime Minister not have realised that the poor old scorpion simply cannot help what is in its nature?
Mrs Badenoch
I completely agree with my right hon. Friend. The story is that of the frog and the scorpion, and it is one of my favourite childhood stories. Everyone knew what Lord Mandelson had been up to. It is simply not tenable for any Member on the Government Benches to hold the line on this one, burying their heads in the sand and hoping that it goes away, least of all the Prime Minister.
We now know that the Prime Minister was aware of the compromising emails last Wednesday at Prime Minister’s questions, yet he came to the House and said that he had confidence in his ambassador. Many on the Labour Benches cheered, but now they are all looking at their phones, and most of them do not have the courage to look me in the eye. They were cheering last week, and now they are full of shame. [Interruption.] Sorry, are they proud? No, they are not. I will continue.
Why on earth did the Prime Minister do that? At any point did he ask his staff what more information might surface? That morning Lord Mandelson was saying that more information would surface. Did the Prime Minister receive a briefing about that ahead of Prime Minister’s questions? It is inconceivable that he did not. Ministers are now claiming that new information subsequently came to light—new information that they did not have. The story is all mixed and messed up, and they know it. What information appeared that was not in the original vetting? We would like to hear that when the Minister responds.
There are still more questions to answer. When did the Prime Minister’s chief of staff speak with Peter Mandelson last week, and what did they discuss? Do the Government have the courage to tell us that? We are told that Morgan McSweeney spent hours on the phone to the ambassador at the same time that Lord Mandelson was dodging calls from the Foreign Office. What were they talking about?
Those are questions about what happened just last week, but how did all this come to happen last year? The Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee has asked some excellent questions. But I ask the Minister this: what led to Lord Mandelson’s appointment in the first place? How was it that a man with known links to a child sex offender came to be appointed?
Iqbal Mohamed (Dewsbury and Batley) (Ind)
An additional question is whether there was any external influence. Did Tony Blair or any of Mandelson’s friends have anything to do with the appointment?
Mrs Badenoch
The hon. Gentleman asks a very good question, and I hope the Minister can provide an answer, because all of us across the House want to know.
We want to know how Lord Mandelson’s appointment happened in the first place. As I see it, there are only three possibilities. The first is that it was a failure of vetting, but are we really supposed to believe that this is the fault of the security services? I do not think so. Did they not drag up the intimate relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, which was discussed last week? The second possibility—a bit more likely—is that the Prime Minister’s advisers kept information from him. If that happened, it would be incredibly serious.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith
Does my right hon. Friend agree that no matter what happened or did not happen, a Prime Minister—a leader—has to shoulder the responsibility? It is absolutely appalling that they would then blame the staff around them. It is their responsibility, and they answer to the House—no excuse.
Mrs Badenoch
My right hon. Friend makes an excellent point. This is a Prime Minister who hides behind everybody else; whether his advisers, his junior Ministers or his Back Benchers, that is what he does. If he wants to blame advisers, which one was it? Who kept it from him? Why have they not apologised and resigned? No one is taking responsibility.
Thirdly, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Goole and Pocklington alluded to, the most likely but most worrying reason of all is that the Prime Minister had plenty of information to suggest that Lord Mandelson should not be appointed but chose to appoint him anyway. Even at the time, eyebrows were raised about this appointment and there were many critics; I remember it from the time. Now we read in the papers that the Prime Minister overruled security advice not to appoint Lord Mandelson. Is that true? The Minister should tell us.
It is time for the Prime Minister to come clean. He needs to come out of hiding. This issue will not go away. The Government cannot play for time as we will be back here again and again until all these documents are published. We will be back until someone takes responsibility.
This is a political crisis on top of an economic crisis all of the Government’s own making. They are distracted now, but they came into office with no plan for the country, no idea what they stood for and no vision for what they wanted to achieve. Because of that, they have been lurching from disaster to disaster, with winter fuel, tax rises, welfare chaos, scandal, and the Prime Minister’s failing leadership rebooted after just one year. The only plan they came into office with was a promise they made again and again to the British public: that they would restore honesty and integrity to Government. That was their defining mission, that was their grand plan, and it is in tatters.
So far, in one year, we have had an anti-corruption Minister sacked for corruption, a homelessness Minister sacked for evicting tenants, a Housing Secretary sacked for dodging housing tax, a Transport Secretary sacked for fraud and a director of strategy—apparently the speechwriter—lost only yesterday in scandal.
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Chris Ward)
indicated dissent.
Mrs Badenoch
The Minister shakes his head—he should be shaking it in shame. I have not said anything that is not true.
Now, finally, we have a US ambassador sacked for his links with a known child sex offender. The Government claim to care about violence against women and girls, until they actually have to do something about it. Where is the apology to those victims?
I know the Prime Minister does not like difficult questions, but it is his judgment that is being called into question. He owes it to the country to come clean.
Stephen Doughty
I have set out the process clearly, and I note that the Chair of the Select Committee has received that letter, which also sets it out clearly. She may have slightly missed the commitment that I made to her and to members of her Committee at the start of the debate, which was about considering all options to support the Committee in its work on pre-scrutiny processes. She makes an important and sensible point.
Stephen Doughty
I am going to conclude, and I do want to get back to the fundamental question.
The Prime Minister has made it clear that Lord Mandelson should not and would not have been appointed as ambassador in the light of the shocking information that came to light in the past week. The argument that we have heard from Opposition Members today is that the information was clear all along. But if the full depth and extent of this relationship had been so obvious, I hardly think that Lord Mandelson would have been one of the leading candidates to become chancellor of Oxford University—but he was. I highly doubt that he would have been offered a job as a presenter on Times Radio—but he was. He also appeared on BBC “Newsnight”, a programme that has done important work investigating the crimes of—
Stephen Doughty
I was making an important point about the scrutiny of Jeffrey Epstein conducted by BBC’s “Newsnight”; such serious questions might have been asked of Lord Mandelson, but to my recollection none were. [Interruption.] Indeed, I am glad that the Leader of the Opposition wants to intervene, because I have a question for her. She and the shadow Foreign Secretary, the right hon. Member for Witham (Priti Patel), as well as other Opposition Members, have raised questions today, but did they say a word in this House about Lord Mandelson’s appointment before last Wednesday? I do not have any record of that. In fact, the record shows that they did not raise it and they did not ask questions. The reality is that in the light of new information, the Prime Minister has acted decisively.
Mrs Badenoch
We did not need any new information to know that it was an unsuitable appointment. The Minister is making a doughty defence of Lord Mandelson, but the truth is that this debate has been about the Prime Minister’s judgment. When I was a Secretary of State and questions were asked about judgment, I did not send junior Ministers to answer my questions; I faced the House and I explained what had happened. The Prime Minister is not doing so. Will the Minister commit now to answering all the questions that I asked in writing? Will he also take this opportunity to apologise to the victims? He has not done so and the Government have not done so. The debate is nearly over. Will he take this opportunity to apologise to the victims for the appointment of Lord Mandelson?
Stephen Doughty
Perhaps the Leader of the Opposition was not in her seat at the start of the debate, because I made very clear our position on Epstein’s victims and our horror at the revelations, and said that all our thoughts are with them. I did that in sincerity in response to the points that have been made across this House, and I say that again. However, she could not answer my question. She did not raise this issue before last Wednesday. If it was all so obvious, why did not she do that?