Starmer announces emergency laws to kick Peter Mandelson out of Lords | Politics | News
Peter Mandelson and Keir Starmer (Image: Getty)
Keir Starmer has ordered officials to draft legislation allowing Lord Peter Mandelson to be stripped of his peerage “as quickly as possible”, Downing Street said.
Labor could lose its rank within weeks, sources say.
The government also highlighted a wider need for the House of Lords to be able to quickly remove “infringers”.
The Prime Minister’s spokesman made the announcement after Sir Keir said allegations that emails relating to highly sensitive Government business had been passed to the Cabinet were “disgraceful” and “there has been no assurance that the full information has yet been revealed” about the Jeffrey Epstein files.
The Prime Minister told the Cabinet that Lord Mandelson had “let down his country” and that “swift action” was needed in responding to the revelations in the Epstein papers.
The Metropolitan Police is investigating reports of alleged misconduct in a public office after millions of pages were released as part of the so-called Epstein files. It comes after files released by the US Department of Justice showed Lord Mandelson passed information to Epstein while he was a cabinet minister in Gordon Brown’s government.
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The Prime Minister called for the former ambassador to Washington to leave the Lords, while Downing Street said it believed Sir Keir “should not be a member… or use the title”.
He appointed the country’s top civil servant to conduct the review.
Documents show that details of internal discussions were sent to Epstein from the heart of the UK government in the wake of the global financial crisis.
The then business secretary, Lord Mandelson, appeared to have told Epstein in 2009 that he would lobby ministers over a tax on bankers’ bonuses and that he would approve an imminent bailout of the euro the day before it was announced in 2010.
Bank statements for 2003 and 2004 showed payments totaling US$75,000 from the financier, and Epstein is also said to have paid for an osteopathy course for Lord Mandelson’s husband.
The Metropolitan Police said on Monday that it had received “a number of reports of allegations of misconduct in public office” after the files were released and that they would be examined to determine whether they met the criminal threshold for investigation.
A Government spokesman said: “It is for the police to decide whether an investigation should take place and the Government stands ready to provide whatever support and assistance the police require.”
Downing Street has previously said Sir Keir has asked Cabinet Secretary Sir Chris Wormald to conduct an “urgent review” examining “all available information regarding Mandelson’s contacts with Epstein while he was a government minister”.
Former prime minister Gordon Brown said he asked Sir Chris to investigate the disclosure of “confidential and market-sensitive information” during the global financial crisis.
Nick Macpherson, a former permanent secretary at the Treasury, suggested in a social media post that then-Chancellor Alistair Darling had suspicions about the leaks at the time.
“Alistair Darling and the official Treasury were always aware that the investment banks had an inside route to Number 10. But the brazen nature of that inside route is quite breathtaking,” he wrote in BlueSky.
The prime minister’s secretary general, Darren Jones, told the House of Commons on Monday that Lord Mandelson “must be held to account for his actions and his conduct”.
