The following Statement was made in the House of Commons on Monday 9 February.
“Last week, I came to the House in the wake of information released by the United States Department of Justice about the depth and extent of Peter Mandelson’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. I outlined the immediate steps that this Government took, including an initial review of material, which ultimately led to a referral to the Metropolitan Police, and steps taken to modernise the disciplinary procedures to allow for the removal of Peers who have brought the House of Lords into disrepute. I am here today to update the House on further action that the Government will take to rebuild trust in public life in the wake of the damaging revelations since my Statement last week.
I am sure that the House will agree that issues of standards, while important in and of themselves, do not meet the scale of disgust that we all have when we see powerful, rich men misuse their positions to abuse women and girls. The procedural rules, and the rules that I will talk to the House about today, are important given what has been able to happen in the past, but we should start by recognising that our collective response requires wider changes in the culture and use of power, wherever it rests. This goes to the heart of who my right honourable friend the Prime Minister is. It is why he became a human rights lawyer in the first place, why he became Director of Public Prosecutions, why he changed the Crown Prosecution Service to be more victims-oriented, and why he became Prime Minister.
As I set out last week, Jeffrey Epstein was a despicable criminal who committed disgusting crimes. The Epstein scandal is another awful example of a culture that did not value the lives, let alone the voices, of women and girls. The series and sequencing of events across the last week have made it clear to us all, rightly, that for too long, and too often, influential people in positions of power—overwhelmingly men—have been able to avoid proper and just scrutiny because of the perverse power structures that incentivise their belief that rules do not apply to them. If I may say so, Members who are chuntering from the Conservative Benches while I am talking about the victims of sexual abuse and the abuse of power should know better and recognise that they should be quiet and listen when we are talking about victims and the justice that they deserve to seek.
Peter Mandelson’s disgraceful behaviour raises a number of questions about the ability of the current standards system to catch those few individuals who seek to break our rules. This damages all Members across the House. The vast majority of public servants, whether officials or elected Members, come to serve the public, not themselves. This House, and indeed this building, is full of people working hard, unsociable hours, and making significant personal sacrifices, in order to try to make a difference to people’s lives, to do what is best for their country, to fight for their communities, and to use their position in this place to give a voice to those whose voices are too often not heard. The issues associated with Peter Mandelson, however, show that we must go further to ensure that no one can ever again behave in this way.
Since entering government, we have delivered on our manifesto promises to strengthen the role of the independent adviser, and we have set up the Ethics and Integrity Commission, while also publishing Ministers’ interests, gifts and hospitality more frequently and reforming severance payments to ensure that they are proportionate and fair. This is significant and important reform after years of repeated ethics scandals under the last Administration. This includes restricting payments for Ministers leaving office following a serious breach of the Ministerial Code, and requiring repayment of severance for those found in breach of the business appointment rules. It is also why the Government have introduced the Public Office (Accountability) Bill—a landmark piece of legislation to tackle injustice—so that, when tragedy strikes, the state is called to account.
In response to the latest revelations in the past week, the Prime Minister has confirmed that the Government will bring forward legislation to ensure that peerages can be removed from disgraced Peers and that Peter Mandelson will be removed from the list of privy counsellors. We are changing the process for the relevant direct ministerial appointments, including politically appointed diplomatic roles, so that in cases where the role requires access to highly classified material, the selected candidate must have passed through the requisite national security vetting process before such appointments are announced or confirmed.
However, we recognise that we need to go further. We will work with the newly established Ethics and Integrity Commission to ensure that it achieves its aim of promoting the highest standards in public life. We will consider whether the current arrangements for the declaration and publication of financial interests for Ministers and senior government officials are sufficient, and whether regular published financial disclosure forms or other additional transparency measures should be used in the future.
We will look closely at our system for providing transparency around lobbying, and it is clear that we should consider again the use of non-corporate communication channels within government. Revelations from the Epstein files have shown that it has been far too easy to forward sensitive information via unofficial channels. There is a lack of clarity about the use of non-corporate communication channels within government, which has raised concerns about the security of official information, as Conservative Members know from their former Ministers forwarding information from the Government via private email accounts to people when they should not have done so. The Government recognise the consistent calls for a strategic review of these channels, the role they play in government, the legal framework in which they sit and whether the current codes of conduct and guidance relating to them are effective.
