Lord Mandelson: Response to Humble Address

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd June 2026 Commons Chamber

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

I am not hiding from the fact that we have to make changes to the appointments process. Indeed, the Government have changed the process for all direct ministerial appointments to make sure that due diligence and national security vetting have to take place prior to appointment. It is absolutely right that that change was made.

Let me turn to the process. The process that was followed was obviously a significant one in order to publish such a large volume of material. When I was at the Dispatch Box on 4 February, I committed to publishing material in scope of the motion—bar that which the Intelligence and Security Committee agreed would be prejudicial to national security and international relations.

At this point, I want to put on record my thanks to the Committee. Members who were in the House that day might recall that even as I was speaking in the Chamber I was making the case for the involvement of the Intelligence and Security Committee. I know that it was not a small undertaking for the Committee. A huge amount of time has been spent on this, and I am very grateful to the Committee’s members for their very careful and—it looks to me—painstaking work in going through the volume of documentation.

On 4 February, and indeed since, Members have raised a range of issues, and it is absolutely right that the Government are held to account on those. As Members will have seen from the material that was published on Monday, the Government have acted on the House’s request for transparency to an extraordinary extent.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

On Monday, I asked a question to the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister about the fact that it is extraordinary that there appeared to be no WhatsApp or text messages from the Prime Minister—that was the information available to us at the time. We now know that there are no text messages from the Prime Minister to Mandelson after a few days after the general election, and the WhatsApp messages have totally disappeared.

The answer I got on Monday from the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister was slightly disingenuous, I have to say. He said that Prime Ministers do not operate in this way. Rather like Mr Gladstone, they sit at the Cabinet table and men in frock coats bring them papers. It is complete rubbish. We know that the Prime Minister must have been using WhatsApp all the time. To use disappearing WhatsApp messages is contrary to what the covid inquiry suggested, and it is quite contrary to transparency.

I say to the Paymaster General that these scandals are made much worse by any hint of a cover-up. Everybody knows that a mistake was made, and people are very forgiving of the Prime Minister if he has made a mistake. What they are not forgiving of is some sort of cover-up, where numerous text messages and WhatsApp messages have suddenly vanished.

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

I think some Conservative Members would be quite happy to have Gladstonian principles in government.

I really do reject the point about a cover-up, and I reject it for this reason: this process was quite rightly driven by and led by officials without political interference, working with the Intelligence and Security Committee—a cross-party Committee that is very well respected across this House. Not a single redaction in those documents came about because of a ministerial decision, and that is simply because we have not played that part in the process—and neither should we have done, so I completely reject the idea of a cover-up.