Wormald, who is the head of the civil service, confirmed that there was \u201cno panel interview\u201d when Mandelson was being considered for the role because the post was filled through a direct ministerial appointment by Prime Minister Keir Starmer.<\/p>\n
A panel interview would normally be used to ask a candidate if there was anything in their history that would bring the government into disrepute, Wormald explained, but Mandelson did not go through this process, and therefore the question was not directly posed.<\/p>\n
Mandelson\u2019s relationship with Epstein did come up during due diligence checks, Robbins said. But Wormald said the information that ultimately saw Mandelson ousted from his role was \u201cnot available to us at the time that the due diligence was done.\u201d<\/p>\n
Quizzing the pair, Labour MP and committee member Uma Kumaran argued that it ought to have been foreseen that a \u201cwell-publicized friendship with the world\u2019s most notorious pedophile might be a problem to the government,\u201d while Conservative MP Aphra Brandreth read out a list of publicly available information on Mandelson, saying he \u201ckept a notoriously close relationship\u201d with the pedophile and stayed in his Manhattan townhouse after Epstein had pleaded guilty.<\/p>\n
Brandreth asked: \u201cAt what point were questions raised about whether that was appropriate, and why does it seem that suddenly a small additional bit of information would tip the balance on that being, at one point deemed appropriate to then not appropriate?\u201d<\/p>\n
Speaking in the House of Commons in September after the sacking, Starmer said the Mandelson-Epstein relationship was \u201cfar different to what I\u2019d understood to be the position at the point of appointment,\u201d and \u201chad I known then what I know now, I\u2019d have never appointed him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Under questioning by the committee, Robinson confirmed that Mandelson \u2014 who has said he feels \u201cutterly awful about my association with Epstein twenty years ago and the plight of his victims\u201d \u2014 is no longer on the government payroll, but refused to say if the former ambassador received any settlement following his exit.<\/p>\n
The pair said there had been a \u201cnumber\u201d of changes to the direct ministerial appointment system since Mandelson was appointed. Wormald said these reforms would \u201ceffectively replicate what would normally happen in a panel interview,\u201d introducing a higher degree of scrutiny.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wormald, who is the head of the civil service, confirmed that there was \u201cno panel interview\u201d when Mandelson…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":241726,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[39097,59,57,58,1293,420,50,101741,468,424,44186,1352,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-241725","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-kingdom","8":"tag-due-diligence","9":"tag-gb","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-greatbritain","12":"tag-history","13":"tag-keir-starmer","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-oliver-robbins","16":"tag-payments","17":"tag-peter-mandelson","18":"tag-prostitution","19":"tag-services","20":"tag-uk","21":"tag-united-kingdom","22":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241725","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=241725"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241725\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/241726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}