Lord Mandelson: Response to Humble Address

Debate between Kirsty Blackman and Julian Lewis

Wednesday 3rd June 2026 Commons Chamber

[Kirsty Blackman (Aberdeen North) (SNP)]

This has been an interesting and wide-ranging debate, but at times it has been painful to listen to, because we are talking about a really terrible decision that was made by the Prime Minister, and about the retraumatising of victims, who have to keep hearing about this issue without seeing justice. If we were talking about a way to get justice, that would be different. The hon. Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones) made an excellent speech, and I agree that she has been a consistent champion of women’s safety, particularly online, but these issues have been constantly raised.

Throughout the debate, hon. Members—not the hon. Member for Pontypridd—have waved or thrown around a significant number of dead cats. In fact, for anyone who has spent a lot of time going through the documents, perhaps it should be red boxes that have been waved around, especially ones with “President of the United States” written on them. An awful lot of time seems to have been dedicated to getting a red box for the President of the United States—that is civil servant time that could have been better spent being more transparent, rather than chasing the specific maker of red boxes and getting them to print things on one.

One of the dead cats, or red boxes, is about the mitigations. It is important that there should have been mitigations, and that point was made when the Prime Minister was first given a document about whether Peter Mandelson should be appointed. Its advice was that mitigations would need to be put in place. The problem is not that mitigations were not put in place—I am not saying that they were put in place, or that we know or do not know which ones were put in place; the problem is that the Prime Minister made the decision in the first place.

The information on the bit of paper that was given to the Prime Minister talked about the “reputational risk” of appointing somebody who was friends with Jeffrey Epstein. It was not a reputational risk; it was just a risk—a risk of retraumatising victims and a risk of giving somebody who had close links to various companies and to Russia a position of power. The Prime Minister knew about those problems, and it was incredibly cute of the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee to try to say that the Prime Minister really was not responsible for this, because he delegated it to other people. The Prime Minister made the decision—the Prime Minister has held up his hands and said that he made the decision—and nobody in the House can say that the fault was that the mitigations were not put in place. The fault is with the Prime Minister for making a political appointment and choosing somebody he knew—he was told it—was friends with Jeffrey Epstein.

[Sir Julian Lewis]

I entirely agree with what the hon. Lady is saying. Does she agree with me about this? We have established clearly that those blank boxes, in which the Prime Minister could have made a comment when he was given the crucial information and the options leading up to the appointment of Mandelson, were intentionally blank. They are there precisely for the Prime Minister to record his response and, indeed, his decision. The fact that they were not redacted, but were genuinely blank, suggests to me—I cannot think of any other explanation—that the Prime Minister did not want to fill them in because he knew that there was something shameful about the appointment he was about to approve, and he did not want it on the record.

[Kirsty Blackman]

It is also clear that the Prime Minister had made up his mind, and it almost did not matter what people said. There was an awareness of the article that had been published saying that Peter Mandelson stayed in Jeffrey Epstein’s house while Jeffrey Epstein was in prison—it does not get much worse than that. The Prime Minister had made the decision, as we can see from a whole lot of this documentation.

I appreciate the reasons for how the redactions have been made, and I appreciate that this massive amount of work was pulled together by a significant number of people dealing with things in all different formats. However, there is a significant lack of consistency in this document that makes it really difficult to work out what is going on. For example, there are spaces in the document. If we look at page 199 of part III, Jon Garvie apparently sent a blank message, to which Peter Mandelson replied, “Quite”. I do not know how he could have replied “Quite” to a blank message. The document does not have stars, it does not say that the message has been redacted and it does not explain what the message was. At other points in the document, it does say what the messages were and what the redactions are—a certain picture, or something. As I have said, I appreciate the amount of work that was put in to pull this document together, but we are not getting the full picture. We are not seeing everything because the document has in some places been put together in a not very helpful way.

I turn to the Morgan McSweeney messages. As I have mentioned, Morgan McSweeney has lost his phone and therefore cannot provide WhatsApp messages. However, on page 173 of part III, he has provided group WhatsApp messages. The document specifically says that the

“messages were provided to the Cabinet Office by Morgan McSweeney”.

