Lord Mandelson Humble Address: Government Response

Baroness Finn Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd June 2026 Lords Chamber

This is the 10th update that I have provided to the House on this matter. With the exception of the small number of documents that are withheld at the request of the police, which we intend to publish when the police are content for us to do so, the Government now consider that they have duly discharged the duties set out in the humble Address. I will, however, return to the House for the general debate on Wednesday to provide a further opportunity for colleagues to ask questions. On that basis, I commend this Statement to the House”.

[Baroness Finn (Con)]

My Lords, this scandal began with the Prime Minister’s decision to appoint Peter Mandelson as His Majesty’s ambassador to Washington. Mandelson is a man whose relationship with Jeffrey Epstein was already known to be a profound reputational risk and whose later published record included cash payments and benefits from Epstein, including travel.

At the core of this story is not merely a failure of process; it is a failure of judgment. It is the Prime Minister’s failure, and it shows a callous disregard for the victims of one of the most notorious sex offenders of modern times.

In truth, we have learned little that is surprising from what is actually in these documents. It is no surprise that Lord Mandelson displayed contempt for the Prime Minister, for cabinet government and for officials and advisers alike, despite his public utterances. He described No. 10 as “beleaguered and bereft”, said it needed a “complete revamp” and claimed that senior people in Downing Street did not know what the Prime Minister wanted; indeed, that most of them did not think that the Prime Minister knew what he wanted.

Of equal concern is that, clearly, Ministers spent a lot of time discussing party politics with a supposedly politically impartial official. Can the Minister confirm that that failure to uphold the impartiality of the Civil Service is in contravention of the Ministerial Code?

What is most revealing is not what the documents contain; it is what they do not contain. Nowhere is there candid written submission, whether from officials or political advisers, saying, “Prime Minister, this appointment is unwise. This candidate carries unacceptable reputational risk. This office demands a higher standard”. We have not been shown a written decision from the Prime Minister or the Foreign Secretary authorising the appointment on the merits. Instead, we are given peripheral documents: process, risk, choreography, vetting, and announcement handling. One chain says simply that

“a political appointment has been agreed”.

The Cabinet Secretary later records that earlier advice explained the Prime Minister’s right to

“make such an appointment and the process for doing so but did not give specific advice on candidates”.

So, for all the Prime Minister’s talk of leadership, the record before us suggests that not one person serving him felt able or willing to advise him candidly in writing that this appointment was folly. That is a remarkable indictment of the culture at the centre of government.

It is also deeply ironic. This is a Prime Minister who has staked much of his moral authority on the Hillsborough law and a statutory duty of candour. He has said that such a duty is needed so that the truth is not optional and cover-ups are impossible and that the law would change the balance of power so that the state can never hide from the people it should serve. Those are admirable sentiments. They arise from hard and bitter experience: Hillsborough, infected blood, Covid—all where families were forced to fight the state, not only for justice but for records, evidence and truth.

Perhaps the one person in government who did, in private, take the duty of candour seriously was Pat McFadden, who told Lord Mandelson:

“Every meeting I have is: ‘Who can we tax in order to pay benefits to others?’ They’re asking the wrong questions”.


What a shame that he felt that that duty did not extend to the electorate.

Does the Minister appreciate how surreal it is for a Government to preach candour in public office while, in relation to one of the gravest scandals in British diplomatic history, they appear assiduously to have avoided creating clear records of advice and decision? Candour is not merely what Ministers say at a Dispatch Box after the event. Candour is what advisers write down when the powerful are about to make a grave mistake.

There is a further problem. The Government acknowledge that material has been withheld so as not to prejudice an ongoing Metropolitan Police investigation, and say that further publication may follow. But where is the schedule? How many relevant documents have been withheld? What categories do they fall into? Who authored them? What dates do they cover? What broad subjects do they concern? I ask the noble Baroness to undertake that the Government will provide the House with a clear account of what has been withheld and why.

Finally, responsibility cannot be outsourced to officials, advisers or process. The responsibility lies with the Prime Minister. If further confirmation were needed of Lord Mandelson’s total unsuitability, it is found in the extraordinary discovery that after his appointment had been publicly announced, he still planned to participate in UBS’s Greater China Conference in Shanghai in his Global Counsel capacity, and that he would be paid for it. Officials further recorded that he asked to start on the FCDO payroll in order to facilitate that private engagement. This was a man with no proper regard for propriety, ethics or the dignity of public office, and he has been driven from office and from public life. The remaining question is how long the Prime Minister who appointed him can credibly remain.

