Starmer admits vetting flagged Mandelson-Epstein ties (Full Transcript)

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: The UK Prime Minister has come under extreme pressure about what he knew about Lord Mandelson's connections to Jeffrey Epstein when he appointed him as U.S. ambassador. At Prime Minister's questions, Keir Starmer said he regretted that appointment and that Peter Mandelson had lied repeatedly and let him, the party and the country down. Crucially, though, the leader of the opposition extracted an important admission, with the Prime Minister saying he did know that Mandelson had continued his friendship with Epstein after his conviction and jail sentence, but went ahead with the appointment. Let me take you back to the Commons because MPs will vote on the release of the paperwork and the background to that controversial appointment in about three hours' time. The debate well underway. We'll have more on that in a moment. More, too, on the fallout in the U.S. and the latest details around Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. First, though, let's hear a little more from the Prime Minister at PMQs.

[00:01:00] Speaker 2: I am as angry as the public and any member of this House. Mandelson betrayed our country, our Parliament and my party. Mr Speaker, he lied repeatedly to my team when asked about his relationship with Epstein before and during his tenure as ambassador. I regret appointing him. If I knew then what I know now, he would never have been anywhere near government. That is why, Mr Speaker, yesterday the Cabinet Secretary, with my support, took the decision to refer material to the police, and there is now a criminal investigation. I have instructed my team to draft legislation to strip Mandelson of his title and wider legislation to remove disgraced peers. This morning, I have agreed with His Majesty the King that Mandelson should be removed from the list of Privy Councillors on grounds that he has brought the reputation of the Privy Council into disrepute.

[00:02:06] Speaker 1: As I mentioned in the main introduction, the Conservative leader, Kemi Bajanok, extracted a crucial admission today from Keir Starmer that he did know in advance of Mandelson's continued friendship with Epstein, but appointed him as the US ambassador anyway. Have a listen to that exchange.

[00:02:23] Speaker 3: I am asking the Prime Minister something very specific, not about the generalities of the full extent. Can the Prime Minister tell us, did the official security vetting he received mention Mandelson's ongoing relationship with the paedophile Jeffrey Epstein?

[00:02:41] Speaker 2: The Prime Minister.

[00:02:43] Speaker 3: Yes, it did.

[00:02:47] Speaker 2: As a result, various questions were put to him. I intend to disclose to this House all of the national security prejudice to international relations on one side. I want to make sure this House sees the full documentation so it will see for itself the extent to which time and time again Mandelson completely misrepresented the extent of his relationship with Epstein and lied throughout the process, including in response to the due diligence.

[00:03:26] Speaker 1: Straight to Westminster and the debate that is currently going on. Our political correspondent has news on the wording of that government amendment. Ian, tell me more.

[00:03:38] Speaker 4: As you know, what has been debated now is how much information is going to be divulged about Peter Mandelson's time in Washington as the UK's ambassador and the process of his appointment, what documents and what advice was given to the Prime Minister in a run-up to that appointment. It looked as though the government might not be able to win the vote today amongst its own MPs, because they were trying to have a couple of exclusions. Exclusions on the grounds of national security, exclusions on the grounds of potentially damaging international relations. During the course of that debate, MPs on both sides of the House are saying, actually, we don't want the government to be able to mark its own homework here, we want an independent body to decide what is and is not divulged. They suggested the Intelligence and Security Committee, that is senior parliamentarians from across the House who have been highly vetted, who are in touch with the security services. In the past minute, we have now seen the government making a further change, amending their own amendment, Matthew, and this is it. This is what is called a manuscript amendment, it is actually strolled quite quickly and then typed out. It follows negotiations behind the scenes, but what they are saying now is that the documents will indeed be referred to the Intelligence and Security Committee. I am told from a chat I had with a couple of Labour MPs who had concerns, that they think that those concerns have now been allayed and that the government will now win the vote tonight. So they have diffused a potential rebellion. We thought something was going on when the chief whip, the person in charge of party discipline, government discipline, was seen walking back into the chamber just about ten or 12 minutes ago. He had been involved in negotiations outside with some of those who had concerns. Just to give you a little bit more detail on this, there were concerns that initially the government wanted to say this independent committee, the ISC, could advise senior civil servants, could advise the Cabinet Secretary on what should be released and what should not. It looks as though now it is the Intelligence and Security Committee itself that can make that kind of determination.

[00:05:46] Speaker 1: Ian, that means it is another hit for Kemi Badenoch because she suggested that in Prime Minister's questions as she warned Labour MPs not to be complicit in the cover-up. So she got and managed to get that extraction from the Prime Minister. He did know about the continuing friendship with Jeffrey Epstein when he made the appointment. That was hit number one, but now hit number two because the suggestion she made in terms of the amendment, that is where we would have ended up.

