Lord Mandelson
Debate between Kieran Mullan and Emily Thornberry(6 days, 10 hours ago)
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Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)
I would like to start by acknowledging the victims of Epstein and the powerful men around him: vulnerable, abused women and girls who were sold and traded. Since the publication of Epstein’s papers, we have learnt so much more. An email from Jeffrey Epstein to Peter Mandelson, dated 28 October 2009, reads as follows:
“new york? brown? cuban-american…have you made any decisions?”
A few minutes later, Peter Mandelson responds:
“why are you awake. these questions are all related – desp for CuAm but can only get to NY at a time when people feel G”
—that may be Gordon Brown—
“won’t have some sort of breakdown…still working on it, therefore”.
There are so many questions to be asked about that. One of the suggested answers might be that this is not just about young women.
Emily Thornberry
I will come to that, because it is important, and it is important to put it in context.
Since then, we have seen not just that, but treachery of the worst kind. The question is: how did we get here? How did a man like that become Britain’s ambassador to the United States? We must begin by taking ourselves back to the time when Donald Trump was elected, and consider how challenging and difficult it was to know who was the best choice for ambassador. There was a choice: we could have continued with the ambassador who was already there, Karen Pierce. She had been invited to Mar-a-Lago many times; she had connections with Donald Trump’s circle; she was an older woman; she was a powerhouse; she is great at making friends; she wears mad shoes. She is one of a generation of senior, older women, too many of whom are no longer in the Foreign Office and have been replaced by boys. At the time when Labour was elected, all the other six members of the G7 were represented by women, as was the United Nations. Now there is only one.
We had a choice between deciding to ask Karen Pierce to continue to be the ambassador and going in another direction. The question was: what was the right way to do it? We chose Mandelson because it was seen as an imaginative response, and I welcomed it as an imaginative response. Personally, I would have continued with Karen Pierce, who is a woman I know, trust and admire, but if a different direction was to be taken, it was a choice that was imaginative and one that made some sense in the context of Donald Trump becoming President.
On 3 November, when we discovered more information about Mandelson’s relationship with Epstein, we asked Chris Wormald, the Cabinet Secretary, and Oliver Robbins, the permanent under-secretary at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, to come before the Foreign Affairs Committee to give evidence, because we were concerned about how this had happened. Clearly, so much background information about Peter Mandelson was out there but did not seem to have been considered properly before a decision was made, so we asked how it had happened. We were told that the first thing that had happened was due diligence. Due diligence meant fast-stream civil servants having the opportunity to search open sources, so they go to Google and they look, and that threw up reference to Peter Mandelson’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.
I said to Sir Chris Wormald—this is question 313 in the transcript—
“It is really important to be clear about this—I am sorry to keep banging on about it—but was the Prime Minister told that Peter Mandelson had stayed at Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse in 2009, when Epstein was in prison for soliciting an under-age girl?”
Perhaps this is because of my background as a lawyer, but there seems to me to be a difference here. To stand by a friend who has been accused of something shows one sort of character—it shows a certain strength—but to continue to be friends with them after they have been convicted, and to stay at their house, shows a completely different type of character. That, to me, was a nub point, so I wanted to know whether the Prime Minister had been given that information, which was publicly available—although, I have to say that it had passed me by; I knew of the friendship, but that is different from knowing that the friendship had continued post-conviction. I think it is really important to establish that difference, and that was something we asked about in the Committee hearing. The answer was, “I am not going to tell you the contents of the due diligence report.”
Emily Thornberry
Anyone who either made the decision or said that it was a good thing must regret it, of course, but we must remember that the appointment was made on the 18th and I made those comments two days later. During those two days—in the run-up to Christmas—the Clerks were not the people I referred to first. Work was done thereafter, and the reason for that work was that we wanted Mandelson, once his appointment had been announced, to come before the Committee to be questioned. We felt that it was very important that he should appear before the Committee in an open hearing, where we could ask him questions, such as the ones that I put, and a record could be made.
Emily Thornberry
May I just finish?
For instance, I said this:
“if you had come before us, we would have looked on the internet—we would have googled—and we would have found that Channel 4 had done a documentary, ‘The Prince & the Paedophile’, that clearly highlighted Mandelson’s links with Epstein. We would have given consideration to the Financial Times and Guardian reports in June 2023 that referenced the JP Morgan internal investigation. In those reports, what was most damning of all was that Epstein was sentenced in 2008 to 18 months’ imprisonment for soliciting an underage girl, and Peter Mandelson goes to stay in his townhouse in Manhattan in 2009. At that time, Peter Mandelson was the Business Secretary. So we have the Business Secretary staying in the townhouse in Manhattan of someone convicted of paedophilia.”
We would have asked those questions, and whatever answers would have been given, whether they were honest or not, would have been out there in public.
The problem, I think, was that a decision was made in the haste of Donald Trump’s election to go for an “imaginative”, “inspiring” or “alternative” person to go to the United States, and not enough time was spent on it. The decision was therefore made to appoint, subject to—
Emily Thornberry
I think I have made it clear that, for me, there is a difference between being a friend of someone who is accused of something and then putting distance between oneself and that person if they are then convicted. I think a decision should be made at that point. That goes to a matter of conscience and the right way to proceed. That is my view.
Emily Thornberry
I will not take any more interventions.
I have explained what our Committee was told about due diligence and how that happened. Normally what would then happen is that an interview would be done with a panel, and questions that arose during due diligence would be put to the candidate during that interview. But that did not happen in this case because it was a political appointment. So if anyone had any concerns about Peter Mandelson and his background, or any of the things that people are now concerned about, those would not have been formally put to him during any form of interview process where minutes were taken and we could now look at what those conversations were. That, I think, is a really important piece of information to put before this House so that people understand how this happened.
We have due diligence—fast-streamers looking at the internet—nothing being put to Peter Mandelson, and then the decision being announced. The decision was announced in the middle of December, as we have heard, and then they wanted to do it really quickly, presumably so that he could be at the President’s swearing-in. Also, once the announcement was made, Karen Pierce would have lost power and influence, because it would have been known that she was not continuing in post, so it was important to move as soon as possible.
The next stage was vetting, which is done by the Foreign Office. The question I have for Ministers is this: given that the announcement had been made and that speed was needed, was pressure put on the Foreign Office to get through the vetting quickly? Was there, to coin a phrase, a need to “get on with it”? That is an important question to ask and one that we need an answer to, but we must also be realistic. Once it was known that Peter Mandelson was going to be the ambassador for Britain, it would have taken huge bravery and introduced potential risk to withdraw him from the appointment if anything had come up at the vetting stage.