[Lord Pack (LD)]

My Lords, when discussing such matters we should always start with remembering and honouring the bravery of the women and girls who came forward to tell the truth, revealing the grim reality of the behaviour they and others had been subject to. Their commitment to truth stands in stark contrast, sadly, with Peter Mandelson’s decision to withhold key information from the papers we are discussing today.

However, turning to what we do have, and starting on a positive note, the Government’s new guidance on direct ministerial appointments published alongside the humble Address now says—and it is very welcome:

“Where security vetting procedures are necessary, these should be undertaken and completed before an appointment is confirmed and announced”.


I have raised before the rather bizarre, back-to-front nature of appointing somebody first and only then checking whether they are suitable, so that is a very welcome change and should be acknowledged as such.

On a possibly less positive note, I see that the terms of reference for the vetting review have also been published alongside this tranche of documents. I have previously expressed concerns about how the results of Peter Mandelson’s vetting were reported to others through a daisy chain of verbal briefings, such that in the end the Prime Minister was hearing the outcome of the vetting process third hand, without sight of the relevant outcome documents. Whatever we think about the judgments made in that process, that is clearly a very brittle process, prone to error and lack of accountability. Can the Minister therefore confirm that the vetting review will include not just how vetting is done, which is clearly within scope, but how its results are reported to others, including looking at the merits of replacing that culture of verbal briefings with a clear, documented paper trail?

Moving on to what is definitely not, I am afraid, a positive note, the messages that we now can see from inside government show a clear and widespread embedding of the culture of government by WhatsApp. I have previously asked about the promised review of the Cabinet Office’s guidance on the use of WhatsApp, which still, at the bottom of the page on GOV.UK, states:

“This guidance will be reviewed on or before 31 December 2025”.


Last month, when I queried when the review will be completed, the Minister told me:

“I expect it to be before your Lordships’ House imminently for us to discuss the detail”.—[Official Report, 19/5/26; cols. 280-81.]


However, yesterday, in the House of Commons, the Minister, Darren Jones, told the House simply that the terms of reference for the review will be published “very shortly”. So we have gone from a promised review before 31 December 2025, to an expectation last month that details were imminent, to a hope yesterday that the terms of the review will be published very shortly. It seems that each time, as time passes, we are getting further away from the completion of the review. What assurances can the Minister give us about the Government’s commitment to sorting this issue out and ensuring that this review is fully completed —and promptly?

Turning to the papers themselves, I have four questions. Running through much of the correspondence is the idea from officials that membership of the House of Lords exempts you from vetting requirements in many circumstances. It is a repeatedly expressed belief. Given the limited nature of the checks made on those of us who have the privilege of joining this House, and given that those checks have in many cases been carried out several decades previously, can the Minister confirm the Government’s position? On what occasions, and for which posts, would someone who otherwise has to be vetted be exempted from vetting by virtue of being a Member of this House?

Secondly, there is the email from a civil servant to Peter Mandelson on 21 January last year—volume 1, page 77—regarding the vetting team’s request for the names of his foreign contacts. The email said:

“I suggest you send over the handful of names you mentioned, even though you don’t consider them ‘close contacts’. That will reassure the vetting team that you’ve been comprehensive, even if it’s all quite artificial”.


That apparent coaching on how to mislead the vetting team with extraneous information is clearly concerning. Can the Minister tell us when the Government became aware of such exchanges, and what action has been taken to ensure that similar such coaching or advice is not proffered in future?

Thirdly, there is the curious email from Ailsa Terry to Peter Mandelson and Morgan McSweeney on 13 February last year—volume 1, page 386. It says:

“Olly has been clear about the need to delete all traffic on this”.


Why would a senior civil servant be telling those two people to delete all the records of something?

Finally, I turn to a matter of detail—it would be a useful one to clear up—regarding volume 3, page 128. It appears to show the noble Lord, Lord Livermore, arranging a meeting with a paid lobbyist, yet the Treasury’s list of declared such meetings does not have any matching entry. Did that meeting take place? If so, who attended it, and what is the reason for that meeting not appearing in the register?

I appreciate that, obviously, the Minister may not be able to give detailed answers to all those points now, but I hope she will be able to commit at least to writing to me, because clarity and transparency are crucial as part of not just the Government’s but the whole political system’s reaction to the scandal we have been facing.