Lord Mandelson

Mike Martin Excerpts

Wednesday 4th February 2026 Commons Chamber

[Lisa Smart]

I am sure that I have been listening as intently as the hon. Gentleman. There are so many questions that it is right for the Government to answer, and we believe that a public inquiry, after any police investigation has concluded, is the way to get to the bottom of them. There are questions swirling around about which advisers said what, when, but the decision to hire Mandelson was ultimately the Prime Minister’s, and he must be held responsible for that.

[Mike Martin (Tunbridge Wells) (LD)]

The Minister said that Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes were “unforgivable”. Does my hon. Friend think that the Prime Minister appointing said known paedophile was forgivable?

[Lisa Smart]

I think my hon. Friend is referring to the appointment of the friend of a known paedophile, rather than the appointment of a paedophile.

[Mike Martin]

Thank you very much.

[Lisa Smart]

That is an important clarification to make. Rightly, there are questions surrounding the judgment displayed by the Prime Minister in appointing Peter Mandelson to the position of UK ambassador to the US. Those questions are wholly valid, as are the questions being asked about current Cabinet Ministers who also chose to maintain friendships with Mandelson—there are rumours of him popping in and out of some offices at will. I must say, I noted the facial expressions of some Government Front Benchers during Prime Minister’s questions earlier.

Of course, many questions were raised about Mandelson before his appointment. Questions were raised about him during the 2009 expenses scandal. He was forced to resign from Cabinet twice for unethical behaviour, and we understand that the security services raised serious concerns about his appointment last year, yet he was still appointed to one of our most sensitive diplomatic positions. This is not a case of one unforeseen problem; it is a pattern of warning signs that were ignored. This Labour Government promised to break with Conservative chaos, but instead we see the same failures—inadequate checks, reactive crisis management, and an inability to prevent obvious problems. You do not restore public trust with heartfelt apologies after things go wrong; you do it by having proper systems that stop scandals before they happen. Labour has failed to maintain public confidence, and it must do better.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

[Mike Martin]

As Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, does the right hon. Lady know what the then Foreign Secretary—the Deputy Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy)—knew at that time? Does she think that that should also be brought to the attention of the House in this release of documents?

[Emily Thornberry]

The point is that the due diligence and vetting are done by civil servants and are not supposed to involve politicians, and the decision was made in No. 10. That is how it works, as I understand it, so the views of the then Foreign Secretary may not be directly relevant.

[Mike Martin]

I thank the right hon. Lady for giving way once again; she is being very generous. What is the point in civil servants doing due diligence if that information is not given to politicians when they make the decisions?

[Emily Thornberry]

No, it is given to those who are making the decisions—as I understand it. The due diligence is done by the Cabinet Office. It does due diligence on a number of candidates, and then the decision is made as to which candidate will be put forward. Then it is announced. Then the vetting is done by the Foreign Office, and that information is handed back. I believe that that is the process. I think it is important, for clarity, that people know the process, because if we are about to get a large amount of information, it is important to understand how it worked.

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Burgon]

I totally agree with the hon. Member’s powerful point. It is no wonder that trust in politicians is at an all-time low. This affair shines a light on the role of the rich and powerful, and the relationship between some at the top of politics and some of the richest and most powerful men in the world. Peter Mandelson has always had, I would say, an unhealthy fascination with the super-rich and the powerful. After all, it was he who said that he was

“intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich”.

In this serious debate, we need full honesty. As I alluded to earlier, one of the main reasons that Peter Mandelson was let off the hook and eased into one of the most important offices that he could be given by the Prime Minister was his role in internal Labour party factional affairs—that is just completely wrong. Let me quote Peter Mandelson:

“I work every single day in some small way to bring forward the end of his tenure in office.”

He was referring, of course, to the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) while he was leader of the Labour party, at a time when Lord Mandelson was a Labour party member. That is the reason Mandelson was let off the hook. People were so grateful for the job that he did again and again to kick the left of the Labour party that they—

[Mike Martin]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Richard Burgon]

I will give way shortly. I think the Prime Minister would be delighted if I gave way now, because I am coming to an important point.

The reward for the factional role that Mandelson boasted about and revelled in was a blind eye being turned, even though the Prime Minister knew about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. The reality is that Peter Mandelson would not have made it on to a panel of Labour party local election candidates, or as a Labour party parliamentary candidate at a general election, yet because of his factional role and his relationship with the super-rich—which stinks, quite frankly—he was eased into the position of ambassador to the United States of America. That is the truth, whether or not people choose to admit it.

[Mike Martin]

This important debate deals with corruption on an international scale, and with women and girls who have been victimised over years. May I ask the hon. Gentleman to lift his eyes above factional Labour politics and to focus on the issues at hand?

[Richard Burgon]

The hon. Gentleman may not have understood the point that I am making—perhaps that is the Liberal position on these things; I do not know. What I am talking about is the fact that victims of sexual abuse were put second to factional politics. The point I am making is that this dirty, grubby internal factional behaviour overrode those considerations—so, in fact, I do not disagree with him. That is the point that I am making: the lives of survivors should have been put first. The risk that Peter Mandelson posed to national security, and his deep inappropriateness for the role of ambassador to the US, should have been put first. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman misunderstood me, but that is the very point that I am making.

The public deserve the truth—the full truth. They need to know who argued for Peter Mandelson despite what was known about his relationship with Epstein, who argued for him to be pushed over the line into the role of ambassador to the United States, who warned against it, and what role the advisers around the Prime Minister played. That is fundamentally important. We cannot have a situation that the public quite rightly view as totally unacceptable. We need to know exactly how this happened and nothing should prevent that, because the public are completely baffled and disgusted.

The point has been made that we need to clean up our politics. Of course, that means no jobs for the boys when they are deeply inappropriate and deeply unsuitable for them, and it means looking at the role of big money in politics. Mandelson was infatuated with the rich and powerful in the same way that he was infatuated with the factional politics within the Labour party. Those things resulted in his being appointed to the position of ambassador despite what was known.

A manuscript amendment may be tabled and it may satisfy Members on both sides of the House—I do not know—but no manuscript amendment will rub away this crisis. No manuscript amendment and nothing that can be said in this House will remove the fact that the appointment of Peter Mandelson as ambassador to the United States of America, despite what was known at the time, is literally indefensible. It is really telling that not a single Member on either side of the House has tried to defend that today, although some have defended it previously.

I come back to the point that we cannot have appointments in this country suborned as a result of people’s friendships or the role that they have played in internal party factions. That puts the national interest at risk and it can put national security at risk. The Prime Minister said “country first, party second”. What we cannot have is faction first, country second. I think that that is what happened with the indefensible decision to appoint Peter Mandelson to this important role, despite the fact that it was in the public domain that he had continued his relations with Epstein while that man was in prison for soliciting child prostitution.