Lord Mandelson: Response to Humble Address

Alex Davies-Jones Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd June 2026 Commons Chamber

[Alex Davies-Jones (Pontypridd) (Lab)]

I think what has struck me most about this whole affair is not what has been said, but what has been missing. Over the past week, we have seen endless coverage of private messages, political embarrassment and Westminster intrigue. We have heard discussions about powerful people, powerful networks and powerful reputations. However, amid all this, we have heard far too little about the victims. For all the headlines that have been generated by this story, the people whose lives were devastated by Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse have too often been reduced to a footnote, and that should concern every single one of us. Perhaps the most revealing aspect of the disclosures is not simply who Ministers were meeting, but who they were not. While significant effort appears to have gone into cultivating relationships with influential figures in the tech world, victims were left feeling unheard and overlooked. That is the wrong way around.

I sought to use my position in Government to advocate for victims, but when we are forced to fight tooth and nail simply to have those voices heard, something is not working as it should. That is why I took the difficult but necessary decision to resign. But stepping down does not mean stepping back and that is why I will now voice Lisa’s words:

“My name is Lisa Phillips. I am a survivor of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell’s global paedophile trafficking and abuse network. I respectfully ask that MP Alex Davies-Jones be permitted to speak on my behalf and be my voice in Parliament today, when so many survivors’ voices still go unheard.

I met Prince Andrew on Epstein island on the night I was sexually assaulted by Jeffrey Epstein. Like many of my survivor sisters, I was trafficked and abused over a number of years. I am seeking answers not only about Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, but also about the powerful men who enabled, protected, or benefited from this abuse and trafficking.

This debate is about accountability. Jeffrey Epstein’s powerful network made many victims and survivors feel unable to come forward. When powerful people protect or turn a blind eye to abuse, justice becomes harder to achieve. That must change. Many UK survivors came forward to the Metropolitan police, yet they too were left without the answers and accountability they deserved.

As a survivor, I struggle to understand why Prime Minister Keir Starmer appointed Peter Mandelson when his association with Jeffrey Epstein had long been publicly known. For survivors, this raises serious questions about whether the lessons of the Epstein scandal have truly been learned. I have repeatedly requested the opportunity to meet with the Prime Minister, but those requests have been ignored. Must I now wait for the next Prime Minister to acknowledge me and my survivor sisters?

With respect, Prime Minister, your apology alone means little without meaningful action, so I ask you directly, Prime Minister: do you, and the Government you lead, support a full public inquiry into Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell and those who enabled, protected, participated in, or benefited from their crimes, including those on British soil? The answer is simple: yes or no. Regards, Lisa Phillips.”

The least Lisa, and the many other British brave survivors, deserve is an answer, yet they are being met with silence. Lisa’s testimony reminds us all that this debate cannot be confined to any one individual. It is about a culture: a culture where power protects power, and where influence and connections can matter more than accountability.

The disclosures made available to the House paint a troubling picture: a picture of senior figures discussing how to build relationships with powerful tech billionaires and silicon valley elites; and a picture of a Government seemingly preoccupied with winning over the likes of Elon Musk and maintaining close relationships with figures such as Sam Altman. That raises an important question: what was the priority?

At precisely the same time as those Ministers were discussing how to secure the approval of tech oligarchs, Ministers such as myself and my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Yardley (Jess Phillips), along with campaigners, safeguarding experts and survivors, were all calling for stronger action on online harm. We were calling for action on violent pornography, action on misogynistic content, and action to better protect children online. Yet too often our voices were ignored, sidelined or dismissed. As people who have spent much of our careers campaigning to tackle violence against women and girls, my hon. Friend and I found that deeply frustrating to say the least. The role of Government should not be to seek approval from the world’s most powerful technology companies; it should be to stand up for the people we are sent here to serve.

When people look at these disclosures, they see a Government who appeared more interested in cultivating relationships with tech elites than listening to the warnings about harms being experienced by women, girls and young people every single day. That matters. The public increasingly feel that there is one set of rules for the powerful and another for everyone else. They see the same names, the same networks, the same circle of influence and the same men, and they see powerful institutions closing ranks when difficult questions are asked. That perception damages trust.

