Lord Mandelson: Response to Humble Address

Nick Thomas-Symonds Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd June 2026 Commons Chamber

[The Paymaster General and Minister for the Cabinet Office (Nick Thomas-Symonds)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the Government’s response to the House’s humble Address of 4 February 2026.

On 4 February I came before the House to debate the Humble Address motion. I said at the time that it was in the national interest to be transparent and to act as quickly as we could, and with the second publication of documents earlier this week on Monday, the Government have done so. Today’s debate is a further opportunity for Members to put questions and, indeed, debate the content of the documents. My right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister, who is alongside me on the Front Bench, will listen to the debate and close it in due course.

As we debate these issues today, we should ensure that we keep Jeffrey Epstein’s victims at the forefront of our minds. What Epstein did was abhorrent and unforgivable. He was a vile, evil paedophile, and I denounce him and his actions as strongly today as I did on 4 February when I came to the Dispatch Box.

The Prime Minister has taken responsibility for appointing Peter Mandelson as ambassador to the United States. He has said that if he knew then what he knows now, he would never have appointed him, and he has apologised.

I think it is worth setting out the process that was followed in order to publish such a large volume of material on Monday.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

As the right hon. Gentleman is going to talk about process, I would be very grateful if he could clear up one matter. I have a high regard for the right hon. Gentleman’s integrity, and so I hope he will not dance around this subject, as has been done by others in the past.

In the first tranche of documents there were a number of notes sent by private secretaries to the Prime Minister. If I were allowed to use a prop, I would open the documents to pages 3 and 8, where Members would see notes discussing the situation as regards how to appoint the ambassador, Peter Mandelson and so forth. Under those notes are big boxes headed “Prime Minister Comments”. The normal course of action when a Prime Minister receives a document of that sort is that he notes down his response to it. These boxes are totally blank. My simple question to the right hon. Gentleman is this: are they blank because the Prime Minister made no notes whatsoever or because any notes that the Prime Minister made have been redacted and removed? The Intelligence and Security Committee deals routinely with even more sensitive material, and every time there is a redaction in a publication, there are three asterisks to show that the redaction has taken place. Have there been redactions of the Prime Minister’s notes on these memorandums that were sent to him for decision?

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

The answer is that they are blank now because they were blank then. The formal decision to appoint Peter Mandelson as the ambassador was conveyed by the Prime Minister’s then principal private secretary in a letter to the Foreign Office. I know that the right hon. Gentleman is referring to the empty box notes, and the reason that they are empty is that there was nothing to redact. I hope that is a sufficiently clear answer.

[Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con)]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way, because I want to ask about the process of the appointment, rather than the process of the release of the papers, which I think he is about to move on to.

I have previously spoken in this House about the process in the future, and I think the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, the right hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry), has made not-dissimilar comments. Whether we have a future Conservative Government—hopefully—or another Government, we should have pre-appointment scrutiny of senior posts, both ambassadorial appointments and, I would argue, permanent secretaries of Departments. That would be a safer way of doing things.

On senior appointments to the ISC—there are lots of current ISC members present in the Chamber, as well as former members such as myself—the Paymaster General will know that the appointment is made by the Prime Minister, but the double-lock mechanism ensures that the House has a say and can veto appointments if necessary. I am not necessarily asking for that mechanism, but certainly the relevant Select Committee should carry out pre-scrutiny for senior appointments of ambassadors and other senior officials, whether they are political appointees or not. I think that would help the whole House, whatever our politics.

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

I am not hiding from the fact that we have to make changes to the appointments process. Indeed, the Government have changed the process for all direct ministerial appointments to make sure that due diligence and national security vetting have to take place prior to appointment. It is absolutely right that that change was made.

Let me turn to the process. The process that was followed was obviously a significant one in order to publish such a large volume of material. When I was at the Dispatch Box on 4 February, I committed to publishing material in scope of the motion—bar that which the Intelligence and Security Committee agreed would be prejudicial to national security and international relations.

