Lord Mandelson: Government Response to Humble Address

Debate between Lord Harper and Baroness Smith of Basildon

Tuesday 24th February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

I am grateful to my noble friend for his point about the staff. I tried to do it justice but, as chair of the committee, he did it much better than I could. It is important that there is no question that the committee and the House have full confidence in the staff and the work that they do. Yesterday in the House of Commons, the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister made it clear that there are ongoing discussions. It is important that the resources that the ISC needs are available. I understand that discussions on that are taking place.

[Lord Harper (Con)]

My Lords, the Leader of the House referred to things we did not know. The problem for the Prime Minister is that he confirmed in the House of Commons that he did know that Lord Mandelson had an ongoing relationship with Jeffrey Epstein after he had been convicted for child sex trafficking, and he still appointed him as ambassador to the United States of America. That is a bit of a problem.

Can I pick up on something that the Leader of the House said about decision-making? The humble Address said that all information in the terms of the Address would be published, except where it was prejudicial to national security or international relations. I understood that the process of pulling together all those documents was being overseen by the Cabinet Secretary, who I understand has delegated that to the Permanent Secretary in the Cabinet Office, and that it would be that official who made the decisions about what was prejudicial and what therefore went to the ISC. The Leader of the House has just said that that decision is going to be taken by the Government, by which we normally mean Ministers. Can she clarify whether the decision about which documents are prejudicial and will therefore go to the ISC will be taken by the Permanent Secretary in the Cabinet Office, who has been delegated that task by the Cabinet Secretary, or by Ministers?

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

The noble Lord raises two points, the first of which concerns what the Prime Minister did or did not know. I do not think anybody was aware of the extent of the activities of Jeffrey Epstein and the relationship between him and Peter Mandelson until these documents were released. The other point is the information that the Prime Minister and No. 10 have given to the Metropolitan Police. Questions were asked of Lord Mandelson and the answers that were forthcoming to the Prime Minister were not, as we now understand, the case. The Prime Minister feels that he was lied to by Peter Mandelson then. It is the extent of that relationship that is really important.

On the humble Address, I was talking about government in the widest sense. The Cabinet Secretary has delegated this to the Permanent Secretary at the Cabinet Office, who will be the person sifting the documents to ensure that the documents sent to the ISC are those that the Government have withheld for reasons of international security and international relations and our national security.

Standards in Public Life

Debate between Lord Harper and Baroness Smith of Basildon

Tuesday 10th February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Harper (Con)]

My Lords, on 27 December 2025, the Sunday Times reported that the now noble Lord, Lord Doyle, had campaigned for Sean Morton after he was charged with child sex offences. The Letters Patent were not sealed until 13 January this year, so for 17 days the Prime Minister supported the process of conferring a peerage on someone who had continued an association with a known paedophile. That process of backing the noble Lord, Lord Doyle, continued until today, when the Whip was removed and an investigation has commenced. Does the Leader of the House support the removal of the peerage from the noble Lord, Lord Doyle, just as the Prime Minister has suggested should happen to Lord Mandelson?

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

My Lords, in all these things there needs to be a proper process. There is an issue around due diligence on Members being nominated from all parties; we all have to ensure that we have the right processes in place. The noble Lord, Lord Doyle, was approved by HOLAC on the information that it had available at that time. He now no longer has the Labour Whip and there will be an investigation.

I do not really want to get into speculating, when I do not know enough about the details, on whether an individual should have the Whip or peerage removed, but we have to ensure we have the ability to do that, which we do not at the moment. As we bring forward legislation on that issue, I will consult with noble Lords about the circumstances in which we think it is appropriate that someone should not be a Member of this House and, ideally, not have a peerage either.

G7 and NATO Summits

Debate between Lord Harper and Baroness Smith of Basildon

Tuesday 1st July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

My Lords, I do not know whether the noble Lord was in the House when Kneecap was raised previously, but I strongly condemned their behaviour at that time and continue to do so. On the other issue he raises, it seems to me that the greatest public service that any Government provide is to keep their citizens safe. That includes, as I said before, defence spending and resilience. Citizens who work in the Armed Forces or our defence industry take on a public service to keep people in this country safe, and we should support them in doing that. I know Northern Ireland has an important defence industry. To say that it is less important does not recognise the threats the world faces at this time. I think we would all love an ideal world where there were no threats, no violence and no areas of conflict, and we did not spend money on defence. That is not the real world. We have to protect our citizens. If we fail to do that, we fail in the first duty of any Government.

[Lord Harper (Con)]

My Lords, in his Statement, the Prime Minister linked economic security, national security and what he called social security. He said that welfare reform was urgent and that the system was failing people every single day. Is not what has happened at the other end of the building a demonstration that the Government’s credibility is shot to pieces? They have literally taken out of that legislation almost all the reforms that they proposed, so their credibility is damaged on that important issue. That matters to our defence commitments, because our credibility in promising that increase in expenditure in the rest of the Statement is now damaged because the Government have demonstrated that they cannot find those savings. That demonstrates that those things are connected. The Government’s credibility is damaged, not just on welfare reform but reputationally on these important national security issues as well.

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

The noble Lord will not be surprised that I fundamentally disagree with the point he made. Every time our Government have made a commitment to defence spending, we have kept that commitment. That is an absolute commitment. The noble Lord wants to tie that in with welfare reform. I have not heard anybody say that the situation that this Government inherited on social security and welfare spending is not one that needs to change. There are many measures within that Bill that practically everybody in the other place has supported. An example is the idea that somebody who gets a PIP and is disabled who wants to try to work should not go to the back of the queue and have to go through the system again if working fails. They should be able to try work to see whether it is suitable for them. The system that we have inherited needs change, and that change will continue.

The Bill has passed tonight. People agreed on the issue of reform. They now want to look at the detail. That is the process of legislation. The noble Lord was a Chief Whip in the other place. He knows how the process of legislation works. He lost enough votes himself to recognise how difficult it can be. What can never be accepted is that it is right to write some people off in the system and say that, even though they want to work, we are not going to help them to do so. Those are the measures that we are going to put in place. To link this to the Prime Minister’s comments about economic, national and social security, all these things make up what is good about life, the importance of life and the resilience we all need. Our safety, our resilience and how we treat the nation all link together, and that is how you have a healthy society that supports each other.