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The hon. Gentleman is talking about full transparency, and the ministerial code says that Ministers must be “open and transparent”. When the Prime Minister came to the House in February and said that the reason he sacked Mandelson was because he had lied to him about his relationship with Epstein, was that a full and transparent account of the reasons why Mandelson should not have had the job?
I think the remaining people who want Starmer to remain the Prime Minister are those who are worried about who the Labour party might pick instead. The hon. Lady seems to be sharing all sorts of whataboutery information, but has she considered that the outrage is not manufactured? It is a huge national security concern that our ambassador, who had access to security information at the highest level, was a security risk to this country.
The Chancellor will be aware of how important aviation is to the UK economy, particularly Heathrow, which is responsible for a huge amount of air freight and economic activity in my constituency. Given the reports regarding the supply chain for kerosene used in aviation, what measures is the Chancellor taking to ensure kerosene supply? What consideration has she given to tax relief to ensure that our aviation sector is sustainable and continues to contribute to the UK economy?
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. I have listened carefully to his speech. Given what he heard at the Committee this morning and his background and experience, does he regret Olly Robbins’s sacking?
Yesterday, I sat through over two and a half hours of questions and responses to the Prime Minister. His responses were pretty much focused on process, when really what is fundamental to the issue at hand are judgment and national security. We do not need some sort of fancy UK vetting dossier to know that Mandelson is a risk to national security. What is more, above and beyond the impact on the victims of Epstein, it is a fact, surely, that the FCDO and the machineries of Government knew that the American Administration very likely had compromising information on Epstein. Despite Mandelson’s close association with Epstein, we appointed him as ambassador to a foreign power—admittedly an ally, but nevertheless a foreign power—to conduct difficult negotiations that would be critical to our national interest, knowing that it was highly likely that that country had compromising information on that individual. That, for me, is the most egregious, fundamental failure to protect our national security. We have learned that this was a political decision. It was the Prime Minister’s decision but, what is more, it reflects on all Ministers, given their collective responsibility. I strongly believe in forgiveness. The Prime Minister has come here and made an apology, of sorts. It was a very caveated apology: “I didn’t know. People didn’t tell me. People lied and lied to my team.” We know that our apologies have value only if we truly believe that we did something wrong. The Prime Minister needs to finally show some leadership and take responsibility for his actions, for all of us.
The Minister will be aware that the election campaigns for the Surrey West and Surrey East unitaries are ongoing as a consequence of this legislation, but we still have not had an announcement on whether we will get a mayor for Surrey. That will be critical for protecting our green belt if the Conservatives do not retain power after the elections. Can she update the House on the importance of protecting our green belt and getting a mayor for Surrey who can do so?
9. If she will suspend the process to ratify the UK-Mauritius treaty.
The Chagos islands are even further from my constituency than they are from Mauritius, which is saying something, but this is having a significant local impact. Hillingdon council is now caring for hundreds of Chagossians fleeing to this country through Heathrow airport to escape the consequences of the Government’s proposed deal, which is placing huge financial pressure on my local authority. Will the Minister undertake to cancel this proposed UK-Mauritius treaty, to bring certainty about the future of the base and ensure that my constituents do not continue to bear the consequences of those forced to flee by the Government’s actions?
I first crossed paths with the Prime Minister when he and I were both working to improve the way our country deals with cases of child sexual exploitation. One of the principles that was enshrined in law across our society as a result of that was accountability—the golden thread between the leaders, managerial and political, and those who follow their instructions. It was very clear that if you led an organisation where mistakes were made and if you ignored the warnings, you were accountable. If you created a culture in which those warnings were not properly shared, you were accountable. It is not at all clear why the Prime Minister, given all he learned and all he did in those days, has decided to abandon that position. It was said of the Prime Minister: “Pretty much the first time I’ve seen him angry was when he commissioned the…report. He was angry because he did not know. He wondered why the escalation process did not permit the case to be referred up to his office.” Those words do not refer to anything to do with Peter Mandelson. They date to the decision of the Crown Prosecution Service not to proceed against Jimmy Savile. However, those words in The Guardian could refer exactly to the matter we are debating today. I gently say to Government Members that while past performance is not a guide to the future, this is a Prime Minister who has form in deploying exactly this defence when caught out. I cannot let this debate pass without raising an issue that is of great concern to my many constituents who work at HMS Warrior, the Northwood Headquarters base on the edge of my constituency. As my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition has set out, as a result of the Prime Minister’s dismissive attitude to vetting and the pressure he placed on officials, an individual was given access to intelligence on which my constituents rely to keep them safe when they undertake operations at a very high level of personal risk for the benefit and long-term interests of this country. Yet the Prime Minister refuses to accept any accountability for the risk at which his decision may have placed my constituents and their loved ones, as well as so many other people who serve our country. I hope the Minister will be able to give the House an unambiguous assurance on behalf of the Prime Minister that whatever was shared with the Prime Minister and with Ministers, the necessary minimum risk mitigations were put in place, so that we can at least be confident that this Government thought to try to keep my constituents and those who serve our country safe.
