Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)

My Lords, I will do my best to answer the questions in the time available. First, in response to the noble Lord, Lord True, who complained about the timing of the Statement, he usually asks me to repeat Statements made by the Prime Minister as soon as possible. It was my judgment, given the seriousness of the issue, that we should do it as soon as possible. He said about doing it in prime time; I think the House is pretty full to hear the Statement, and it is right that it is so, given the seriousness of it. He asked if I will come back tomorrow. I will always repeat the Prime Minister’s Statements in this House and take questions from your Lordships on any issue raised by the Prime Minister in the normal way and take questions in the normal way. I think the noble Lord has got slightly confused between vetting and due diligence. There is no evidence that Peter Mandelson lied during the vetting process because we do not know what the vetting process had said. The Prime Minister said that he feels that he was not given accurate answers during the due diligence process, and he said that appointing Peter Mandelson was the wrong decision, for which he has apologised. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, for raising the issue of victims, because too often we have just political debates. This started when the Epstein files were released, and I do not think, had those Epstein files not been released, we would have known the extent of the relationship between Peter Mandelson and Jeffrey Epstein. Certainly on the issues around the information he was sending to him and the depth of the contact, we were not aware. What we are talking about here is a failure of government, and it is extraordinary—