This work will focus on the issues for the Government, but it will complement a range of work being carried out both in this House and in the other place. The Government are committed to the principle that second jobs for Members of Parliament should be banned outside very limited exceptions, such as maintaining a professional qualification. The Committee on Standards is currently conducting an inquiry into second jobs, and we are working with the committee to deliver meaningful change as quickly as possible. The House is considering the legislation currently before Parliament to introduce a duty of candour, and the Prime Minister has been clear that we will bring forward legislation to enable the removal of peerages from those who have brought the House of Lords into disrepute. The Government will ask the Lords Conduct Committee to expand its work reviewing the Code of Conduct in the other place to consider whether standards issues, including the rules relating to Peers and lobbying, need to be reformed.
Finally, I want to provide the House with an update on the response to the humble Address Motion passed by the House last Wednesday. The Government are committed to publishing all relevant documents in line with the Motion agreed by the House, and we are working at pace to do so. As the House agreed on Wednesday, papers that the Government believe should not be published on national security or international relations grounds will be referred to Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee. The Prime Minister wrote to the chair of the committee on Friday, acknowledging that it is important that documents are made available to Parliament as soon as possible. As the Prime Minister has set out, the Government are committed to being as transparent as soon as possible and in full compliance with the Motion. The Prime Minister has asked the Cabinet Secretary to liaise with the Intelligence and Security Committee, and I will ensure that the House is kept updated on this work.
We have all been appalled at Jeffrey Epstein’s disgusting crimes and Peter Mandelson’s despicable behaviour. It is utterly contrary to what the Prime Minister stands for and the values at the heart of this Government. We are resolute in our commitment to fighting men’s violence against women and girls and to supporting their victims. Delivering on this mission is a critical part of our response to the terrible misogyny at the heart of the Epstein scandal. We also recognise that Peter Mandelson’s behaviour has posed difficult questions about our safeguards against corruption. I have set out today the steps the Government are taking to ensure that the British public can have confidence in the integrity of public life and, as I said last Monday and today, I will continue to update the House on these matters as our work develops. I commend this Statement to the House”.
My Lords, the problem with this Statement is that it does not address the central question of why the Prime Minister chose a twice-disgraced man, a known associate of a convicted criminal and one of the most repellent paedophiles we have ever known, to be His Majesty’s ambassador to Washington—removing an outstanding career diplomat to make way for a liar and a charlatan.
None of the extensive if rather vague measures set out in this Statement would have had any impact on what happened. The Prime Minister knew of Mandelson’s track record and that Mandelson was still in touch with Epstein, yet he promoted Mandelson. This was a massive misjudgment, as I know the noble Baroness opposite agrees, which has brought disrepute not on this House, as the Statement claimed, but on Mandelson and those who appointed him. It has also deeply embarrassed our country.
The Statement talks about a duty of candour. Can the noble Baroness the Leader of the House tell us what has happened to the public accountability Bill? When will it be brought to your Lordships’ House? In relation to candour, I draw attention to two words in the resignation statement of Morgan McSweeney. The words I refer to are, “when asked”. The resignation statement said:
“When asked, I advised the prime minister to make that appointment”.
Mr McSweeney did not write those words by accident. Who asked him about Mandelson? Was it Mr Jonathan Powell or was it the Prime Minister? Who was it? At Questions today, the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman of Darlington, said that she did not know. Can the noble Baroness tell us? If she does not know now, will she undertake to find out and let the House know?
The Statement and much of the accompanying spin threw out a lot of blame and a lot of political chaff. We have had blame cast on the vetting system. I believe that is a disservice to the highly dedicated professionals involved, but who made the appointment? If the Prime Minister did not have enough vetting information, heaven knows, he is the Prime Minister—he of all people could have asked the security services for more. The noble Baroness, Lady Chapman of Darlington, told the House at Questions that Mandelson was announced as ambassador before the vetting process was completed. Why was that? Was it not considered important?