Has the Foreign Secretary made any assessment of what impact the conflict is having on the horrendous humanitarian situation in Yemen? Given Iran’s continued support for the Houthis, does she believe that in discussions to end the conflict there will be some opportunity to make a positive impact on that conflict?
Our ambassador in Washington stands at the nexus of the Five Eyes, with more classified intelligence crossing his desk than crosses the desks of most Cabinet Ministers. It is obviously one of the most important appointments the Prime Minister makes, but it is also one of the most sensitive. A security failure in that post could seriously jeopardise the Five Eyes relationship—the Americans are notoriously twitchy about security—so the appointee’s conduct before the appointment must be beyond reproach and their trustworthiness must be impeccable. One of our best ambassadors, Karen Pierce, was already in place. She was highly regarded by the State Department and the White House; indeed—contrary to what the Lib Dem leader said—so much so that President Trump called the Prime Minister to urge him to keep Pierce while expressing concern about Mandelson in one of three calls from the White House on her behalf and against him. She was a high-class, high-performance, zero-risk choice. Against that, we had the London establishment’s view that Mandelson’s amoral dark arts would somehow make him a good ambassador—a view typically espoused by people with no idea of what makes a good ambassador. Among the questions before us in assessing the Prime Minister’s judgment is whether Mandelson was a better appointment than Karen Pierce and, if so, whether the benefit of that appointment was sufficient to outweigh the clear risks. Of course, the answer to both those questions is an emphatic no. It was abundantly clear to anyone taking that decision that he was a significant security risk. He was a man who had twice been forced to resign from Government and who had known links to a paedophile. Mandelson was also closely associated with the Russian oligarch Deripaska, a man who had been responsible for the deaths of 100 people and was personally responsible for murders and extortion. Mr Mandelson—Lord Mandelson, as he was then—spent weekends with Deripaska in his dacha and in Moscow. He did this at weekends, of course, because the EU does not record where its commissioners are at the weekend. That is the sort of background we are talking about. As we heard from my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Essex (Mrs Badenoch), the leader of my party, Mandelson was also a non-executive director of Sistema, a Russian arms dealing company led by a Putin ally. When he stood down from his role at Sistema, he took a large shareholding, which he kept for some time. All of this is in the public domain. It was in the public domain before Mandelson was appointed. There were links to China, too. I can list them over and over again: TikTok, which is owned by the Chinese state; and Shein, which is based on Uyghur forced labour. Of course, he also called time and again for closer Anglo-Chinese relationships. When appointments such as these are made, it is not a judgment beyond reasonable doubt. It is not even a judgment based on the balance of probabilities. It is a judgment on significant risk. Are we going to take a significant risk with the Five Eyes relationship? Of course we are not. It should be clear, on public data alone, that this man is, or was, a significant risk. Indeed, the propriety and ethics team in the Cabinet Office flagged to No. 10 most of the issues I have just described before this process started. Mr Speaker, forgive me for being so direct, but we should remember that Peter Mandelson is a man who has proven that he is greedy for money, greedy for glamour, greedy for status and greedy for power, and that he is willing to break the rules to get them. That is the key point: he is willing to break the rules to get them. Such a man is a classic security risk in the face of Russian or Chinese kompromat, not to mention the risk posed by his known involvement with Epstein.
