Humble Address: Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor

With your permission, Madam Deputy Speaker, I wish to make a statement on the Government’s return to the Humble Address on Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. I will speak briefly, because I am conscious of the time.

I have today laid before the House documents that the Government have identified that the House requested in its 24 February 2026 Humble Address, covering the creation of the role of special representative for trade and investment in 2001, the appointment of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, and the advice of officials and Ministers.s This has not been straightforward. Departments have changed in the intervening years and most documentation was then paper-based. In addition, we have had to be careful about not compromising the police investigation. I am glad to say that we have published 11 documents today, including: the formal appointment proposal, evidence that Ministers were content with the proposal, internal communications, and media and press briefings. The documents speak for themselves, and all hon. Members can read them as they are available in the Vote Office.

I want to assure the House that we have proceeded on the basis of maximum transparency and have only redacted material that bears no relevance to Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, such as travel proposals for other members of the royal family or content that would otherwise prejudice international relations. I reiterate that the Government are fully co-operating with Thames Valley police in their investigation into potential misconduct in public office. I commend this statement to the House.

I call the shadow Minister.

I thank the Minister for advance sight of both the long and short versions of his statement. We support the Humble Address and continue to support full transparency in this matter. I have just a few questions.

I think the Minister said that this is just the start of a full disclosure. Will he share with the House whether there will be further disclosure, or is this the final amount? If there are to be further tranches, will he give the House a clear and final timetable for when the process will be complete? Is the absence of a formal record of due diligence or any vetting process evidence that the Government raised no questions at the time about the appointment? Where, if anywhere, are the documented concerns or challenge from officials or Ministers at the time?

When will the full set of files that this House requested relating to Lord Mandelson’s role, and particularly any advice, correspondence or due diligence connected to his appointment, be released to the House? Finally, the Minister has a large trade envoy programme under his responsibility. What due diligence are the Government doing on appointees to that trade envoy programme, and do those appointees follow a code of conduct that governs their behaviour?

Yes, there was a long version but, to be honest, I would basically have been reading out the written ministerial statement that we laid at 10.30 am. Much as I love the sound of my own voice, I am not sure that the House does—I think I have united the House on that—so I thought I would go for the shorter version. The papers speak for themselves.

The hon. Lady asked whether there will be more. I suspect that there will not. I think that this is nearly everything—certainly, this is everything that we have come across so far. Of course, we will keep on looking, notwithstanding the complexity around searching in paper-based systems in multiple Departments. I give the House a guarantee that if there is more to publish, I will come back with more, but I suspect that this may be our last tranche.

The hon. Lady asked whether Ministers raised questions at the time. I have published everything that relates to that period. There is nothing else, I think, to be found. The statements that say Ministers were content is the sum total of the response. I suppose, to some degree, that is understandable, bearing in mind that the palace had made it very clear that Her late Majesty was very keen that Andrew be given a job, that Andrew was keen to take on the job, and that the job had previously been done by another member of the royal family in broadly the same terms.

They’re Labour.

I hear the right hon. Member’s chuntering, in his regular application process to be made a trade envoy. I am still considering his proposal.

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

The Minister has so far given us two reasons why the statement he has just given at the Dispatch Box is different from the one that was sent, embargoed, an hour ago. If it is the same as the written statement, why was it sent out as embargoed? I should also say, dare I say it, that transparency should not be trumped by time limits in relation to the business of this House.

It has been three months since the House passed the Liberal Democrat Humble Address to release the files showing how and why Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor was appointed as a UK special representative for trade and investment, and until today the Government have published only one written statement, which told us very little. The Minister has not previously come to the Dispatch Box at all; I note the difference from the response to the Humble Address, in the name of the official Opposition, relating to Peter Mandelson.

The files that we have seen show that there was no vetting by the Government and that, even then, no questions appear to have been asked. The lack of documentation provided is itself concerning, as is the time taken to get this far. The Minister has said that he is not sure whether there are more documents. When will he be sure, and when will he release any remaining documents? The documents we do have clearly show concerns about the potential for conflicts of interest. It started with golf, but we all know what came next. Why did that not lead to any scrutiny or vetting, not just at the start but at any stage during Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s tenure as an envoy? The guardrails were not in place. The appointment came into effect more than a year after Ministers said that they were happy for it to happen, and the files also show that the then Prime Minister had been aware from the start and did nothing. There was time for the warning signs to be taken seriously. Why were no questions asked at all in that period?

If I am honest, I am bit miffed by the attitude of Liberal Democrat Front Benchers, because I have regularly updated them ever since the Humble Address was passed. I have been as open as possible with them, and they have privately indicated to me, regularly, that they were perfectly happy with the progress we were making.

