Emily Thornberry

Well, that is very helpful; I thank the right hon. Gentleman very much. Let us move on. Is there a record of the decision? When Sir Oliver Robbins appeared before the Committee, and indeed when other people appeared before it, I kept coming back to the same question: “Where is the record of your decision? What was the process that you went through before doing this? Why are there no notes? Why is there no record? How can we hold you to account if you really, genuinely are not making any notes at all?” Given that a decision was made to give Peter Mandelson the job subject to mitigations, where is the record of the decision? Do the police have it? Is it in the papers and I have missed it? I do not think so. Was there never a written record of the decision? Surely someone would have made a record of the action taken—or is that the email? Is that it? Is that the action that they took, or is there something else? Surely there was a letter written to Peter Mandelson saying, “You have the job, but only if you do x, y and z.” This cannot be dealt with by way of a WhatsApp message or a phone call. This is very serious. This is about the security of our nation, and it should be in a letter. I certainly hope that the reason that I have not seen it is that it exists but the police have it, but I do not know one way or the other. I know that others will be dealing with this later, and I want to draw my remarks to a close, but the Foreign Affairs Committee has been trying to do its job to the best of its ability to try to ensure that such a mistake does not happen again, and we have been doing that in good faith. It has been difficult. We have been “mandarined”; we have been given partial answers; we have been given nonsense by people believing that it is not for us to know. Well, it is for us to know, and it is for us to know because we are trying to make our Government better, and it is our job as Back Benchers to do that.