Granted to the Tories yesterday and to be fronted by Badenoch. Yet another headache for the government…
Read Badenoch’s speech below:
“I beg to move… that this House has considered the matter of… the government’s accountability to the House… in connection to the appointment of Peter Mandelson.
I thank you Mr Speaker, for granting this important debate.
The Prime Minister… personally decided to appoint a serious known national security risk to our most sensitive diplomatic post.
Peter Mandelson was not just a man who had already been sacked twice from government for lying…
Not just a man who had a public relationship with a convicted paedophile…
But a man… with links to the Kremlin and China. Links so close… that they were raised as red flags with the Prime Minister before his appointment.
Yesterday… the Prime Minister did not deny… that he knew about these links before he appointed Mandelson.
He could not deny this… because by his own admission… he had seen the documents that proved the links.
I cannot overstate how serious a matter this is.
The Prime Minister sent a known security risk to Washington… to a position where he would see our most important ally’s top-secret intelligence.
What if he had seen something… and leaked it to one of our enemies?
How much would that have damaged our security partnership?
We cannot even be sure… that didn’t happen.
What is most extraordinary… is the Prime Minister appointed Peter Mandelson before vetting was complete.
He did this… despite a letter, from the then Cabinet Secretary Lord Case, clearly expressing to the Prime Minister… that the process required security vetting to be done… before the appointment.
How can he have then claimed on the floor of this House that the process was followed… when he knew that it hadn’t been?
He mentioned the word “process” more than 100 times in Parliament yesterday. But he was the one who didn’t follow that process.
This morning, we have heard the bombshell testimony of the Former Permanent Secretary of the Foreign Office, Sir Olly Robbins.
Robbins had a long and distinguished career serving ministers.
He is not the sort of person to give us a frank personal account of how things played out last January.
So when he told us today that Downing Street put the Foreign Office under “constant pressure” to clear Peter Mandelson…
…That No 10 showed a “dismissive approach” to Mandelson’s vetting process…
So when he told us…that it would have been “very difficult indeed” to deny clearance… and that doing so would have “damaged US-UK relationships”…
We know he is giving us only the slightest indication of how bad things were.
That there was actually overwhelming drive from the Prime Minister’s office to ensure Peter Mandelson was installed as Ambassador.
He has told us… No10 showed no interest in the vetting. No desire to wait and ensure due process was followed.
In fact, the Cabinet Office even questioned the need for Peter Mandelson to be vetted at all! The same Cabinet Office that had discovered Mandelson’s links to Epstein, China and Russia in its due diligence.
Instead, according to Robbins, “the focus was on getting Mandelson out to Washington quickly”, and before the vetting even started, Mandelson had already been granted access to, and I quote, “highly classified briefing on a case-by-case basis”.
This is what the Prime Minister calls full due process.
Now… the Prime Minister might have refused to answer my question around his knowledge of Mandelson’s links to the Russian defence company Sistema yesterday. But that is only because… he knows… we know the answer.
It was there in the due diligence. His choice of ambassador, retaining an interest in a Russian company linked to Vladimir Putin after the invasion of Crimea.
And the Prime Minister’s response to seeing that information? According to Robbins: “constant pressure” on the Foreign Office to get the appointment done.
The Prime Minister placed top secret intelligence in the hands of a man he knew to be a national security risk.
He did so before the official security vetting, not just knowingly, but deliberately, and to an extent that left a senior civil servant with a distinguished career… under the clear and obvious impression that the vetting must return only one possible outcome.
None of this was following full due process. By the letter or the spirit of that phrase.
This is no longer just about what the Prime Minister was or wasn’t told. This is about what he did before the vetting process had even started.
And we now know that Mandelson wasn’t a one off.
According to Robbins, No10 also asked for the disgraced Matthew Doyle, the Prime Minister’s then Director of Communications, to be made an ambassador!
Astonishingly… the Prime Minister’s office even told Robbins to keep this request a secret from the Foreign Secretary!