As the hon. Member for Birmingham Yardley (Jess Phillips) said, it would be really nice if there was an explanation of why the information that is not there is not there. She gave back a nil return: she was asked for her messages with Peter Mandelson, and she replied that there were no messages with Peter Mandelson. On the Morgan McSweeney stuff, for example, it would be helpful if it said against these group chat messages that he could access only these group chat messages through another method, and he could not access his own personal messages, which is why we do not see them, or that he had disappearing messages on, and that is why we cannot see them. We do not know the reason: we do not know if it is because there is nothing, or because there was something, but it has now gone. I think that the level of transparency we are getting is deeply unhelpful.

On the speech by the hon. Member for Putney (Fleur Anderson), I have never had a constituent say that they would like less transparency. I have never had one say that they would like to know less about why the Prime Minister appointed Peter Mandelson; they want to know why the Prime Minister appointed Peter Mandelson. Today is perhaps the wrong day to make a call for there to be less information. I think that our discussions about this decision should be centred on the victims. The fact is that the Prime Minister made these decisions knowing about the victims, and knowing that Peter Mandelson was friends with Epstein and continued to be friends with Epstein.

It did not matter what red flags were shown up by the processes; the political decision had been made. We know that. We know that the appointment was announced in advance of these things taking place. We know that the decision had been made. We know that—for some reason that I am still not totally clear about—the Prime Minister thought Peter Mandelson was the best person for the job and the person who would do the best for national security, the people of these islands and the Labour Government. That was the decision-making process that the Prime Minister must have gone through.

The Liberal Democrat spokesperson, the hon. Member for St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire (Ian Sollom), said that we do not know what was in the driver’s head. We do not have that really key piece of information. We can have the driver apologise and say, “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have done it,” but until they explain why they did it, we are not going to understand it, and the apology sounds hollower than I think the Prime Minister would like it to.

On transparency, we know that, even though there has been a significant amount of work and there is a significant number of documents, we do not have everything. Some things have been held back because of the police investigation or because of national security. I completely understand and accept that that is the case. However, there are other things that we do not have. On 4 February, the day the Humble Address went through, I submitted a number of freedom of information requests to the Cabinet Office. I received an acknowledgment of those FOI requests and, on 9 March, I received an email telling me that there was a delay in responding. I have received nothing since. Despite submitting an FOI request on 4 February, I have received nothing but an acknowledgment and then one update from the Cabinet Office, on 9 March, telling me that it was very sorry about the delay.

It would be very helpful if those on the Government Front Bench could ensure that I get a response to my FOI requests, because it is a legal requirement for Governments and the Cabinet Office to provide responses to such things and to make it clear if there is a delay why there is a delay, or if they are not going to provide a response why they are not going to provide a response. I would be interested to know how many members of the public have submitted FOI requests relating to the decision-making process or messages about Peter Mandelson, and have not received adequate responses from the Cabinet Office. I do not know why the Cabinet Office has not responded to me, but I would be concerned if it was doing exactly the same thing with members of the public, who do not have the ability to stand here and criticise the Cabinet Office.

The last thing I want to talk about is where things are with the Prime Minister and his currency at the moment. The Prime Minister is not standing here defending himself. The Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister is once again having to fill that role—I do not envy him. We have heard a defence of the Prime Minister’s decision from very few Members on either side of the House. I do not think anybody is trying to defend the Prime Minister’s decision. That brings us back to the Prime Minister’s judgment and to the fact that he made this decision. It was not, as some have tried to say, some civil servants or special advisers who made the decision. It was the Prime Minister who made the decision, however much his arm may have been twisted.

