Richard Burgon

The hon. Gentleman may not have understood the point that I am making—perhaps that is the Liberal position on these things; I do not know. What I am talking about is the fact that victims of sexual abuse were put second to factional politics. The point I am making is that this dirty, grubby internal factional behaviour overrode those considerations—so, in fact, I do not disagree with him. That is the point that I am making: the lives of survivors should have been put first. The risk that Peter Mandelson posed to national security, and his deep inappropriateness for the role of ambassador to the US, should have been put first. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman misunderstood me, but that is the very point that I am making. The public deserve the truth—the full truth. They need to know who argued for Peter Mandelson despite what was known about his relationship with Epstein, who argued for him to be pushed over the line into the role of ambassador to the United States, who warned against it, and what role the advisers around the Prime Minister played. That is fundamentally important. We cannot have a situation that the public quite rightly view as totally unacceptable. We need to know exactly how this happened and nothing should prevent that, because the public are completely baffled and disgusted. The point has been made that we need to clean up our politics. Of course, that means no jobs for the boys when they are deeply inappropriate and deeply unsuitable for them, and it means looking at the role of big money in politics. Mandelson was infatuated with the rich and powerful in the same way that he was infatuated with the factional politics within the Labour party. Those things resulted in his being appointed to the position of ambassador despite what was known. A manuscript amendment may be tabled and it may satisfy Members on both sides of the House—I do not know—but no manuscript amendment will rub away this crisis. No manuscript amendment and nothing that can be said in this House will remove the fact that the appointment of Peter Mandelson as ambassador to the United States of America, despite what was known at the time, is literally indefensible. It is really telling that not a single Member on either side of the House has tried to defend that today, although some have defended it previously. I come back to the point that we cannot have appointments in this country suborned as a result of people’s friendships or the role that they have played in internal party factions. That puts the national interest at risk and it can put national security at risk. The Prime Minister said “country first, party second”. What we cannot have is faction first, country second. I think that that is what happened with the indefensible decision to appoint Peter Mandelson to this important role, despite the fact that it was in the public domain that he had continued his relations with Epstein while that man was in prison for soliciting child prostitution.