I thought there would be some difficulties for us to overcome, in particular the connection between the Humble Address and the police investigation—obviously, we do not want to do anything that might imperil the investigation. I think all hon. Members would agree that, if the police were to find evidence and felt that the Crown Prosecution Service should take forward charges of misconduct in public office, we would all support the prosecuting authorities in doing their duty. I explained all that to the hon. Lady’s hon. Friends, who indicated that they were perfectly happy with that process. I had thought that the police might ask us not to publish some of the material; in fact, they have been very co-operative and have allowed us to publish everything.

We have made some minor redactions, as I have said. Some of those relate to material that has absolutely nothing to do with Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. For instance, where there is talk about the Royal Visits Committee or visits by other members of the royal family, we have redacted that material, as we have material where there are possibilities that we might upset our international allies.

May I just say for the record that I have not made any formal application to be a trade and investment envoy? I previously was a trade and investment envoy under Prime Minister Theresa May, who is now in another place. What I am concerned about is the fact that this particular programme is not cross-party. It was set up by David Cameron, now Lord Cameron, and its strength, I felt, was in the fact that it was cross-party rather than full of mostly Labour Members and Labour peers. I just wanted to put that on the record.

The Minister references the amount of paper-based documentation, but of course, we have not all gone to the cloud overnight. If he goes down to the National Archives at Kew, he will find a lot of paper records going back quite a long time, not just from the last 20 or so years.

On a more substantive point, I want to ask the Minister about the role of the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. He will know, as a former Foreign Office Minister, that diplomatic telegrams are sent by embassies—often by ambassadors—back to London, and possibly even to the royal household. I wonder whether any of those have been disclosed in the papers, which I have not had time to read today because they have only just been laid.

Finally, have any of those diptels, or responses to them, made their way to the office of senior officials in the royal household? Did they know anything about the activities of the former Prince Andrew? Who did they speak to about it, and what action, if any, was taken?

The right hon. Gentleman says he has not applied for a post as a trade envoy. I do not want to show the House the text messages he sent me, but anyway, he makes a fair point. I want to make sure that the trade envoy programme is really effective and delivers around the world. I was with Lord Alderdice the other day, who is not a member of the Labour party, at the London stock exchange when the Uzbek national investment fund was being listed in the UK. His intervention in Uzbekistan has been enormously important in taking forward some of these investments into the UK and listings at the LSE. Indeed, we could see a further investment at the LSE, which would be the biggest ever listing here. The hon. Member for Mid Norfolk (George Freeman), who is a Conservative Member, is also a trade envoy and does a good job.

I did not understand the right hon. Gentleman’s question about diptels. As I said earlier, we are trawling through everything we can to see whether there is anything else that is of relevance under the Humble Address terms. So far, we have published everything we have that is relevant. I can guarantee the House that if there is anything more, we will of course come forward.

I was also asked by the hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain) whether there was any monitoring of the relationship between Andrew and Jeffrey Epstein. I did not answer that question; I apologise. I have seen absolutely nothing to that effect. If I had, I would have published it.

May I first make it clear that I have no desire to be a trade envoy? Aberdeen is the best place on earth and I do not want to be anywhere else if I can help it.

The Minister of State said in his statement that people are still looking. Will he advise us if they stop looking? I appreciate that they might currently be actively looking because there may be boxes that they have not gone through, but will he advise us when there is definitely an end to this, unless somebody accidentally comes across something?

My second question relates to future trade envoys. I am not sure how much the process for appointing them has changed, but can he give us a reassurance that the process is much better than it used to be? If it is not, can he give us a reassurance that he will look at that, so that we can all feel comfortable that our trade envoys are the right people, or certainly not the wrong people, to be doing that job?

I am grateful to the hon. Lady that she does not want to be a trade envoy. I often feel as if I am a trade envoy for Scotland, because we are often securing good deals, as we just have with the Gulf Co-operation Council, and in India. We have just done remarkably well—

I see the right hon. Lady representing Plaid Cymru shaking her head; we have just done really well for Welsh lamb farmers in the GCC deal in the Gulf.

Will I come back to the House when we stop looking? I do not think there will be any more material. Obviously, I will come back if there is more material. I will probably make a written ministerial statement rather than an oral statement just to say that we have ceased the process.

The hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman) asked about due diligence. It is a significant point; of course we do due diligence before anybody is appointed as a trade envoy under the present scheme, which, as I say, is very different from what happened in relation to Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. I should also say that the Business and Trade Committee is currently doing an inquiry into some of these issues. I am very happy to talk about the present trade envoy programme with the Committee, but there are delicacies about what we can say about the past in case the police investigation could be compromised. I am very keen not to do that, and I am glad that the police have been so helpful in enabling us to publish everything that we can today.