At this point, I want to put on record my thanks to the Committee. Members who were in the House that day might recall that even as I was speaking in the Chamber I was making the case for the involvement of the Intelligence and Security Committee. I know that it was not a small undertaking for the Committee. A huge amount of time has been spent on this, and I am very grateful to the Committee’s members for their very careful and—it looks to me—painstaking work in going through the volume of documentation.

On 4 February, and indeed since, Members have raised a range of issues, and it is absolutely right that the Government are held to account on those. As Members will have seen from the material that was published on Monday, the Government have acted on the House’s request for transparency to an extraordinary extent.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

On Monday, I asked a question to the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister about the fact that it is extraordinary that there appeared to be no WhatsApp or text messages from the Prime Minister—that was the information available to us at the time. We now know that there are no text messages from the Prime Minister to Mandelson after a few days after the general election, and the WhatsApp messages have totally disappeared.

The answer I got on Monday from the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister was slightly disingenuous, I have to say. He said that Prime Ministers do not operate in this way. Rather like Mr Gladstone, they sit at the Cabinet table and men in frock coats bring them papers. It is complete rubbish. We know that the Prime Minister must have been using WhatsApp all the time. To use disappearing WhatsApp messages is contrary to what the covid inquiry suggested, and it is quite contrary to transparency.

I say to the Paymaster General that these scandals are made much worse by any hint of a cover-up. Everybody knows that a mistake was made, and people are very forgiving of the Prime Minister if he has made a mistake. What they are not forgiving of is some sort of cover-up, where numerous text messages and WhatsApp messages have suddenly vanished.

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

I think some Conservative Members would be quite happy to have Gladstonian principles in government.

I really do reject the point about a cover-up, and I reject it for this reason: this process was quite rightly driven by and led by officials without political interference, working with the Intelligence and Security Committee—a cross-party Committee that is very well respected across this House. Not a single redaction in those documents came about because of a ministerial decision, and that is simply because we have not played that part in the process—and neither should we have done, so I completely reject the idea of a cover-up.

[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

rose—

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

On the subject of someone who might be keen on Gladstone, I will give way.

[Sir John Hayes]

The right hon. Gentleman knows me well, and he knows of my disdain for Gladstone and my deep admiration for his rival Benjamin Disraeli, who in my judgment was the greatest ever Prime Minister by far.

The key thing about the ISC, on which I sit—I am grateful for the Minister’s comments about its work—is that the House took the view that the ISC should see the whole of the information. Whether that was the right view or whether the Humble Address was too permissive is an open question, but the House took the view that we should see all matters relating to international relations or national security.

An executive decision was taken—I do not know whether it was endorsed by Ministers; it was certainly endorsed subsequently by the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister—not to make the UK Security Vetting file available to the ISC. That is not what the Humble Address says. Subsequently, that has been legitimised by the argument, which I do not buy, that it would have a chilling effect on the whole vetting process. However, the Minister—and by the way, I share the respect of my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) for him—knows that the ISC’s seeing material is not the same as disclosing it. This is about scrutiny, not disclosure, so why was an executive decision made not to make that information available to the ISC? Who made it, and when? Was it made by officials? Was it made by Ministers? Will he explain how he can square that with the remark he just made?

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

It was an official-led process. Let me just make that clear, because the right hon. Gentleman points towards a pretty important issue. We had the Humble Address and its wording—hon. Members can read that wording—with the quite extensive list drafted by the shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, the hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Alex Burghart). At the end, it said:

“except papers prejudicial to UK national security or international relations which shall instead be referred to the Intelligence and Security Committee”.

What the Government have done, and indeed were entitled to do so, is take into account the precedents set by previous responses to Humble Addresses—under the Government whom the right hon. Gentleman supported, indeed. The Prime Minister has written to the Chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee on precisely that point.

