Peter Mandelson condemned the police for his arrest on Monday and claimed he was only taken into custody because detectives had wrongly believed he was about to flee the country.<\/p>\n
In a remarkable rebuke to the Metropolitan police, lawyers for the former peer challenged the force to provide the evidence to justify their actions, insisting it was prompted by a \u201cbaseless\u201d suggestion that he was planning to move abroad.<\/p>\n
His lawyers said Scotland Yard had agreed to interview him under caution next month rather than arrest him over claims that he had passed sensitive government information to convicted child sex offender, Jeffrey Epstein.<\/p>\n
But the Met was informed on Monday that Mandelson was preparing to leave the UK for the British Virgin Islands and took him into custody at a London police station before releasing him on bail in the early hours of Tuesday morning.<\/p>\n
Mandelson is understood to have told friends at about 4am, just hours after his release, that the claims were \u201ccomplete fiction\u201d and questioned \u201cwho or what\u201d was behind them. His lawyers said his \u201coverriding priority\u201d was cooperating with the police.<\/p>\n
The extraordinary fightback comes after months of difficult headlines for Mandelson that led to his sacking as the UK\u2019s ambassador to Washington last September over his links with Epstein, as well as his departure from the Labour party and the House of Lords.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Downing Street is bracing itself for the release of a \u201cdue diligence\u201d report from the Cabinet Office as early as next week, which sources said warned Keir Starmer of the serious \u201creputational risk\u201d of going ahead with the appointment.<\/p>\n
Officials said the document could prove \u201cvery difficult\u201d for the prime minister and warned that his response at the time \u2013 asking former chief of staff Morgan McSweeney, a friend of Mandelson, to ask him about its contents \u2013 could be seen as \u201ccompletely inadequate\u201d.<\/p>\n
The Guardian understands that the Met received \u201cintelligence\u201d from a source that Mandelson may be planning a trip overseas.<\/p>\n
The information included the suggestion that the British Virgin Islands could be the destination for the Labour grandee, though it does have an extradition agreement with the UK.<\/p>\n
Detectives assessed the source of the intelligence and viewed it as sufficiently credible that police decided to take no chances and make the arrest.<\/p>\n
When he was released, police put restrictions on his travel overseas as part of his bail conditions. It was unclear whether this involved surrendering his passport.<\/p>\n
A statement from Mandelson\u2019s lawyers, Mishcon de Reya, said: \u201cPeter Mandelson was arrested yesterday despite an agreement with the police that he would attend an interview next month on a voluntary basis.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe arrest was prompted by a baseless suggestion that he was planning to leave the country and take up permanent residence abroad. There is absolutely no truth whatsoever in any such suggestion.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have asked the [Met police] for the evidence relied upon to justify the arrest. Peter Mandelson\u2019s overriding priority is to cooperate with the police investigation, as he has done throughout this process, and to clear his name.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mandelson is understood to have sent a message to friends in the early hours of Tuesday morning, just hours after he was released from police custody and was pictured returning to his north London home.<\/p>\n
\u201cDespite previous agreement between police and legal team over voluntary interview in early March, police arrested me because they claimed \u2026 that I was about to flee to the British Virgin Islands and take up permanent residence abroad, leaving Reinaldo, my family, home and Jock [his dog] behind me,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n
\u201cI need hardly say complete fiction. The police were told only today that they had to improvise an arrest. The question is, who or what is behind this?\u201d<\/p>\n
Reports that the Lord speaker, Michael Forsyth, was involved in passing on a tip to Scotland Yard were fiercely denied by parliamentary authorities.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for the Forsyth said: \u201cAny suggestion at all that the Lord speaker received information about Lord Mandelson\u2019s movements or communicated any such information to the Metropolitan police service is entirely false and without foundation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mandelson\u2019s furious response to his arrest has brought renewed focus on the prime minister\u2019s decision to appoint him to the Washington role, despite being aware that his friendship with Epstein had continued post-conviction.<\/p>\n
A government source said: \u201cIt was a mistake to appoint Mandelson, as the PM has said. He lied during the recruitment process. What we know now we didn\u2019t when he was sacked, let alone when he was appointed.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Cabinet Office document is thought likely to be among the most damaging of those included in the first tranche of papers relating to the appointment. The government is restricted from releasing further information while the police inquiry is ongoing.<\/p>\n
However, on Tuesday, the government bowed to pressure from MPs to sanction the release of documents relating to the appointment of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor as a British trade envoy in 2001.<\/p>\n
Government sources from the time suggested that the request for the former prince to inherit the role from the Duke of Kent came from Buckingham Palace directly and was approved by ministers as a formality, as it was unlikely that No 10 would turn down an explicit call from the queen.<\/p>\n
In extraordinary scenes in parliament, MPs lined up to criticise Mountbatten-Windsor\u2019s conduct, with trade minister Chris Bryant describing him as a \u201crude, arrogant and entitled man\u201d.<\/p>\n
The releases are expected to provide an unprecedented insight into the handling of the two figures now under investigation over their relationships with Epstein.<\/p>\n
However, officials believe it could be weeks or even months before any documents about Andrew are released, in part because of the risk of compromising the police inquiry, but also because of logistical complexities.<\/p>\n
A number of the relevant files are believed to exist only in paper form, with officials saying that, as yet, they are only beginning to get a sense of what may need to be released.<\/p>\n
The process is being led by the Department for Business and Trade (DBT), given the former prince\u2019s envoy role was with UK Trade and Investment, a now defunct government body co-run by the business department and the Foreign Office.<\/p>\n
Under government protocols, the complex process of deciding which documents can be released without prejudicing the police inquiry is handled by the Cabinet Office, meaning DBT officials must go through them.<\/p>\n
Another complication is that a key factor in whether Andrew is prosecuted for alleged misconduct in public office is expected to be whether his unpaid trade envoy role counted as public office, an area where the documents due to be released could be relevant.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have no qualms about releasing any of this, but we also don\u2019t want to compromise the police investigation, and it\u2019s not clear yet what is or isn\u2019t relevant,\u201d a government official said. \u201cSo we just don\u2019t know how long it will take. We don\u2019t want to look like we\u2019re obfuscating, as we have no qualms about releasing any of this.\u201d<\/p>\n
On the Mandelson files, a first batch is being prioritised for imminent release, which has no relevance to the police inquiry, and which also do not have any potential consequences for national security or international relations, and so do not need to be checked by parliament\u2019s intelligence and security committee.<\/p>\n
The timeline for other documents is, in contrast, described by officials as requiring \u201ca number of weeks\u201d, even with the Cabinet Office recruiting internal volunteers to help with the process.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, police investigating Mountbatten-Windsor said on Tuesday evening that searches at a property in Berkshire related to an investigation into the offence of misconduct in public office had concluded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Peter Mandelson condemned the police for his arrest on Monday and claimed he was only taken into custody…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":444340,"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-444339","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\/444339","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=444339"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444339\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/444340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=444339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=444339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=444339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}