The idea… that it is No 10 who are the victims of others not following due process… is, quite frankly, laughable.
The Prime Minister told Parliament yesterday that it was ‘staggering’ that Olly Robbins had not shared the recommendations of the UK Security Vetting with the then Cabinet Secretary Chris Wormald.
But today we learned from Robbins that he had never seen the original vetting file.
If the PM is furious that Robbins did not share the vetting details with him or the former Cabinet Secretary, why is he not furious with the Cabinet Office for not sharing it?
Put simply… why – exactly – did he sack Olly Robbins?
It’s no surprise the Prime Minister is not here today. These are difficult questions.
He cannot claim not to have known about the risk Mandelson posed… because he saw the due diligence that disclosed it.
I still find it inconceivable that despite that failure of vetting being a front-page news story… no one in No 10 was aware of it.
He cannot deny… that his decision put Britain at risk.
The British public deserve to know how this failure happened.
And they deserve to hear it from the Prime Minister himself.
Yesterday, he had the chance to set the record straight.
But Members on all sides… and no doubt the public… were left wholly unsatisfied with the answers he gave.
I am sure they will share my deep disappointment that the Prime Minister has chosen not to be here today.
There remain serious questions about the decisions the Prime Minister took over the appointment of Peter Mandelson.
But the Prime Minister does not want to answer any more questions today…
And so… in typical fashion… he has thrown someone else under the bus.
I feel for the minister… sent out… as a human shield for the Prime Minister today.
The Minister did not make Mandelson’s appointment…. that was above his paygrade.
He cannot tell us what the Prime Minister was thinking when he made those decisions. And he will not be able to provide this House with the answers it deserves to hear.
But this is simply what the Prime Minister does.
Sue Gray… Matthew Doyle… Morgan McSweeny… Chris Wormald… Olly Robbins…
These appointments were the Prime Minister’s decision.
People the Prime Minister chose to appoint.
And people he then chose to sack.
Are we to meant to believe that all these people are the problem… rather than the Prime Minister’s judgement?
As usual… his explanations yesterday left us with more questions than answers.
He says that he was justified in appointing Mandelson before vetting because of advice he received the new Cabinet Secretary, Chris Wormald…
But how can this make sense… when that advice only came along after the scandal erupted?
Post-hoc advice is pointless.
Soon after this… he then sacked Chris Wormald.
Why is the Prime Minister now relying on the evidence of the very man he told us was doing so badly in the job that he sacked him!
Let’s move on… to the Prime Minister’s claim that no one in No 10 was aware that Mandelson had failed his vetting.
But enough people in Whitehall knew… for journalists from the Independent… the Mail… and Sky News to find out.
Journalists have released texts with the Prime Minister’s Director of Communications where they made No 10 aware of this fact.
He did not deny this story was true. Why not?
Something simply doesn’t add up.
Despite this… the Prime Minister went on to assure this House… to assure the public… that Mandelson’s appointment was down to a failure of vetting.
I cannot fathom how the Prime Minister can still claim to have not misled the House on this point.
It is telling… that when given the opportunity to apologise for misleading the House… even inadvertently… by my Hon Friend for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk yesterday… he chose not to.
I suspect… that he chose not to… because he knows that if he did… he would be bound by his own words…
Bound by the standards to which he held previous Prime Minister from this very despatch box.
In 2022… he said… that if the Prime Minister misleads the House… he must resign.
Either, he is a man of his word…
Or he thinks there is one rule for him, and another for everyone else.
Unbelievably… half of the Permanent Secretaries who were in post when Labour took office… less than two years ago… have gone.
The sacking of senior civil servants… to carry the can for the Prime Minister’s failures… has already cost taxpayers more than £1.5 million in payouts.
It is quite something for the former Cabinet Secretary Lord O’Donnell to warn that the Prime Minister has created “one of the worst crises in relations between ministers and mandarins of modern times”.