My Lords, I must apologise for being a little late; the annunciator was not operating properly in my room. I must also apologise that I am speaking and not my noble friend Lord Purvis. He has been at the funeral of my namesake in Kirkwall today.
I wish to talk about the broader issues in the Statement and, to quote the Statement, about what we need to do
“to rebuild trust in public life in the wake of the damaging revelations”
since the Prime Minister’s Statement last week. We all face the enormous problem now of longer-term decline in public trust in politics in this country and of what this will do to make it decline further. All of us, in all parties, need to resist scoring too many points against each other and to recognise that we have a common task to rebuild that public trust.
I hope that, in that sense, the Government will take this opportunity to push through some of the reforms that the Labour Party and others have talked about but have not yet found the courage to pursue fully. I note, incidentally, that Transparency International has just lowered the UK’s rating in its Corruption Perceptions Index, which is now much closer to the American level than to the level of most European democracies. That is where we are. So I hope the Government will take this opportunity to introduce significant reforms, which we hope will command cross-party support.
I hope that these will include parliamentary scrutiny for all senior public appointments. The noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, this afternoon hinted that His Majesty’s Government are already moving in this direction. Too much power and decision-making is concentrated in Downing Street. We all recognise that the Prime Minister has too many decisions to take. Parliamentary sovereignty is a convenient myth that covers Executive domination. Political decisions and appointments would be much more acceptable if government change were approved by Parliament.
My Lords, I am grateful to both noble Lords for their questions. I understand why the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, was unusually able to contribute despite being late. He was only a couple of seconds late, and obviously I understand that the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, is at the funeral today in Orkney.
The Prime Minister has said that this was a wrong decision. He has been clear and honest about that and he has apologised. He has been clear that he was lied to by Peter Mandelson when questions were asked. He feels the sense of betrayal that a number of people feel about the answers that were given and about the trust that was broken. More importantly, when the Prime Minister apologised to Parliament, he also apologised to the women and girls who were victims of Jeffrey Epstein. If we do not keep them at the forefront of our minds, we do not learn any lessons and we do a disservice to them. Because of what has happened with Peter Manderson, they have relived this, and the impact that has had on their lives and continues to have going forward is something we have to be very aware of.
This was a betrayal on an almost industrial scale. I doubt many of us have read all the messages, but some messages were being sent in real time to Jeffrey Epstein on sometimes very sensitive matters of public policy. That is a betrayal not just of friends and colleagues but of the Government and the country, and we all take that seriously. This is not just about Peter Mandelson’s friendship with Jeffrey Epstein. These were rich, influential, powerful people, mostly men, who used their power to use and abuse young girls, often almost in plain sight. I find that unsettling and deeply shocking. This scandal went on for so long, and yet again those who were abused were not believed. There are lessons to be learned from that.
Both noble Lords raised the question of what happens next. The noble Lord, Lord True, asked about the public accountability Bill. That is being worked on at pace to get things right, and the Prime Minister has made his personal commitment to that clear. The noble Lord also asked about the vetting system and said that blame was being pushed on to it. No, but the Prime Minister has said it was a wrong decision, and he takes responsibility for that and has apologised. But if we are saying that the vetting system cannot be improved, it was the same vetting system that had been used in every other case, although clearly, lies were given to the Prime Minister. But changes are being made to a system whereby it is after an appointment has been undertaken that full vetting, as opposed to due diligence, is undertaken, for now and for the future.
My Lords, on 27 December 2025, the Sunday Times reported that the now noble Lord, Lord Doyle, had campaigned for Sean Morton after he was charged with child sex offences. The Letters Patent were not sealed until 13 January this year, so for 17 days the Prime Minister supported the process of conferring a peerage on someone who had continued an association with a known paedophile. That process of backing the noble Lord, Lord Doyle, continued until today, when the Whip was removed and an investigation has commenced. Does the Leader of the House support the removal of the peerage from the noble Lord, Lord Doyle, just as the Prime Minister has suggested should happen to Lord Mandelson?