That is the public information. If the hon. Gentleman wants to get into the argument between UKVS, which we are now told was saying the risk was marginal, and No. 10, who are saying that the strike-off is a red, he can do that. I am talking about public data, and about what we should know before we start the process—
No, no, the hon. Gentleman has had his go. Sit down. No. 10 has chosen to ignore these things, and that is critical. We have heard about the pressure that was being put on the Foreign Office over and over again. Forgive me again, Mr Speaker, for this direct quote, because it is obscene. The Select Committee Chairman recounted today how Morgan McSweeney called Sir Olly’s predecessor and told him to, “Just fucking approve it.” Speaking in the Committee, Sir Olly made it clear that he was under “constant pressure” in an “atmosphere of constant chasing”. Why? We already know that it was not because Mandelson was a materially better candidate than Karen Pierce, the brilliant, well-established, highly regarded incumbent with excellent connections to the White House. It was because Mandelson was a leading member of the new Labour aristocracy, full stop. It was not talent, but connection. It was not even in the national interest. Plainly it was not even in the Labour interest. It was in the interest of a Labour clique. Mandelson’s appointment was a decision made with complete disregard for the known risks, which explains the Prime Minister’s lack of curiosity about the vetting. It was not a lack of curiosity; he did not ask because he did not want to know. The former Cabinet Secretary warned the Prime Minister that he should secure Mandelson’s security clearance before any appointment. He was warned on 11 December 2024 by the Cabinet Office about Mandelson’s public past. On 11 September last year, No. 10 was asked by a journalist whether Mandelson had failed developed vetting. No. 10 knew. It is as plain as a pikestaff. So where do we go from here? We have a Prime Minister and a Government in power who are making decisions in the interests of their own clique within their party, and in doing so they are putting the United Kingdom at explicit risk. The Prime Minister should resign.
I came in to watch the Committee. Sir Olly actually said that the advice he was given by his director of intelligence was “borderline”. One issue that was not clear was whether the pressure from No. 10 was simply on him or on all members of the channel, down to lower levels.
Order. Can we proceed without an unseemly exchange across the Dispatch Box? I would like to be able to hear the question from the hon. Member for Bristol Central (Carla Denyer), and I am sure that the Chancellor might also like to hear it so that she can respond.
I plan to let this statement run only until 2 o’clock. Many Members are still standing, so short questions and perhaps short answers would be very helpful in allowing me to get in as many as possible.
I thank the right hon. Member for his point of order, and for providing notice of it. Although Ministers are responsible for the accuracy of their remarks at the Dispatch Box, I am very clear as Chair that this is of the utmost importance and that Ministers must take their responsibilities to this House seriously. If the right hon. Member requires further advice on what may or may not constitute this House being inadvertently misled, I suggest that he follow up on the specific concerns with the Clerk of the Journals in the first instance.
I thank the hon. Member for his point of order, and for giving me some notice of it. He will have heard my earlier response. The Chair is not responsible for ministerial answers, but Ministers should take their responsibilities seriously to make sure that answers are correct. I note that representatives of the Treasury Bench are still sat there. I am sure the message will be passed back to the Chancellor, but he will have heard her response to the hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Sorcha Eastwood). I do not intend to continue this debate via the Chair.
The hon. Lady will have heard my earlier responses. She has most certainly put the matter firmly on the record. As I have said, the Chair is not responsible for ministerial answers, but I am sure that those on the Treasury Bench have heard her and other points of order loud and clear this afternoon.
Order. Hon. Members have turned up in their droves to listen to the hon. Lady’s ten-minute rule Bill; they might have the courtesy to listen quietly while we are hearing about road noise on the A180.
This is a particularly sorry saga. It is corrosive for not just this Government and the Labour party, but the entire political class and politicians as a collective body and it is certainly corrosive for the country. That is because a theme has emerged from this episode and others under this Government around competency—or what the public would probably see as a general theme of incompetency. It is frankly ludicrous and laughable that we have got to this point. For the best part of two decades, Peter Mandelson’s name has been a byword for sleaze and incompetence, and that is before we knew about the risks that he could continue to pose to our national security if he were given a position. The corrosiveness of this Government and their incompetency is borne out in all the decisions they have U-turned over—I think we are up to 18 U-turns in two years. We have seen the corrosive effects of Government policy across the board, whether it is on the economy or on the price that businesses are paying, as a result of questions that the Government have not asked. That begs the question about the Prime Minister’s general incuriosity about seemingly everything—least of all this, the most serious of issues. Peter Mandelson was known to be a paedophile-adjacent character at the time that the Prime Minister took the decision, seemingly at any cost, to appoint him as ambassador to the United States. As many Members have said, it seems that that happened because he was seen as a particularly slick operator at the top of the Labour party, and he was seemingly untouchable to so many. It is a great shame that it has got to this point, with this ongoing debacle and scandal, and the Prime Minister’s evasion, to cause the downfall of Peter Mandelson. Unanswered questions remain, including a really