UK: Starmer says he wasn't told about Mandelson vetting

Keir Starmer gave a statement to the House of Commons on Monday, seeking to provide more details on the vetting and controversial appointment of the UK's former ambassador to the US, Peter Mandelson, a known Jeffrey Epstein associate who resigned amid scandal last year and now faces legal investigations for alleged misconduct in public office. 

Starmer told the House that while Mandelson had failed his security vetting process, officials at the British Foreign Office elected to overrule this recommendation, and then neglected to tell Starmer or any senior government officials about this. 

He also said that if he had been told about Mandelson failing the checks, he would not have appointed him to the prestigious job in Washington. 

The case has been piling pressure on Starmer's already unpopular premiership for months, with important local and regional elections coming up in May. 

Starmer: Decision to appoint Mandelson 'was wrong' 

The Labour Party leader prefaced his comments on the process of Mandelson's vetting, appointment, sacking, and the subsequent investigations, with a more general comment on the decision to put an already-controversial Labour grandee with known ties to Jeffrey Epstein in the role. 

"At the heart of this there is also a judgment I made that was wrong," Starmer told lawmakers. "I should not have appointed Peter Mandelson. I take responsibility for that decision. And I apologize again to the victims of pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, who were clearly failed by my decision." 

Mandelson was appointed in December of 2024 and was sacked by the following September as more information on his relationship with convicted sex offender and financier Jeffrey Epstein came to light. At several points since then, the handling of his appointment and dismissal has caused major headaches for Starmer's government, as new information came to light via the so-called "Epstein files" and other sources.

In the meantime, he has resigned from both the Labour Party and the upper house, the House of Lords, and faces a criminal investigation for alleged wrongdoing dating back almost two decades when in a prior public office. 

Several senior government officials and civil servants have been sacked amid the fallout, but Starmer and the ministers in his Cabinet have so far been spared the ax.

What did Starmer say about the vetting process?

The prime minister then went on to lay out both the latest findings about Mandelson not having been approved for so-called "developed vetting clearance," the UK process that recommends senior civil servants for access to top secret information, and to say that this information had not been shared with any of his senior government ministers. 

"Last Tuesday evening ... I found out for the first time that on the 29th of January, 2025, before Peter Mandelson took up his position as ambassador, that Foreign Office officials granted him developed vetting clearance against the specific recommendation of the United Kingdom Security Vetting (UKSV) that developed vetting clearance should be denied," Starmer said. 

"Not only that, the Foreign Office officials who made that decision did not pass this information to me, to the Foreign Secretary [Yvette Cooper], to her predecessor the deputy prime minister [David Lammy], to any other minister, or even to the former Cabinet Secretary Sir Chris Wormald," Starmer said. 

Starmer said the information wasn't even passed on to government ministers after Mandelson's sacking and amid the first rounds of scandal over due process, which led to members of his government unwittingly misleading the House by seeming to imply Mandelson had cleared the vetting process. 

Finally, Starmer said that in February of this year he became so concerned that Mandelson had apparently not raised any red flags, given the extent of the allegations and the criminal investigation that had subsequently materialized against him, that he ordered an internal review of UKSV vetting procedures themselves. Even then, he said, nobody thought to mention Mandelson had failed the checks.

"The fact that I was not told even when I ordered a review of the UKSV process is frankly staggering," he said. 

"I know many members across the House will find these facts to be incredible," Starmer said late in his speech, eliciting loud laughter in the chamber that he probably had not sought. "To that, I can only say they are right. It beggars belief that throughout the whole timeline of events, officials in the Foreign Office saw fit to withhold this information from the most senior ministers in our system of government."

How did opposition leaders respond? 

The leader of the center-right Conservative Party, Kemi Badenoch, said in her response to Starmer's statement that: "His reputation is at stake. Everyone is watching." 

"This goes beyond propriety and ethics. This is a matter of national security," Badenoch said. "At every turn, with every explanation, the government's story has become murkier and more contradictory. It is time for the truth." 

Badenoch, like the leader of the Liberal Democrats Ed Davey, accused Starmer of letting others take the rap for a decision that could fundamentally be traced back to him, namely appointing Mandelson to the role despite his checkered past. 

Davey said "this is 2022 all over again," in reference to the latter days of Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the frequent sackings and resignations, and the allegations of misleading parliament. 

"Why did he ask so few questions about the vetting process itself," Davey asked, surmising that Starmer "knew" that appointing Mandelson was a risk, but "decided it was a risk worth taking — a catastrophic error of judgment."

Meanwhile, Reform UK lawmaker Lee Anderson was ejected from the chamber for a breach of its rules for accusing Starmer of "lying" to the house and refusing to alter his language when challenged by the speaker.

Who is Peter Mandelson? 

Mandelson, 72, has been a fairly prominent figure in British politics since the early 1990s, when he first took a seat in the House of Commons.

He was particularly known for his skills as a strategist and fixer, working as the Labour Party's director of communications even before he took elected office. 

Mandelson served in various ministerial roles in the governments of Labour Prime Ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, including Business Secretary and the organizational role of First Secretary of State that is often compared to the role of deputy prime minister, with neither of those positions permanently filled. 

He had been no stranger to scandal or to resignation in the past, resigning from Tony Blair's Cabinet in 1998 over an undisclosed loan for a home from a party ally with links to a media mogul. In 2001, he had to resign once more, this time over allegations of seeking to improperly influence a passport application.

He had also come under criticism for potentially inappropriate ties to Russia and China. 

Mandelson also had a stint in Brussels as European Commissioner for Trade from 2004 to 2008, in between roles in British governments.

Despite his connection with Epstein, Mandelson himself is not accused of any sexual misconduct. 

Edited by: Rana Taha