There were a number of Humble Addresses during the 2017-19 Parliament when I was in opposition. I would not say that they were a constitutional innovation, because they have quite an ancient origin, but I personally played some part in their re-emergence. It is obviously the case that, as those Humble Addresses have been replied to—now by a number of parties in government—principles have been used in approaching them which come from things such as the Freedom of Information Act, the duty of Ministers under the ministerial code, the Data Protection Act 2018 and the general data protection regulation. Those are based on precedents for responses to Humble Addresses.

[Tim Roca (Macclesfield) (Lab)]

The Minister is being incredibly generous with his time. As an aside, I think many hon. Members in this place—those on the Conservative Benches at least—would like to go back to the 19th century.

It is clear that officials have done a huge amount of work with regard to this process. Will the Minister say a little bit about the independent King’s Counsel, and what assurances it has provided that the Government are complying with the Humble Address?

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

That was another important part of what was done, and the House should also take reassurance from that. I made the point about precedents to the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes), and the Government also sought to take that independent legal advice on their interpretation of complying with the Humble Address.

[Sir Julian Lewis]

rose—

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

I will take an intervention from the right hon. Gentleman, but then I need to make a bit more progress.

[Sir Julian Lewis]

I want to clear up the point about precedents. It may be that I am wrong about this, but I do not think there is any precedent for the House deciding that the Intelligence and Security Committee specifically should look at material that was to be redacted before it went to the public. The Intelligence and Security Committee, as the Minister well knows, was founded in 1994. Since that time, there has never been even one leak from the Committee. So there is no comparison between making things available to the Intelligence and Security Committee—the only parliamentary body entitled to see highly classified material, and one which never leaks—and to any other body. While he says, “This is all led by officials. It is okay for the officials to see it, but not to release it to anyone else,” the reason the ISC was chosen for the motion is that it is within the ring of secrecy, and that is unaffected by any precedents regarding bodies that do not have that special status.

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

I agree with the right hon. Gentleman. It is just that if he looks at the wording of the Humble Address, he will see that it lists a series of classes of documents, and then it says, “except papers”—those that were referred to the ISC. That is our compliance with the motion.

Let me turn back to the process, which, as I said, was undertaken by officials. They sought returns from all Government Departments, including material, as has been referred to, on non-corporate communication channels. There were multiple rounds of discovery to ensure that searches returned material relevant to the full scope of the motion. Some documents were assessed as likely prejudicial to national security or international relations—the point I was just making—and, as I committed to the House in February, they were then referred to the Intelligence and Security Committee.

Due to the wide scope of the motion and the significant volume of material that needed to be located and reviewed, the first publication, on 11 March, was focused on the parts of the motion that were of most urgent interest to the House: Peter Mandelson’s appointment, his withdrawal and the severance. The second tranche, which was published on Monday, contains material relevant to the parts of the motion that cover communications and documents concerning Peter Mandelson’s appointment and vetting, and messages between Peter Mandelson and Ministers, special advisers and senior civil servants in the months prior to and throughout his tenure as ambassador. All documents held by the Government have now been disclosed, save those that are being withheld on the request of the Metropolitan police.

[Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)]

On the point of communication between Peter Mandelson and Ministers, the fact remains that the more documents that are released, the more questions emerge about Peter Mandelson’s reach across Government. Will the Minister tell the House whether Lord Mandelson had any discussions whatsoever with Ministers, officials or advisers about Palantir? Will further documentation with regards to that be released?

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

On Palantir, I refer my hon. Friend to the methodology statement at the start of each of the three volumes, where it is made absolutely clear that there is a recognition that Palantir is a matter of interest to the House; indeed, there are references to Palantir within the documents. As I am sure the House will understand, I will not speculate on the contents of the documents that remain with the Metropolitan police, but certainly I invite everyone to look at the references to Palantir in the tranche of documents before the House—indeed, the public can do so as well.

[Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)]

I am interested in the mitigations, which are the reason we have this great gap between what would seem to be a security threat and Peter Mandelson being appointed. I cannot find any documents about that, but I have found that in written evidence to the Foreign Affairs Committee in September 2025—after the appointment, and when it was about to be withdrawn—Ian Collard said that he had requested a copy of the vetting summary. He made some notes based on the summary as an aide-mémoire, in case it was needed, and submitted them for the Humble Address. I am interested in seeing what the notes are of the mitigations: the man responsible for the mitigations took a note—presumably of what he had seen—and put it in for the Humble Address, yet it is not in the papers.

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend. Officials leading the process will have heard the exchange—and this exchange—in relation to that specific point about Ian Collard. As the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister set out in his statement on Monday, the documents with the Metropolitan police fall into several categories: internal correspondence relating to Peter Mandelson, and documents in relation to conflict of interest and national security vetting. I appreciate the point that my right hon. Friend makes and officials will have heard the exchange between her and me.

[Emily Thornberry]

I want to make it clear that the document I referred to is not part of the original decision making; it is an aide-mémoire that Ian Collard made. If I cannot see the original documents, can I at least see that later one?

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

As ever, my right hon. Friend makes her case forcefully. I am treading carefully in my language because this process has been led by officials working with the ISC. The officials working on it will have heard the request that she just made.

[Sir John Hayes]

I will take up the point that the right hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry) raised about mitigation later in the debate—should I catch your eye, Madam Deputy Speaker, which is not a given. Will the Minister address the issue of when the Metropolitan police asked for information on UK vetting? We will not know the granular detail because the executive decision based on precedent was made, although my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) has challenged the precedent. However, there was an assumption that some information on vetting would be made available, perhaps in a redacted form having been considered first by the ISC—I will say no more than that. We now hear that no information on vetting will be made available until the Metropolitan police has finished its work, when it will come back through the ISC according to the process agreed as part of the Humble Address. When did the Metropolitan police begin to take an interest in the vetting part of all this, and why?

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

To the right hon. Gentleman’s direct question, I have not been part of the process or been given precise dates for when the Metropolitan police said what. However, I will say this: the documents with the Metropolitan police have been viewed by the chair of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, the hon. Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare), so within the confines of not wishing to undermine the ongoing investigation we have tried to be as transparent as we can be with Parliament at this stage. In addition, the summary document of the vetting has been shared with the Intelligence and Security Committee, so to the extent that we have been able to share documents, we have. The request in this debate from the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington South and Finsbury, will no doubt have been heard as well.

Let me turn to the issue of redactions, which I started to develop in earlier answers to interventions. I will not repeat what the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister said on Monday, nor the methodological note that is available for right hon. and hon. Members to look at, but I want to clarify some issues so that there is no doubt about the process that was followed. As I have said, no material was redacted on grounds of prejudice to national security or international relations without the ISC’s approval. The redactions agreed with the ISC are all triple-asterisked throughout the publication. When you see the three asterisks, that material was agreed with the ISC to be redacted.

On my point about precedent in the earlier exchange with the right hon. Member for New Forest East, the redactions were limited to the names of junior officials, contact details such as telephone numbers and email addresses, the personal or commercially sensitive data of third parties not relevant to the motion, and some cases where there was legal professional privilege. That is in line with the process that has been followed by successive Administrations in relation to Humble Address motions. Those redactions are clearly labelled in the publication. To reconfirm, no Government Minister or special adviser has determined any of the redactions; that was done by the official-led process. I echo the comments made by the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister on Monday in thanking the Chair of the PACAC, the hon. Member for North Dorset, who is not in his place, for reviewing our approach to the third-party redactions and the material withheld, so as not to prejudice the ongoing police investigations and to ensure that we are being transparent with Parliament, as we should be.

Let me turn to the specific point about the Metropolitan police. Everyone across the House will appreciate the need not to prejudice the investigation, and will understand that I am unable to answer questions about certain documents that have been withheld. They include questions to Peter Mandelson by the Prime Minister’s then chief of staff and Peter Mandelson’s responses. The remaining documents, as I said a moment or two ago, fall broadly into the following categories: national security vetting material, conflict of interest process material and relevant internal correspondence with Peter Mandelson. Such information will be published in due course, either at the conclusion of the investigation, or at a point, if there were one, at which publication would no longer be prejudicial to the police investigation.