What concerns me almost as much as the disclosures themselves, however, is how they came into the public domain in the first place. It was not because the Government chose transparency or Ministers proactively provided answers, but because Parliament forced the issue—because Members in this place demanded scrutiny and this House insisted on accountability. That takes us to a much bigger question: why is transparency so often dragged out of institutions rather than being freely given? Why do victims, campaigners and Parliament so often have to fight for information that should be freely available from the outset?

Perhaps the most striking contradiction of all concerns transparency. While this Government have spoken passionately about the importance of openness, accountability and a duty of candour, the disclosures raise serious questions about whether those principles were being lived as well as preached. The public are entitled to ask how confidence and transparency can be maintained when disappearing messages were being used at the highest level of Government. They are entitled to ask why survivors have appeared to struggle to secure the same level of access and attention that was afforded to some of the most powerful figures in global technology. They are entitled to ask whether the voices that mattered most were truly being heard.

When victims and survivors feel ignored while those with wealth, influence and power are actively courted, something has gone badly wrong. That is not the culture that the public expect from Government, and it is certainly not the culture that victims deserve. That is why this debate—this whole issue—should strengthen our resolve to deliver a genuine duty of candour. Not a slogan, a soundbite, or something invoked only when convenient, but a genuine legal and moral obligation on those exercising power to tell the truth, to preserve information, to be transparent, and to place accountability ahead of any self-protection.

Too often in this country, transparency is not volunteered; it is extracted—painfully. It comes only after leaks and investigations, and after victims’ families, campaigners and parliamentarians fight for information that should have been available from the outset, sometimes for decades. The disclosures before us did not emerge because the Government chose openness; they emerged because Parliament forced scrutiny through Standing Order No. 24. That should concern every Member of this House, because if transparency depends on being forced, then we do not yet have a culture of candour. Until we confront that honestly, we will continue to fail the very people that this House exists to serve—not with words but action; not with promises, but accountability.

--- Later in debate ---

[Fleur Anderson]

I absolutely agree with my right hon. Friend the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee. Foreign affairs money is being spent on this, when it could have been spent on humanitarian aid or ensuring that our systems and processes are supporting those worldwide to make sure that we are all safer. The Intelligence and Security Committee has been looking at this issue a lot, but we face many other intelligence and security issues in the world. Huge amounts of senior civil servant time has been spent on the Humble Address, too, and those people have been reflecting on the process. I am sharing some of the frustrations that they are feeling, because they have had to look through an enormous amount of papers that are well outside the focused questions we are asking, such as, “Why was Peter Mandelson ever employed in the first place?” We should be looking at that with a laser-like intensity, but we have wide-ranging other bits of paper. I accept that we can never know what we do not know until we have looked at it all, but the civil servants—the ones in the middle of the process—have seen that there could be a far better process.

[Alex Davies-Jones]

My hon. Friend is making an important contribution about the effort, time and amount of documentation involved. She has also spoken about the cost and suggested a number of things that the money could have paid for. Does she agree that one thing could have been an inquiry? That is what the victims and survivors are calling for, and reams of information could have been included in that that would not necessarily have been included in this Humble Address, as they would not necessarily be relevant to the appointment of Mandelson as the ambassador to the US.

[Fleur Anderson]

I absolutely agree. My hon. Friend talked about the inquiry during her speech, and I thought exactly that: should there not be one so that, with all this money being spent, we can look at the victims and the necessary justice?

In my constituency, I am working the victims of the PIP breast implant scandal. Some 47,000 women are affected, and they have never had any amount of parliamentary money spent on any inquiry. They would look at what we are doing here and want us to look at the proportionality. I always like to raise their case, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I hope you will allow me to do so. We have to have those comparisons in our mind all the time, and as constituency MPs, we do.

Moving on from my three points about the Humble Address, which I hope the Procedure Committee will take up, I will briefly address the idea of publishing the full internal vetting document. I understand why Opposition Members want it published, and I share their frustration about the way in which the appointment was handled, but I must emphasise that I cannot support the publication of the raw vetting documents, because it would do lasting damage to our vetting process.