Lord Mandelson Humble Address: Government Response Update

Lord Clarke of Nottingham Excerpts

Tuesday 28th April 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)]

I would not want to mislead the House; I am going to write to the noble Lord about the commercial redactions. I had not been told that there would be any commercial redactions, but I will write to him to make sure that I am on the record, and I will place the answer in the Library. With the exception of those materials being withheld by the Met Police, which will be published at a point deemed to be appropriate, I expect the next tranche to be—I cannot say the final tranche, because we know there is a third—the substantive tranche, which will be all the material available to us. That is what I expect in the next tranche.

[Lord Clarke of Nottingham (Con)]

My Lords, one of the difficulties in discussing the vetting of Lord Mandelson seriously is that nobody outside the Government has the first idea what the grounds were for the recommendation that his vetting should be refused. I accept and completely agree with the process the Minister described whereby the answers and the conduct of the vetting are totally confidential and are never revealed in any circumstances. However, I cannot see the threat to national security in answering this question: can the Minister say whether the grounds upon which the recommendation was made were not anything to do with his friendship with Epstein? Can I ask for a yes or no? Were the grounds nothing to do with it and something quite different, or is it the friendship that lay behind it?

[Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)]

My Lords, I wish I could give the noble Lord the answer he seeks, but I cannot, because I have not seen the material we are discussing, for very good reason. On the reasons why it was a borderline case—I believe that is the phrase now—and what mitigations were put in place, I do not know the detail.