[00:06:14] Speaker 4: That is right. You are absolutely right. I think it was significant that she got Keir Starmer to say explicitly what was implicitly the case, that he knew that Peter Mandelson's relationship, his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein continued beyond Epstein's initial conviction back in 2008. She wanted to draw a line there and said the Prime Minister says the extent and depth of that relationship only became known much, much later. That is why he was sacked. She was saying he should never have been appointed in the first place. That was hit number one. But hit number two did punch the bruise on the Labour benches. No Labour MP wants to be associated with Peter Mandelson as things are now, including those who were perhaps his close colleagues and confidants not so long ago. She was effectively saying that if they voted for exclusions to the documentation, then they would be guilty of a cover-up. They did not want to do that. They have now found a different way of doing that. She herself has suggested that the Intelligence and Security Committee would be a useful compromise so that genuine national security considerations are taken into account rather than potentially the grounds for wider exclusions. So yes, in that sense, this makes Keir Starmer's position even more uncomfortable.

[00:07:31] Speaker 1: Just a final quick thought, Ian. How weak is Keir Starmer's position now within the party given everything we are seeing and given all the backdrop that led up to this?

[00:07:43] Speaker 4: I think it is significant that he could not necessarily shepherd his own MPs on this. In recent times, of course, on many other issues, what the Conservatives say is that the backbenchers, the people outside the Cabinet, are the people driving the Government agenda rather than the Prime Minister himself. He looked as though he was getting on the front foot. He was taken actually against Peter Mandelson, trying to strip him of his title, making sure he was under pressure to resign from the House of Lords, calling for an inquiry by the Cabinet Secretary into what Lord Mandelson had been up to with his business secretary many years ago. That looked like he was getting on the front foot, but he was not able to bring his own troops with him when it came to getting some exclusions to the documents around Peter Mandelson's appointment and what Peter Mandelson was up to when he was in Washington far more recently. So yes, that does make his position weaker. I think the Government should try to underline that it is in favour of transparency despite the events of this afternoon. We are going to see the initial release of some documents once this debate concludes after seven o'clock.

[00:08:49] Speaker 1: Ian, thank you once again, Ian Watson, there at Westminster for us. Things moving all the time there, so we'll continue to keep an eye on that debate. Well, I've also been speaking on the programme to George Parker, political editor at the FT. You may remember that famous exchange he had with Peter Mandelson on a train about Jeffrey Epstein. But we started by talking about the magnitude of this scandal.

[00:09:14] Speaker 5: I don't really remember a scandal on quite this scale. You know, Peter Mandelson was someone who was really almost at the very top of British politics. He was effectively the Deputy Prime Minister to Gordon Brown back in 2009. He'd been in receipt of money, $75,000 that we know about, which wasn't declared. And later on, when he was a minister, he was passing Government secrets to Jeffrey Epstein, a convicted paedophile. And it's an incredible story. It will fuel conspiracy theories, I suspect, for many years to come. And, you know, on a scale of British political scandals, it's right at the top, I'd say.

[00:09:49] Speaker 1: I mentioned the exchange you had a few years ago with Peter Mandelson on the train where he let rip furiously at you expletives as well. For people watching who don't know about that, just recap, explain what actually happened here.

[00:10:08] Speaker 5: Well, it was a story that we, a magazine story we wrote about Peter Mandelson exactly a year ago, actually. It was published and I was profiling him. I was the, I think, did the only interview with Peter Mandelson before his appointment, just before his appointment to Washington. And I thought I would leave it to the very end of the interview to ask him about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. And frankly, not many people were asking about that at the time. And you could feel the chill descend on the railway carriage. And he said that he regressed meeting Epstein and the harm done to the women and girls that he abused. And then he said, this is an FT obsession. And frankly, you can all F off. I'm not going to use the word he used, but he said that word. And I thought that's extraordinary for someone who's about to take on the biggest diplomatic job in the British government for using that kind of language. But it showed, of course, quite what he had to hide.

[00:10:57] Speaker 1: It showed to perhaps he just simply was dismissive, thought all of this didn't really matter happened in the past and presumably annoyed at people like you continuing to ask questions about it.

[00:11:10] Speaker 5: Yeah, exactly. And I mean, to be fair, my excellent colleague, Jim Pickard, he's been on Peter Mandelson's case for 15 years or so reporting various scandals that he's been involved in. And most recently, he revealed in 2023. So this is a couple of years ago now, that Peter Mandelson had stayed in the Manhattan townhouse of Jeffrey Epstein, while Jeffrey Epstein was in prison for soliciting a minor for sex. At the time, Peter Mandelson, I said, was effectively the deputy prime minister making a private visit to the home of a convicted pedophile. So that was in the public domain in 2023. Jim raised it with the prime minister at a press conference in January 2024. So Keir Starmer was well aware of it. And that was what was brought up in the chamber today by Kemi Badenoch, the fact that Keir Starmer must have known about this. And for the first time publicly, he confirmed that he did.