20 of 44 shown
There is talk in the Statement of more rules on standards. We all want the highest standards in public life but, had the standards that already exist been respected and enforced, we would not find ourselves in this position at all. The problem before us is not absence of rules but absence of judgment. No amount of new bureaucratic architecture can compensate for such a basic failure.
There is talk in the Statement of a
“lack of clarity about the use of non-corporate communication channels”.
I think that is jargon for WhatsApp. My goodness, what would Mr Streeting and the other eager contenders for the Labour leadership do without WhatsApp? Of course, we all agree with Mr Streeting that the Government have
“No growth strategy at all”,
but the Cabinet Office published detailed guidance on these matters in 2023. Was it not being followed by those involved? Can the Minister tell us in what specific respects this guidance in relation to the use of WhatsApp is unclear? What steps are being taken to avoid the intentional deletion and auto-deletion of electronic communications by any special adviser or person involved in these matters? Has guidance been sent to departments?
There is talk of banning second jobs. My personal view is that a politics made up only of professional politicians would be a politics deprived of many insights. Can the noble Baroness the Leader of the House give the firmest possible assurance that there will be no extension of that to this House, which relies so much on outside experience?
The Statement says that the Government will ask your Lordships’ Conduct Committee to reinvestigate rules around the conduct of Peers. With respect, that is a matter for this House and not for the Government. The Conduct Committee carried out a major review of the Code of Conduct earlier this Session, under the expert chairmanship of the noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller. It reached carefully considered conclusions, published barely more than a year ago. I understand that the noble Baroness the Leader of the House has written to the committee seeking further consideration. No one can object to any code being kept under review; that is what we do and have done in this House over the years. However, I hope that the noble Baroness the Leader of the House will assure this House that there will be no pressure from the Government on the committee as it considers her letter, simply on the basis that the Prime Minister wants to close a stable door that he should never have opened in the first place.
We welcome that the Statement reiterates that the ISC will be able to review all documents relevant to this scandal, but can the noble Baroness respond to a question asked last week by my noble friend Lady Finn about the powers inherent in the Justice and Security Act 2013 and the potential influence of the Cabinet Office? What steps are being taken to avoid conflicts of interest or undue pressure in the light of the ISC secretariat being staffed by the Cabinet Office?
The Statement says that the Prime Minister has asked the Cabinet Secretary to liaise with the committee about the documents. Can the noble Baroness confirm the astounding reports today that the Cabinet Secretary is now potentially being removed and may perhaps be a further scapegoat in this sorry affair? Is it true that he is leaving or not?
If there is to be legislation about titles, as is alluded to and which we can certainly, positively, all consider in this House, will the noble Baroness give a clear assurance that there will be full and open consultation across party lines before any legislation is published?
Certainly, it will be a welcome thing if the likes of Mandelson are rooted out of public life, even if at the third time of asking. However, I submit that we should not be stampeded into ill thought-through measures that may trench on the freedoms and privileges of Parliament. Does the noble Baroness agree that the answer is not necessarily to rebuild the system in haste after each failure but to exercise proper judgment at the point of appointment? That is what went wrong in this sorry affair.
Then we need to strengthen the guardians of ethics in public life. We need the Commissioner for Public Appointments, the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments, and the Independent Adviser on Ministerial Interests to be strengthened in their roles and perhaps given a statutory basis. We need to look at the status of the Ministerial Code, and please can we have the delayed publication of the revised Cabinet Manual, last revised far too long ago?
We need to consider whether the business of taking office for the Prime Minister and for Ministers should be changed, and whether they should take an oath, perhaps before their House of Parliament, as they take office? Maybe they should receive training. Most immediately, I hope that the Government will now bring in a strong elections Bill, with caps on donations, defences against foreign, state and private donations, and a properly independent Electoral Commission.
There are broader reforms which the Liberal Democrats would like to push for to move away from the confrontational style of Westminster politics: fewer Ministers, looser Whips, stronger committees, acceptance that multiparty politics means a more collaborative style of politics. I heard Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Manchester, say last week at the Institute for Government that a change in the voting system would make our politics less adversarial. I hope there are some within the Government who are considering that.
