Alex Burghart

I thank the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister for advance sight of his statement and for taking this statement himself; it is good of him not to delegate. This was not his mess—that was the 2024 Budget—but I am afraid it is now his mess to clear up. I have to ask: where are the documents? The Humble Address was nearly 12 weeks ago. I remind the right hon. Gentleman that on that occasion the House asked for a huge range of things: the due diligence document that was passed to No. 10; the conflict of interest form; the material that the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and the Cabinet Office provided to UK Security Vetting about Peter Mandelson; papers for and minutes of meetings relating to the decision to appoint Lord Mandelson; electronic communications; and so on. Where are they? Since February, the Government have asserted that they are working with urgency and that everything will be available very shortly, that they are working, in that least reassuring of Government phrases, “at pace”, and—today’s favourite—that the information will be available as soon as possible. That is, no doubt, as soon as possible after the local elections. In the documents that have been released, what we appear to see is either an enormous cover-up or a very significant breakdown in the expected process of government. We have seen nothing from the Prime Minister, nothing from his chief of staff and nothing from Peter Mandelson himself; we have seen no minutes of meetings, no billets-doux, no annotations and no box returns. The official civil service guidance on this matter says explicitly: “Keep submissions with ministers’ comments. If ministers write on a hard copy, keep the minister’s handwritten comments. Keep correspondence reporting ministers’ responses along with background provided to ministers in the medium in which they were created”. We have seen none of this. This is either a cover-up or a terrible return to the days of sofa government under Tony Blair. Simon Case told the Prime Minister that in order to complete due process, there had to be security clearance before he made the appointment, and a conflict of interest declaration had to be made by Peter Mandelson. To date, we have seen none of that information. I am pleased to hear the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister say that material associated with Mandelson’s vetting is now being handed to the ISC, but where is the conflict of interest form? I hope it is not the case that this is being disguised as personal information of the sort that the right hon. Gentleman said would not be disclosed, and I would be grateful if he could confirm that it is not. I would also like the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister to confirm that that declaration of interest form exists. There is no good reason why he cannot tell us whether it does. Indeed, the former Attorney General wrote the other day in the papers that there is no legal reason why the Government cannot tell us which documents are being retained by the Metropolitan police. There should be a catalogue of all documents that exist; even if the House cannot look at them, we should be allowed to know what is out there and what will come to us in due course. The titles of documents will themselves not prejudice a trial. The Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister has today talked about the non-disclosure of personal information. I ask him again to tell us about the conflict of interest form and whether Peter Mandelson’s personal information is considered to be in scope of that ruling. Will he set out the Government’s precise approach to redactions vis-à-vis the documents that will be given to this House, rather than the ISC? It will be useful to understand his thinking. On electronic communications, despite this being in the Humble Address on 4 February, I understand from the Cabinet Secretary, who wrote to me over the weekend, that there was no instruction to hand over non-corporate comms until 13 March—about five weeks after the Humble Address. Why this delay? Is the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister confident that no material was deleted in that five-week period? How can he be sure? I again ask the right hon. Gentleman to confirm or deny whether the ISC release contains the information about Lord Mandelson’s interests. This is of specific concern to the House, given how Peter Mandelson may have behaved when he was ambassador in Washington and given the meetings that he may have taken the Prime Minister to. It is time the Government come clean—not on their own terms or to their own timetable, but on the terms set down by the House. Will the right hon. Gentleman finally tell us a hard deadline for when these documents will be handed over?