Keir Starmer<\/a>, has said officials were under pressure from Downing Street to get Mandelson to Washington, but said the pressure did not influence his decision to grant him clearance. Robbins has said he granted clearance without viewing the vetting file, relying instead on an oral briefing from an official who had not seen it either.<\/p>\nIn its statement, the committee said it did not believe the terms of the humble address allowed \u201cfor any documents to be withheld from parliament\u201d, adding: \u201cWhile government may believe that there is good reason to withhold certain documents, it does not currently have the authority to so do.\u201d<\/p>\n
Starmer\u2019s government is now expected to face intense pressure to explain why it has chosen to withhold the vetting file.<\/p>\n
The prime minister\u2019s decision to appoint Mandelson as ambassador to the US in December 2024 has cast a shadow over his premiership and led to calls for his resignation prior to Labour\u2019s poor showing in the local elections.<\/p>\n
One of his chief rivals, the former health secretary Wes Streeting, also faces questions over his proximity to Mandelson, whom some have described as his mentor.<\/p>\n
The ISC also criticised the government\u2019s approach to redacting documents that have been released. Under the terms of the humble address, documents can be redacted on the grounds of international relations and national security. However, the government has said it is making additional redactions, such as removing the personal data of third parties or information deemed commercially sensitive.<\/p>\n
The ISC said it did not believe the humble address provided the government with scope for such redactions, and warned that it believed the redactions were being applied \u201cfar too broadly\u201d.<\/p>\n
It said the government needed to return to parliament to seek permission to make further redactions. It noted that no body had been commissioned to review the additional redactions made by the government.<\/p>\n
In addition to being highly critical of the government\u2019s response to the humble address, the ISC criticised the \u201cextraordinary\u201d amount of government business taking place outside of official systems, such as on WhatsApp, and made what appeared to be a critique of the decision to grant Mandelson clearance against the advice of security officials.<\/p>\n
\u201cLengthy WhatsApp conversations between senior officials and ministers appear now to be the format by which government policy is formulated,\u201d it said. \u201cPerhaps as a result, the lack of an audit trail \u2013 in terms of agendas, minutes and records of conversations, in the [Foreign Office] in particular \u2013 do not appear to be kept as a matter of practice. This is unacceptable in government.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a section headed \u201cfailure to adhere to security advice\u201d, the ISC\u2019s statement raised concern that the conclusions of security officials were not acted on. In an apparent reference to UKSV\u2019s advice to the Foreign Office, it said: \u201cWhere advice is sought and obtained by those organisations whose job it is to ensure security, for that advice to be overruled to suit some other objective is not acceptable.\u201d<\/p>\n
It added: \u201cProper security concerns cannot be dismissed simply because they are inconvenient.\u201d<\/p>\n
Alex Burghart, the shadow chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, said: \u201cIt is outrageous that Labour are trying to withhold documents about the Mandelson-Epstein affair from parliament.<\/p>\n
\u201cThroughout this process, Starmer and his ministers have sought to pull the wool over the public and parliament\u2019s eyes. They only started releasing information because the Conservatives forced them to, and even now they are continuing the cover-up.\u201d<\/p>\n
A Cabinet Office spokesperson said: \u201cThe government takes its obligations to parliament and the protection of our national security extremely seriously. We have been clear that the public deserve transparency and we are committed to complying with the humble address in full.<\/p>\n
\u201cRedactions will only be made where necessary, and in a way which is transparent to the house. We are working to publish as much material as we can, as soon as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A powerful parliamentary committee tasked with reviewing files relating to Peter Mandelson\u2019s appointment as US ambassador has revealed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":585872,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-585871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585871","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=585871"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585871\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/585872"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=585871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=585871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=585871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}