simple one that has been asked many times, although we have not had an answer. I would love to know, as would my constituents and many in this House, what seemingly virtuous qualities of Peter Mandelson warranted the on-balance very serious risk that the Government took in pursuing his appointment. The pressure placed on the Foreign Office when clearing and appointing Mandelson has become apparent over the past few weeks, particularly this morning following the testimony of Olly Robbins, and it is frankly reprehensible. We heard that Olly Robbins was told to get that done at any cost: effectively to ride roughshod over good moral conduct to deliver the will of the Prime Minister. We are starting to hear glimmers that certain people at the top of Government—perhaps in the Cabinet—advised the Prime Minister or the Cabinet Office that they were not comfortable with that, but the Prime Minister was completely ignorant of it throughout the whole process. We now know that Peter Mandelson was effectively appointed and given access to sensitive security information before his security clearance was granted. I have a direct question for the Minister: is he aware of whether Peter Mandelson had access to sensitive information prior to the security clearance recommendation coming through? If the Minister is not aware of that, what review is being put in place to ascertain the level of that information, and what risk management will be put in place to mitigate the effects of the exposure of any sensitive information that Peter Mandelson may have obtained before the security clearance came through? There is another question of accountability. Many of us in the House, and people in the country at large, would love to know why the bar of personal accountability is so low for everyone else, yet impossibly high for the Prime Minister. If I had had the chance yesterday—lots of Members wanted to speak and I understand why I did not get an opportunity—I would have loved to have asked the Prime Minister whether he had considered resigning at any point, and if not, why not. How many more people have to be blamed or scapegoated before this becomes a situation where the Prime Minister does the decent thing and resigns? How many more twists and turns does this saga have to follow before the Prime Minister does the right thing? I can tell the Minister—he is looking somewhat uncomfortable; I commend him for coming to the Front Bench today—that my constituents are sick and tired of the evasiveness of this Prime Minister. They want him to do the decent thing and to resign.
On that point, will the hon. Gentleman give way?
T8. Ministers will be aware that Ashab al-Yamin has claimed responsibility for the terrorist attacks across north-west London on Jewish synagogues, places of worship, businesses and homes. That is a group that takes its orders directly from Iran and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. What action have Ministers taken to call in the diplomats from Iran and expel them, because they are instructing terrorist attacks on our citizens?
The Government recently informed me that they have received 64 category 2 type B extradition notices under section 70 of the Extradition Act 2003, of which 56 have been certified. Fewer than five of those come from Bangladesh. Can the Minister confirm how many of those relate to Members of this House, and whether there are any Interpol red notices that apply to Members of this House?
In the readout of the Prime Minister’s meeting on 15 April on vetting, it states: “There is no evidence that the decision to grant DV despite the UKSV advice had been disclosed to anyone outside FCDO and UKSV” until the vetting document itself was shared with the permanent secretary of the Cabinet Office. Is the Prime Minister therefore saying that neither the Chair of the Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security nor the National Security Adviser were aware of the security risk with our most important strategic ally until the vetting document itself was shared with Cat Little?
My constituency has a large and growing Jewish population, but because of Labour’s VAT hike, Immanuel college, a Jewish school in my constituency, announced last week that it was closing. At a time of rising antisemitism, and deep fear among the Jewish community, access to a Jewish education is more important than ever, but that announcement risks depriving many Jewish students in my constituency and the wider area of access to one. What assurances can the Secretary of State give those children and their parents about access to such an education, particularly when local Jewish state schools are enormously oversubscribed?
Further to the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis), I think the Prime Minister owes it to the House to tell us what Sir Olly Robbins’s response to him was when he said he had overruled that advice. In my experience, senior officials are very keen to deliver on the wishes of Ministers, particularly a newly elected Prime Minister. My concern is that implicitly, as other Members have said, Sir Olly Robbins was responding to a desire from the Prime Minister, because it was perfectly clear in all the newspapers that there were allegations about Peter Mandelson, but the Prime Minister decided to proceed anyway. The official wished to deliver on the desire of the Minister, and that is why he overruled the advice. I fear that it gave the Prime Minister a degree of plausible deniability.
Who first suggested to the Prime Minister that Mandelson should be appointed as our ambassador to the United States, or was it just his own idea? Did it never cross his mind that Mandelson was at risk of failing the vetting process? Before sacking Oliver Robbins last week, did the Prime Minister ask him why he overruled the verdict of the security vetters, and if so, what was his explanation?
The result of the Prime Minister’s terrible failure of judgment is that for over a year this country’s interests were represented in the United States by someone that our own security services deemed to be a security risk. Will he assure us that an investigation will take place into all aspects where our national security may have been damaged, and that the results of that will be made available to the Intelligence and Security Committee and, where possible, to Parliament?