There are particular implications of this scandal for the Lords, for which the Labour Government have not yet delivered half of the reforms their manifesto promised. This has damaged the reputation of the Lords, and that means that we have to take those reforms further. We are a part-time House, so the question of outside interests and second jobs, which the noble Lord, Lord True, touched on, is much more difficult for us. Prime ministerial patronage on appointments should also come into consideration. Donors should not be appointed to the Lords, which is a working Chamber. There is a strong case for rules on outside interests and for retirement and participation limits, and we look forward to receiving those.
Lastly, does the Leader agree that the widest lesson we have to take from this is that it is not only politicians who need to regain public trust but those who run international finance: banks in New York and London, multinational companies and high tech? Most of these are based in America, but I note that the CEO of the bank which paid for my education and at which my father worked for 40 years is one of those named in the Epstein files. We should not underestimate the scale of the potential public reaction against financial as well as political elites. Will the Government therefore discuss with the City of London how it, too, needs to react to what is now coming out and what will no doubt continue to come out for some weeks to come?
The noble Lord, Lord True, seems to think that the only non-corporate communication channel is WhatsApp. This has been visited by numerous Governments over years. Non-corporate communication channels are anything that is not the approved channel. Having been in government, he will have had a particular email address and a particular device he could use. I am told that back in the day, it was quite common for people to share emails on their BT email addresses. That is wrong, so over the years guidance has been given and will continue to be updated.
The noble Lord also asked about second jobs for MPs. Of course, it is a completely different issue. Anyone in this House who has been a Member of Parliament, and I see several, will know that it is a full-time job. This has been looked at in the past and it will be looked at again. It is different for your Lordships’ House, in that Members have outside interests they pursue. But there is also the issue of transparency and lobbying, which was mentioned, whereby Members cannot profit from membership of this House. There is no issue at all about Members having outside interests and outside employment, but there is an issue if the two become conflated and Members use membership of this House in order to profit from it. Lobbying Members, if employed by a lobbying firm, and those kinds of issues are ones the House would like to address. I am glad the noble Lord indicated his consent on that.
The noble Lord also asked about the ISC and the relevant documents. I am not quite sure what he was getting at. I think he was suggesting that, because the ISC is serviced by the Cabinet Office, somehow it does not have independence. The members and the chair of the ISC may feel very differently about independence and how it operates. I hope he was not suggesting that. I cannot give him any further information on the Cabinet Secretary; I do not have that information. If there is any information, I will of course update noble Lords.
The noble Lord asked about legislation to remove peerages and whether there would be full and open consultation. I was clear in this House last week that there would be. The noble Lord and I have discussed this privately as well, and I assured him of that. I do not know if he is uncertain about it, but for something that will have an impact beyond the current circumstances, I would want to ensure that this House was content with what it did, and that we were content that it would deal with any future circumstances where the House may think it appropriate that, because of someone’s behaviour—if they were expelled from this House, for example—they would not be entitled to continue to have a peerage.
The noble Lord, Lord True, said that we should not be stampeded into changing the laws. Of course no one is going to be stampeded. We have a proper process in this House: it is called legislation, and that is how we take things forward. In terms of the Conduct Committee, I shared the letter I sent to the noble Lord, Lord Kakkar, with the noble Lord, Lord True. There is no undue influence, but the whole House would want to be assured that we are confident that our rules, processes and procedures do the job they are supposed to do to give Members of this House guidance and confidence, and to give the public confidence in our work as well.
The noble Lord asked a number of questions. He had a bit of a shopping list, I am afraid, of various things that could be done, and I have probably been receiving two different sides of the argument here. This House knows that a number of things should be done about our processes. The Prime Minister has already updated the Ministerial Code so that the independent adviser can make decisions on his own about whether or not to investigate an issue. There are a number of things that have to be done, but at the bottom of this is that we have to ensure that we are above reproach and that we give confidence to the public that we do the work that we are here to do, without fear or favour, and with the spirit of the country’s interests at heart.
Standards in Public Life · Order Paper · Order Paper