Contribution
I thank the Chief Secretary for advance sight of his statement.
The Prime Minister’s authority is gone and his Government are starting to collapse. The Prime Minister’s decision to appoint Peter Mandelson raises massive questions about standards in public life—questions that the Chief Secretary’s statement today just does not answer.
Advisers advise, but Ministers decide. On that basis, can the Chief Secretary explain why it was right for Morgan McSweeney to resign, but not right for the Prime Minister to resign? Morgan McSweeney might have provided the advice, but it was the Prime Minister who made the decision to appoint the best friend of the world’s most notorious paedophile to be His Majesty’s ambassador in Washington. The Prime Minister did that despite knowing that Mandelson had stayed in Epstein’s house while he was in jail for child prostitution. The problem is not the structures or the processes—the information was there; the warnings were there. The problem is that the Prime Minister had all that before him and yet chose to ignore it. He cannot keep blaming others. He cannot blame the process. He must start taking personal responsibility.
The record of this Government on standards is truly extraordinary. First, the Prime Minister was embroiled in the freebies scandal: £107,000 in gifts given to him since 2019 and a personal donor given a Downing Street pass. Then, the Prime Minister was reprimanded by his own ethics adviser over the appointment of a non-disclosed Labour donor to be the football regulator. His Transport Secretary, an ex-cop, had to resign over misleading the police. His anti-corruption Minister had to resign over corruption. His homelessness Minister had to resign for making people homeless. And then his Deputy Prime Minister and Housing Secretary had to resign over a £40,000 unpaid tax bill on her house.
No wonder even the leader of the Scottish Labour party now says that the Prime Minister must go. Mr Sarwar says:
“There have been too many mistakes”
and that he has no choice but to be
“honest about failure wherever I see it.”
He is right.
Let me turn to some specific questions. First, can the Chief Secretary confirm whether Peter Mandelson received a golden goodbye severance payment, signed off by the Government? Why have the Government refused to answer that question since September? It has been reported that the golden goodbye was between £39,000 and £55,000, which is more than the average person earns in a year—that is grotesque. What steps are the Government taking to retrieve that incredible payment for resigning in disgrace? It sounded like the Chief Secretary was saying that he could not do it. I have to remind him that, at the moment at least, they are actually the Government. They can take action.
Secondly, will the Government agree to a full investigation of Peter Mandelson’s behaviour while he was our ambassador? On 27 February, Mandelson arranged for the Prime Minister to meet Palantir, a client of Global Counsel—his own company. It was not recorded in the Prime Minister’s register of meetings; it emerged only later. Palantir was then directly awarded a £240 million contract by the Government. I make no criticism of Palantir. I simply ask: why was that not recorded? How many more such lobbyist meetings were there with the Prime Minister and what other inside information was being shared? Will the Chief Secretary agree, yes or no, to a full inquiry into Mandelson’s time as our ambassador?
Thirdly, let me ask about another new Labour veteran put forward for a public office despite his known association with a paedophile. No. 10 has said that it investigated Matthew Doyle’s relationship with a convicted paedophile, Sean Morton. No. 10 gave Doyle, the Prime Minister’s former director of communications, a peerage after purportedly examining this matter, but it has never clarified whether their relationship continued after Morton’s conviction. If Doyle cut ties with Morton upon his conviction, why do the Government not just say so? I ask the Chief Secretary to clarify that. Will he agree to publish all the documents relating to that appointment?
Fourthly, the Chief Secretary told the House on 2 February that a review of the decision to appoint Mandelson was under way. What form will it take? Will a statement be laid before Parliament, and when? Will Mandelson be interviewed as part of that review? Will it include the potential involvement of hostile intelligence services? Finally, have the Government responded substantively to the ISC’s request for more resourcing so that it can do its job properly in reviewing the papers that are about to be released?
No amount of process or fiddling about with procedures can compensate for a Prime Minister who lacked the judgment to act on the information put before him. The Prime Minister was warned about Mandelson—he knew, but he decided it was a risk worth taking. As the leader of the Scottish Labour party pointed out today, it is not just the Mandelson affair; time and again, the Prime Minister has got it wrong, from the winter fuel payment to the family farm tax. Just like with the grooming gangs inquiry, the Prime Minister has once again put his own political interest ahead of the interests of victims. At the start of his statement, the Chief Secretary said that the Prime Minister’s choices in this case go to the heart of who he is, and that is what we are worried about.
The Prime Minister’s head of communications has resigned; the Prime Minister’s chief of staff has resigned; and the leader of the Scottish Labour party says that the Prime Minister should resign. It seems like even in the Labour party, more and more people are now coming to the same conclusion as the public: this country deserves better.