When I was privileged to serve as Security Minister, the Prime Minister was my shadow. As we dealt with matters of the most significant national security, he was straightforward with me, as I was with him, so I hope that he will answer this straightforward question. The Humble Address made it clear that the Intelligence and Security Committee will see any material related to national security or international relations. In the course of the Committee’s work, we have liaised with the Cabinet Office, clearly. When did the Cabinet Office know about this failure in vetting, who knew, and why did they not bring that material to the Committee when they found it? We had not received it when the Prime Minister found out that the vetting had failed, yet others must have known that it had failed.
The Prime Minister has been very clear about his view of the urgency of his response since he learned of this vetting information, so I want to ask him about the events of last week. He will know that the Intelligence and Security Committee asked for any information relevant to vetting to be supplied to it in the first tranche of information we were to consider. We did not receive anything about vetting at that time. The Prime Minister has now told us that he became aware on Tuesday evening of the information he has set out, but the Intelligence and Security Committee was not told about the existence of that information—information that the Prime Minister must have recognised was within the terms of the Humble Address and would need to be supplied to the ISC. We were not told by his officials about the existence of that information until Thursday, after its existence had been published in The Guardian newspaper. As such, I am bound to ask the Prime Minister this: if that information’s existence had not been disclosed by the press, would we have been told about it? If so, why did the ISC have to learn of its existence from The Guardian and not from the Government?
Can I return to the nub of what this is about? The Prime Minister knew, as we all knew, of the representations about who should be the ambassador—in this case, a man who had been sacked twice out of Cabinet but, more than that, a man whose clear links with Chinese companies and whose meetings with Xi were in the public domain at the time, as were his time at Sistema, where he stayed after the invasion in 2014, and his meetings with Putin. There was also, of course, his relationship with Deripaska, who was negotiating on the tax levels and tariffs on aluminium when he was the EU commissioner responsible. With all that going on at the time of the Prime Minister’s announcement of that man into the ambassadorial position, why did he think he did not know something about him? The Prime Minister knew that he was corrupt, he was corrupting and he was the wrong choice. Surely that is why the Prime Minister overturned Case’s advice to have the review before he made the decision.
Lords amendment 11 relates to the police powers to crush vehicles, which are rarely used for fly-tipping. I remind my hon. Friend and the House that similar powers exist for hare coursing. Once one or two high-profile hare coursing cases had been handled that way, it had a dramatic effect on reducing that crime.
On 4 February, my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition asked the Prime Minister: “did the official security vetting that he received mention Mandelson’s ongoing relationship with… Jeffrey Epstein?”—[Official Report, 4 February 2026; Vol. 780, c. 259.] The Prime Minister replied, “Yes, it did.” What on earth was it that the Prime Minister received and was talking about that my right hon. Friend referred to as the official security vetting? He said that he had received it.
May I just point out that the developed vetting process has always been highly protected because otherwise it would not work? People would not give information to the developed vetting process if they thought that any detail of it was likely to be disclosed, or even if they thought that the result—the assessment of low, medium or high risk—was likely to be exposed. That is why the previous Labour Government wrote section 3 into the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010: in order to prohibit that disclosure. If the Prime Minister is saying that developed vetting information will now be available to Ministers on a routine basis, would he not be undermining the very process upon which we depend for our national security?
Thank you, Mr Speaker. One reason for improved academic standards in our schools under the last Government was the ability for good schools to expand and for failing schools to be put under new leadership. How will the Secretary of State ensure that underachieving schools with falling numbers are transformed with new and rigorous leadership, rather than conscripting unwilling parents to send their children to them?
The Minister might remember that, in a debate on these amendments on 25 March, she and I had an exchange in which I described the very long explanation that she had given as a “load of waffle”, and she replied: “We have listened directly to the families about what they want. We could have brought forward an amendment that simply extended the time limit, but the families told us directly that that was not what they wanted.”—[Official Report, 25 March 2026; Vol. 783, c. 332.] The amendment to extend the period to 180 days is very welcome, but when the Minister said on 25 March that that was not what the families wanted, was she inadvertently misleading the House?
Further to the question asked by my right hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere (Sir Oliver Dowden), is it not pretty poor form that the Prime Minister shovels the blame for this particularly on to Olly Robbins, a fine and experienced civil servant, who was appointed two days after the Prime Minister’s Mandelson announcement? Surely, the buck stops at the top.
I am grateful to Members for bobbing to indicate they would like to take part in the debate.
Order. It might be helpful to know that some Members have approached me to say they have spoken to Mr Speaker, as they may need to move around. They will ask to intervene if they want a Member to give way, and Members can give way if they are specifically asked.