On 4 February, the House made its will clear.

[Emily Thornberry]

It may be that I am just lacking in imagination, but I do not understand why the police would not allow us to see the letter from the Foreign Office to Peter Mandelson saying, “You are given this job subject to not having anything to do with x, y and z”, or whatever the mitigations were. At the moment, we just do not have anything at all and so it is very difficult to understand why he was appointed. We are told that we need to wait for some time in the future—there is no date by which that will be disclosed—and at that stage all will become clear. It is as if the central point of the investigation and all these thousands of pages do not amount to anything until the police eventually decide to give us those crucial documents.

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

It is, quite rightly, for the police and not for Ministers to determine the way in which they want their investigation to proceed and to identify documents that they feel are reasonable lines of inquiry. However, to give the House reassurance, even that class of documents was viewed by the Chair of PACAC—obviously, under particular controlled circumstances —because we wanted for Parliament the level of transparency that we could provide at that stage, despite the ongoing investigation.

The Government have discharged their duty to the House in complying with the Humble Address motion, aside from that small amount of information that will be subsequently published in a final tranche. As Members will have seen, Monday’s publication complies with the spirit and the letter of the motion, as well as being one of the largest ever publications laid in this House. Members have had some time to consider the document—certainly, since Monday—and I am grateful to the Leader of the House for making further time to debate the issue today. I know that throughout the course of the debate, Members will be conscious of not prejudicing the ongoing criminal investigation. I am grateful to the House for understanding the position the Government have taken and my position on answering questions on that.

I look forward to the debate before the House. The Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister will close and respond to points made during the debate. I commend the motion to the—

[Martin Wrigley (Newton Abbot) (LD)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

I will, just.

[Martin Wrigley]

I was trying not to interrupt his flow—[Interruption.] Until I did.

Throughout the files there are mentions of Palantir and Peter Mandelson, including a memo in which he tries to introduce Peter Thiel to No. 10 staff in June last year. Even though Mr Louis Mosley has written to me today suggesting that Peter Mandelson was not intervening regarding Palantir business with the Government, does the Minister agree that he still was doing so?

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

I reject the suggestion that there is any wrongdoing, as regards Palantir contracts being renewed—I think one was renewed by the Ministry of Defence—in the way that the hon. Gentleman suggests. I reject that absolutely. On the meeting between the Prime Minister and Peter Thiel, to be clear, that did not happen.

[Kirsty Blackman (Aberdeen North) (SNP)]

rose—

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Ind)]

rose—

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

We have set off a surge of interventions. I will give way to the hon. Lady and then the right hon. Gentleman, and that is it.

[Kirsty Blackman]

I was listening to the reassurances the Minister gave about the material that has been provided, and the fact that this is all the material bar that which is being held back. May I just ask for a further assurance from the Minister that if things do come to light, which were not found in what I appreciate were significant trawls, and which constitute correspondence that would fit the Humble Address terms, he will follow up and ensure that those things are published as well as the stuff that has been held back because of the police investigations?

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

I do not expect that to happen, but of course if it did, we would consider it. I will finally give way to the right hon. Member for Islington North.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I thank the Minister for giving way; he is being very generous with his time. Is he able to confirm whether Peter Mandelson had divested himself of all his financial interests in companies, including peripheries or actuality of Palantir, while he was ambassador in Washington?

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

That of course strays into the conflict of interests class of documents, which is still one of the classes that is with the Metropolitan police.

I conclude by saying again that it is very important that the House has this debate today. From the debate in February to today, I have certainly taken my duties, and indeed the Government’s duties, to the House very seriously, as has my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister—I think today is his eleventh appearance in the House on this matter. He will, of course, close the debate and answer any further questions. I commend the motion to the House.