B

Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)

Speaking in the House of Lords on 5 February 2026

Debate

US Department of Justice Release of Files

Contribution

I am grateful to the noble Lord. His point about powerful individuals cannot be made often enough, and the impact this has had on the lives of very young people that will stay with them forever. On the sharing of sensitive information, he is right. This is a betrayal, not just of those whom Lord Mandelson was working with but a national betrayal. We do not know what damage could have been done, but certainly damage can be done when such information is shared. It is probably too early at this stage, with so many documents to go through and so many sources to try to retrieve documents from, to say exactly everything that is in there, but the Government are committed to transparency on this. We all need to know exactly what has happened. The documents in the public domain make unedifying reading. For those who were working in those areas at the time, to know that the conversations they had, the documents they signed and the decisions they took in the public interest were being relayed to somebody outside the very small number of people who should have known about them is a gross betrayal.

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