Richard Tice

The reality is that the Prime Minister personally decided to appoint Lord Mandelson as the ambassador to the United States, and in so doing, he has humiliated and embarrassed this nation on the international stage, because Lord Mandelson is someone who described himself as the “best pal” of a paedophile and advised that paedophile to use his time in prison as “an opportunity”—truly shocking. There are two separate issues that require proper examination: first, the judgment of the Prime Minister, and secondly, whether he inadvertently misled the House last Wednesday in responding to the Leader of the Opposition. Let us look at the judgment of the Prime Minister. We know now that as he made the personal decision to appoint Lord Mandelson, he received a two-page document outlining some of his links to the paedophile, and yet he carried on with that decision to appoint him. He made the appointment in that knowledge. That is woefully incompetent judgment. Last week, in the knowledge that there was a cache of emails about Lord Mandelson’s links to this paedophile, the Prime Minister made the judgment—as a lawyer who supposedly is forensic—not to ask the questions about what was in the emails. That seems to me an absolute failure of judgment. He then made the judgment to come to this House and say he had confidence in the man about whom he knew there was a cache of emails that he thought it inappropriate to ask the detail of. The whole point of lawyers and barristers is that they do due diligence, but no—not our Prime Minister. That brings me to the critical issue of whether the Prime Minister inadvertently misled the House. He said two things to the Leader of the Opposition. First, he said twice that he had “confidence in” Lord Mandelson, and yet he knew the day before about a cache of emails, which he did not want to know the detail of, on Lord Mandelson’s links to Epstein. The day after, the Prime Minister fired Lord Mandelson. Is it credible to believe that one can have confidence in a man, given those two facts that came about within a 24-hour period? Secondly, even more significantly, the Prime Minister said that “full due process” had been “followed during this appointment”. We now learn that that is not the case, because the due process was carried out after the decision by the Prime Minister to appoint Lord Mandelson and after it had been announced to the world at large. Those two things cannot be true. Either full due process was carried out before the decision to appoint, or it was carried out afterwards—it was not carried out “during”. For that reason, regrettably, I conclude personally that the Prime Minister inadvertently misled the House of Commons and the British people. Therefore, the Prime Minister needs to come to the House and give absolute clarity on what he knew and when, why he made those decisions, and why he chose not to ask for detailed forensic investigations at the appropriate time.