Lord Mandelson Humble Address: Government Response

Lord Foulkes of Cumnock Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)]

I have to agree with the noble Baroness about brilliant private offices; mine is fabulous. Obviously, it has a really easy job of making sure that I operate well. On the specifics about the metadata, I will have to write to the noble Baroness. This was a process led by Cabinet Office officials. I am not sure of the detail in that space on what additional information they sought.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op)]

My Lords, it is clear that Members opposite were hoping that there would be a silver bullet in all these humble Address papers that would kill the Prime Minister. When they have to resort to quoting Peter Mandelson’s view of the Prime Minister, it shows how desperate they are becoming. Then we got the scattergun approach from the noble Baroness, Lady Finn. She had to resort to picking here, there and everywhere and getting nowhere.

My question relates to what the noble Lord, Lord Pack, said about vetting Members of this House. As the Minister said, that does not happen at the moment. Yet we have a Member of this House who was appointed against the views of the intelligence community: the noble Lord, Lord Lebedev. Surely the Minister must agree that we may need to rethink it in view of that.