Lobbying and access to government will be reviewed in wake of Mandelson scandal, says cabinet minister – UK politics live | Politics – Beragampengetahuan

The first set of documents relating to Peter Mandelson’s appointment as ambassador to the US was released by the government today. MPs ordered the government last month to release tens of thousands of documents relating to the 2024 appointment after questions over how Mandelson was vetted and what was known about his links to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

A due diligence report by the Cabinet Office on Mandelson’s appointment found there was a “general reputational risk” over his relationship with Epstein. The due diligence report drawn up in December 2024 before his appointment noted a series of reports detailing his links with Epstein, including that Mandelson had “reportedly stayed in Epstein’s house while he was in jail in June 2009”.

Mandelson was offered a highly classified briefing from the Foreign Office as US ambassador before he finished the formal vetting process. The documents suggest that the Foreign Office may have begun to brief Mandelson on classified information after his appointment – but before he was formally vetted at the highest levels.

Mandelson asked for more than £500,000 severance pay but got £75,000. The documents state that negotiations began with Mandelson requesting a pay out for the remainder of his four-year salary costs of the fixed term appointment. “This would have amounted to £547,201.”

Chief secretary to the prime minister, Darren Jones, said Mandelson “should never have been appointed”. But in his defence of Keir Starmer, he said the Cabinet Office due diligence report “did not expose the depth and extent” of Mandelson’s relationship with Epstein.

Jones described Mandelson’s request for more than £500,000 severance pay as “inappropriate and unacceptable”. He told the Commons that the final pay out that was agreed “was to avoid even higher further costs involving a drawn-out legal claim at the employment tribunal”.

The Conservatives claimed the prime minister “knew all he needed to know” when he appointed Mandelson, describing it as a “bad choice”. Shadow Cabinet Office minister Alex Burghart, who delivered the party’s response to Jones’s statement in the Commons, said it was a choice that “we can now read about in black and white” in the documents.

National security adviser Jonathan Powell found the appointment process “weirdly rushed”. The documents summarised a phone call between Powell and Mike Ostheimer, the general counsel to the prime minister, on 12 September 2025, in which “Jonathan Powell found the appointment process unusual of Lord Mandelson weirdly rushed”.

Mandelson suggested using Nigel Farage to “better UK connections with the Trump administration”. Mandelson was quoted in the documents as saying: “He’s [Farage] a bridgehead, both to President Trump and to Elon Musk and others … National interest is served in all sorts of weird and wonderful ways.”