Ambassador to the United States

Mark Pritchard Excerpts

Tuesday 16th September 2025 Commons Chamber

[David Davis]

Exactly, and in fact earlier than that point. I will come back to that when I talk briefly about the vetting process.

What precisely did the Prime Minister learn from reading the Bloomberg emails that was not already known about Lord Mandelson from public information and vetting done before the appointment? Each day that goes by, we see more shocking revelations not only about his misconduct and his links to Jeffrey Epstein, but about the failures of both the vetting process and the political judgment of those at the top of Government. I say to the hon. Member for Leeds East (Richard Burgon) that that relates not just to their political judgment, but to their moral standards and the equity in how they apply those moral standards across the board.

That brings us to the question: what happened to the vetting process? Most of what I have described was in the public domain. It does not take James Bond; Google could do this. What was not in the public domain was in the official records, or known to the intelligence agencies—in other words, it was all available to the Government. We know there was a two-page propriety and ethics briefing, which should have flagged concerns, but it merely triggered an unpenetrating email inquiry. That goes straight to the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Hinckley and Bosworth (Dr Evans), which is: where were the questions? Someone does not just send a three-line email and forget about it; they pursue the questions and cross-question the person under suspicion.

[Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con)]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way. He will know that members of the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament are subject to extremely deep vetting. There is also a double check, which is that Parliament has to give its agreement to the appointments to the Committee, once nominated by the Prime Minister. Does the Mandelson case not strengthen the argument for pre-confirmation hearings by the relevant parliamentary Committees of this House in order that candidates can be cross-questioned? At the moment, the Cabinet Office advises on only about 1,000 regulated public appointments for this House, ahead of appointment. None of them is a Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office appointment. Is it not now time to make that change, whether they are political appointments or senior civil servants?

[David Davis]

My right hon. Friend makes a very good point. I certainly think that that would be the right way to go for political appointments. It would probably be the right way to go for the top dozen embassies. I would not worry about all of them, without being rude to—well, I won’t pick a country. That would just be meaningless, but the top dozen are well worth doing.

--- Later in debate ---

[Emily Thornberry]

My hon. Friend may be surprised to hear that I agree with her completely. I think that would be very wise.

[Mark Pritchard]

I thank the Chairman of the Select Committee for giving way. I made my own comments earlier about pre-confirmation hearings. Adding on to that, does the right hon. Lady agree that when senior civil servants—whether from the Foreign Office or elsewhere—are asked to come to Select Committees on important matters and they find some excuse not to attend, the Select Committee should at least have the power of summons in order that somebody gives an account? In addition to that, if security or classification is used either truthfully or—shall we say—exaggeratingly as an excuse not to give evidence to a Committee, does the right hon. Lady agree that when Select Committees have Privy Counsellors, as in her case, a briefing could at least be heard on Privy Council terms?

[Emily Thornberry]

The right hon. Gentleman raises some important points. The power of Select Committees to summon witnesses has been an ongoing debate, and I suspect we have not resolved it yet. He also raises the matter of Privy Counsellors; our Committee has myself and another Privy Council member. The difficulty is that if we were offered Privy Council briefings, as we are sometimes, it is quite difficult, because we want to be able to do those things in public and inform the public of the work of the Foreign Office to ensure that when difficult decisions are being made, they understand why those decisions are being made, with all the factors involved in that. That is fine; I think we need to trust the public more than we sometimes do. We certainly need to trust Back Benchers more than we sometimes do.