{"id":414749,"date":"2026-02-08T14:54:12","date_gmt":"2026-02-08T14:54:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/414749\/"},"modified":"2026-02-08T14:54:12","modified_gmt":"2026-02-08T14:54:12","slug":"mandelson-should-hand-back-us-ambassador-payout-says-cabinet-minister-peter-mandelson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/414749\/","title":{"rendered":"Mandelson should hand back US ambassador payout, says cabinet minister | Peter Mandelson"},"content":{"rendered":"

A cabinet minister has called for Peter Mandelson<\/a> to hand back the payout he received after quitting as ambassador to the US last year, as pressure increased on the prime minister to quit for having appointed him in the first place.<\/p>\n

Pat McFadden, the welfare secretary, said on Sunday he thought the Labour peer should give back his Foreign Office payout, which is reported to be<\/a> as much as \u00a355,000. The Foreign Office is understood to be reviewing the payment.<\/p>\n

Mandelson quit last year as Washington ambassador after further details came to light about his relationship with the convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. This week, he said he would stand down<\/a> from the House of Lords after yet more documents were published, showing the relationship between the two men to have been closer than thought.<\/p>\n

Mandelson was reported on Sunday to have received a payment worth three months\u2019 salary <\/a>when he quit in September. \u201cI think Peter should reflect on that and either return it or give it to an appropriate charity,\u201d McFadden told the BBC\u2019s Laura Kuenssberg.<\/p>\n

The Foreign Office said: \u201cPeter Mandelson\u2019s civil service employment was terminated in accordance with legal advice and the terms and conditions of his employment.\u201d<\/p>\n

The department is understood to be reviewing the payment \u2013 though officials believed at the time they had no legal option but to pay it.<\/p>\n

McFadden was a close ministerial ally of Mandelson in the last Labour<\/a> government, working as his deputy in the business department. He said he had not known anything about his former boss\u2019s relationship with Epstein, and said he had been dismayed by emails that appeared to show Mandelson passing sensitive government information to the late US financier.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is someone from whom I\u2019ve sought political advice over the years, someone who I thought I knew well, but when I look at the emails that have been published in the last two weeks, there\u2019s a whole side of that I knew nothing of,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

McFadden insisted Keir Starmer<\/a> should remain in his job despite rising pressure on the prime minister in the wake of the latest revelations.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s good for the country to be changing its prime minister every 18 months to two years,\u201d he said. \u201cIt has an economic cost, it has a confidence cost, it has an international reputation cost.\u201d<\/p>\n

Steve Wright, the head of the Fire Brigades Union, on Sunday became the first boss of a Labour-affiliated union to call on the prime minister to stand down.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we need to see change,\u201d he told the BBC.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think 18 months ago, the general public wanted to see that change, and we\u2019re not seeing it, we\u2019re just seeing a continuation of what happened before. And I think that needs to be a leadership change, and I think MPs need to be calling for that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many MPs, meanwhile, are agitating for Starmer to sack his chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, who pushed personally for Mandelson to be given the job in Washington.<\/p>\n

Rosena Allin-Khan, the Labour MP for Tooting, said on Sunday: \u201cSomeone needs to take responsibility, and a lot of the responsibility needs to lie with people who advise [Starmer]. It is well known that there is a boys\u2019 club in No 10 of people who feel as though they can act with impunity, give advice. And it\u2019s not worked out well.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another Labour MP added: \u201cThe idea of Morgan being allowed to resign makes the PM look even weaker. He should sack him or he will go down with Morgan. The longer he leaves it, the more likely it is the latter.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A cabinet minister has called for Peter Mandelson to hand back the payout he received after quitting as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":414750,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-414749","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-kingdom","8":"tag-gb","9":"tag-great-britain","10":"tag-greatbritain","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414749","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=414749"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414749\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/414750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=414749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=414749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=414749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}