Lord True (Con)

My Lords, this is a tortuous and, frankly, somewhat embarrassing Statement—stable door after stable door pushed shut long after the obvious national security risk had bolted through them. The Prime Minister is still answering questions on the Statement in the other place; it would surely have been better if it had been repeated here in prime time, at a time when your Lordships had had a chance to digest the Prime Minister’s words, the reactions to them, and the response of Sir Olly Robbins tomorrow. We made that reasonable request, and the Government rejected it. Will the noble Baroness, our Leader, give an assurance that, if asked, she will come back to this House tomorrow to answer questions on Sir Olly Robbins’s response to today’s account of events? The noble Baroness must know what everybody knew—apart from, it seems, the Prime Minister—that Peter Mandelson was totally unsuitable to be our ambassador to the USA. The Statement’s repeated defence, as we have just heard, is that the Prime Minister would not have appointed Mandelson if he had known his vetting had failed. But you did not need vetting to see that Mandelson was a proven liar. You did not need vetting to see that he was twice forced to resign in disgrace from government. You did not need vetting to hear that he revelled in the company of what he called the “filthy rich”, from whatever dubious nation that might be. You did not need vetting to know that he was a known associate and defender of the convicted paedophile, Epstein. You did not need vetting or process—you needed gumption, judgment and common sense, and you cannot subcontract those things to a Whitehall committee. Was there no one at any stage in this who asked the simple question, “Is this wise?” The Prime Minister says that Mandelson lied in the course of his vetting. Should we be surprised? Well, no, though it seems the Prime Minister was. That is the crux of the matter. What is absolutely staggering is the truly spectacular scale of the failure of judgment of the Prime Minister in appointing such a man. It embarrasses the Labour movement, which does not deserve to be embarrassed in such a way. No amount of casuistical argument, such as we have just heard, can efface that personal responsibility. One man picked Mandelson, one man pushed him, and the issue is not the “who knew what when” about Mandelson’s vetting, but what everybody knew about Mandelson before he was appointed, all of which the Prime Minister ignored. This is a Prime Minister on his third Cabinet Secretary—three in under two years. A legion of advisers has been selected, then shoved out of No. 10 as scapegoats for some panic or crisis of confidence. Is not the truth that it is always someone else to blame? I valued the old conventions that Ministers took responsibility. Civil servants were rarely named in this place and never blamed. Whatever happened to those conventions? Why was an outstanding ambassador shoved out of Washington to make way for the likes of Mandelson? It is because the Prime Minister wanted it, and wanted it quick. Why was the Permanent Secretary at the Foreign Office, Sir Olly Robbins, sacked? It is because the Prime Minister wanted a scapegoat, and wanted it quick. Is not the fact of the matter that the Prime Minister wanted his man Mandelson, come hell or high water, and the Civil Service sought to accommodate his instructions? Can the noble Baroness tell the House this: did Sir Olly Robbins act against the law, against the Civil Service Code or outside proper process in any way in enabling Mandelson to go forward, despite vetting advice? If so, will she tell the House his specific offences? If not, can she say on what grounds Sir Olly has been fairly dismissed? The Prime Minister has admitted that he was aware that vetting had not been done on Mandelson when he named him. We know that the then Cabinet Secretary, the noble Lord, Lord Case, advised him to wait for that to be done. Why did the Prime Minister ignore that advice? Can the noble Baroness say whether the Prime Minister or No. 10 at any stage asked about the vetting and Mandelson’s links to China or Russia? Is it true that the National Security Adviser warned that the process was “weirdly rushed”? Is it true, as the Deputy Prime Minister said just this weekend, that there were “time pressures” to get Mandelson cleared? Is it true, as the Foreign Secretary said at the weekend, that officials were instructed to give “priority clearance” to Mandelson? It looks as if, on the Prime Minister’s wishes, the process for Mandelson’s clearance was put in what was called—how was it in the Covid era?—the VIP lane, and we all know what became of that. Due process was followed by Sir Olly; that has not been challenged. All the problems arose from the undue haste of the Prime Minister to force through his man and glad-hand it with him in No. 10. The Statement reveals a world beyond “Yes, Prime Minister”—a bureaucracy of bizarre complexity, in which you cannot see the wood for the legalese, where people have to seek legal advice before they talk to each other, where there are inquiries into inquiries into inquiries, where the Prime Minister sits staggered, unbelieving and unknowing the heart of a system over which he has presided for two years, processing and reprocessing process, for all the world like Sir Humphrey Appleby. We have not had time to assess in detail the minutiae of this Statement. We have not been permitted to hear Sir Olly’s side of the case before being asked to consider it. We will come back to those things, but what must be clear to all is the astonishing lack of judgment by the Prime Minister in making this appointment, the dire consequences of his undue haste, and the rank smell of the blame game and dumping on senior civil servants—things which should have no place in the conduct of good government.