He said… that the sacking of Sir Olly Robbins “risks having a serious and sustained chilling effect on serving and prospective civil servants”.
Another former Cabinet Secretary, Lord Butler, has said the Prime Minister put Sir Olly in an “impossible position”.
These are serious people… who are calling out the Prime Minister’s behaviour.
The former head of Propriety and Ethics, and deputy to the Cabinet Secretary, Helen MacNamara has called the decision to sack Robbins “unacceptable”.
She said that “if they had published the papers that Parliament demanded back in February…this argument would be so much easier for everyone… because…. everyone would be operating on the basis of the same facts”.
She’s right. The delay in publishing the information required by the Humble Address is shocking.
Where are the key annotations, decisions and meeting records – the box returns as they are called in Downing Street?
Why are crucial forms left blank?
The missing documents add to the mystery.
Why is the Government still trying to cover this up?
I am raising these concerns because of the seriousness of the situation the country is now in.
With war in Europe, war in the Middle East, a cost-of-living crisis and a global energy shock…
We need a Prime Minister who has a grip on national security.
Yet last week… the former Labour defence secretary and former NATO Secretary general, Lord Robertson… warned… that that Prime Minister had a “corrosive complacency” when it came to defence.
This is the same man who wrote the Prime Minister’s Strategic Defence Review.
He is ringing the alarm bell… warning us of the grave consequences of the Government refusing to take the tough choices needed to increase defence spending.
If we cannot trust our Prime Minister to tell the truth about this ambassadorial appointment… a key appointment in Britain’s national security architecture… it calls into question the assurances he gives us on everything else.
His promises to control taxes…which he has broken.
His promises not to raise borrowing…which he has broken.
His promises to back business, protect our veterans, defend our farmers and prioritise growth. All of which… he has broken.
He has broken them… because at his core… he is a man with no idea what he believes.
Worse still… he appears to have no interest in doing the job of Prime Minister… just in being the Prime Minister.
Curiosity is what drives serious leadership.
Without curiosity, problems are neither fully understood nor solved.
This whole affair… just goes to show why this country is heading in such a woeful direction under the Prime Minister’s incurious regime.
The Prime Minister’s defence sums it up.
He says… that no one told him… and that he never thought to ask.
This is…in his own words… incredible.
But even if we take the Prime Minister at his word…
Even if we believe the unbelievable, it is no better…
He appointed Mandelson despite knowing that he was a threat to our national security.
He said due process was followed… having failed to follow that process himself.
And he pressured the Foreign Office into signing off on this appointment.
The Prime Minister said in 2022… “I believe that if you’re the leader, the buck stops with you.
He said “I will always stand up for my team, but I will also take responsibility for everything they do. That is what leadership is”.
However… it is clear… that the Prime Minister has no intention of facing up to his mistakes.
It’s clear now that he is not a leader…
And he has no intention of doing the honourable thing.
The decision… about whether he will ultimately take responsibility for his actions… is now up to Labour MPs.
We heard many powerful statements from that side of the House yesterday.
Labour MPs know… that the Prime Minister has let the country down… he’s let Parliament down… and he’s also let the Labour Party down.
It is clear to everyone, except the Prime Minister himself, that he has failed on his own terms.
It is clear to the public that he is failing at the job.
It is clear to Civil Servants… that he is throwing them under the bus.
And it is clear to Members across this House that he is not fit to lead.
This cannot go on. This House deserves better. The country deserves better.
The Prime Minister is not fit for office.
The first duty of any Prime Minister is to keep this country safe.
This Prime Minister has put the country’s national security at risk.
He must take responsibility.
It is time for him to go.”
Douglas Alexander – a friend of Starmer’s – was asked on Sky News if the PM will be in post at the next election. He wasn’t so sure himself:
“I think he will. There are no certainties but of course I think he will lead and I think he should because, frankly, on the biggest call in this parliament he’s exercised the right judgment, which is to keep us out of someone else’s war.”