Referral of Prime Minister to Committee of Privileges

Debate between Alec Shelbrooke and David Davis

Tuesday 28th April 2026 Commons Chamber

[David Davis (Goole and Pocklington) (Con)]

Sometimes the wisdom of the House is crystallised in the comments of us ordinary Back Benchers. That was particularly evident today in the brave speech of the hon. Member for South Shields (Emma Lewell) and, indeed, the intervention of the hon. Member for Birmingham Perry Barr (Ayoub Khan) on the Leader of the Opposition. Both Members said, in effect, that what we have lived through in the last several months is a tragedy—not just for the House, not just for the Government, not just for the Labour party, but for the trust in government, and in our democracy among ordinary people.

At the risk of expulsion from my own party, I will admit to having hoped after the election that this Prime Minister would succeed, because it was in the interests of the country that he did so, but in some ways even more importantly, it was in the interests of our democracy. There is already extant throughout the western world a corrosion of belief in democracy; that goes on and on, and this will make it worse.

We are here today for a simple reason. Statements made by the Prime Minister in this Chamber are at odds with those provided by the civil service on the material issue of Peter Mandelson. This matters. It is not a stunt. Honesty between Ministers and Parliament is fundamental to our democracy. Without it, scrutiny fails. Without it, accountability fails. Without it, trust fails. The responsibility for absolute honesty rests most heavily on the Prime Minister, so the standard that should be met by the Prime Minister is even higher than that applying to others. Recklessness with the truth from any Minister is unacceptable; from the Prime Minister, it is indefensible.

All political parties have their inherent flaws—and I am not going to spend a whole day talking about mine—but the origins of this situation lie in a stance often taken by Labour MPs, which is that good intentions somehow justify bad decisions. It is a case of saying, “We mean well, so our mistakes do not matter” or, worse, “We mean well, so we should be forgiven for anything”, whether it is freebies or wrong appointments or whatever.

That mindset, which I am afraid constitutes a sanctimonious arrogance sustained by a habit of believing their own propaganda, is precisely what led to the appointment of a deeply unsuitable individual as our ambassador to Washington: a man twice dismissed after scandal; a man now under formal investigation by the European Union’s anti-fraud office; a man who had an extraordinary relationship with a convicted paedophile; a man driven, above all, by a pursuit of glamour, money and status; a man who turned amorality into an art form—and, in addition to that, a man plainly compromised by over-close relationships with the proxies of both the Russian and the Chinese Governments.

Together, those facts should have made this appointment unthinkable, yet the concerns were brushed aside. The head of the diplomatic service, as we heard this morning in the Foreign Affairs Committee, was not even consulted. Why? Because within the London establishment, a ludicrous self-deception had taken hold—that the peculiarities of the Trump Administration could be countered by the peculiarities of Peter Mandelson.

[Sir Alec Shelbrooke (Wetherby and Easingwold) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that the previous ambassador, Dame Karen Pierce, was widely—indeed almost universally—respected and felt to have a good relationship with the previous Trump Administration, and there was no reason to believe that she would not have a good relationship with the current Trump Administration?

[David Davis]

That is entirely true, and in fact, the current Trump Administration made the same point to the Government before the nomination of Peter Mandelson.

That perverse logic led to the most obviously unwise public appointment in modern times, and the implied message, unfortunately, was clear: “Government appointments rest on networks of patronage; great offices of state are perks to be handed out to friends.” It is systemic. They even tried to secure an ambassadorial appointment for Lord Doyle, a man so unsuitable that he has even had the Whip withdrawn. Mandelson’s unsuitability was evident before vetting began. It would have been surprising had the vetting service not found grounds to reject the appointment. I suspect that No. 10 knew that, and leant on the Foreign Office to ensure that the outcome was secured quickly and without question.

One Member—I cannot remember his name, or see him in the Chamber—tried to suggest earlier that pressure on time was different from pressure on outcome, but when vetting is involved, it is not. My first positive vetting took six months. Now, I know I have unreliable friends, but I have fewer, I think, than Lord Mandelson. It would have taken quite a long time to get to the bottom of all the issues relating to Lord Mandelson. Saying “You’ve got to do it quickly” is the same as saying “You’ve got to do it shoddily.” Let us not lose sight of that.