Perhaps, as was suggested by the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, it was others who really pushed this appointment and did the decision making. Maybe it was down others, in which case why would you have a Prime Minister who can be so easily led by others that they are willing to appoint somebody who was friends with a convicted paedophile to the most senior role in the ambassadorial service? We must assume that the Prime Minister is not that easily led. We must assume that the Prime Minister cannot have his arm twisted by officials or special advisers, in which case he made the decision. He is not standing here explaining why he made that decision. He is not meeting the victims. The worst thing that has been uncovered today is the fact that the Prime Minister has had requests from those victims and not met them. That is despite the fact that we can see in the mass of documents before us the people who the Prime Minister did meet—people who my constituents would be much less keen on him meeting than the actual victims of Epstein.

The Prime Minister has a significant number of questions to answer. This is not the change that he promised when he stood on his manifesto in 2024. This is not a Parliament that is working for the benefit of people. It is a Parliament that is continuing to hide things, and to duck away from having the difficult conversations and from listening to the people it really needs to listen to the most. The Government need to take a long hard look at themselves, change their priorities, and listen to the requests that are being made by the people who have been harmed the most by this complete shambles.

House of Lords Reform

Debate between Kirsty Blackman and Julian Lewis

Tuesday 10th January 2023 Westminster Hall

[Kirsty Blackman (Aberdeen North) (SNP)]

I appreciate you taking the time to chair this debate so excellently, Sir Gary. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady) for securing this debate. When I was first elected to the House of Commons, I was made the SNP spokesperson on the House of Lords. It is the easiest job an SNP politician can do, because when they do something, we say, “Abolish them,” and when they do something else, we say, “Abolish them,” again. There is just one line you need to know. That is why this debate has been interesting. It has been a thoughtful debate with lots of issues and concerns raised about the House of Lords. Some Members have talked about how great they think the House of Lords is, but we have also discussed a number of different issues.

I will focus briefly on the issue of constitutional obsession. We all have a constitutional obsession. Indeed, hon. Members would not be here if they did not think that things that were not working needed to be changed. It is not just about improving a single constituent’s life by writing to an energy company to complain about a wrong bill. We can improve all of our constituents’ lives by changing the system. That is what all of us are here to do. We are all here to talk and think about the constitution and the changes we want to make to it and to the systems and the ways in which we operate.

My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North is correct that Governments of any type, in any country, have less impetus to deliver change than anyone else. Governments are appointed by whatever system they work within. That means that the system works for them: it has put them there and entrenched their power. Why would they want to lessen their future chances of getting that power?

That point is neatly summed up by the fact that one in 10 Conservative peers have donated more than £100,000 to the party. I do not know which came first: did they donate money and then happen to become a peer, or did they become a peer and then happen to donate money? I do not know the order in which it works, but surely that is a symbiotic, beneficial relationship for both groups of people. It is great for the Conservative party that it can get so much in donations, and it is great for peers that they can get £332 a day, as well as the power and prestige that comes with being a Member of the House of Lords as a result of their relationships, patronage and appointment for life.

I will now talk specifically about how the House of Lords works and operates, and what it looks like. The most recent figures I could find in the Library are from 2019 and show that the average age of Members of the House of Commons is 51. That is not as young as it should be and does not reflect the general population or even the general voting population. However, the average age of Members of the House of Lords is 71. The hon. Member for Totnes (Anthony Mangnall) may be interested to know that he is younger than the youngest peer in the House of Lords. Although he and I are relatively young Members of Parliament, we are far from being the youngest MPs these days.

[Sir Julian Lewis]

As a 71-year-old Member of the lower House, I will not take offence at the hon. Lady’s ageism. I will just point out, however, that if people get to the top of their professions before they get seats in the House of Lords, where they can apply their expertise, they will tend to be older rather than younger.

[Kirsty Blackman]

My issue is not with the actions of individuals at certain ages or with the fact that there are many 71-year-olds who could run rings around significant numbers of us younger ones—I absolutely agree that that is the case. My issue is that it does not represent the population. We are supposed to have a representative democracy but it fails to be so because its membership does not look like the rest of the population.

I will take a moment to tackle another thing that the hon. Member for Totnes said. Some 57% of Members of the House of Lords went to private schools, which is ridiculously high.