Headline: Starmer gives dossier to police on Peter Mandelson’s Epstein emails
Sub-headline: Prime minister has asked officials to press ahead with legislation to remove Mandelson from Lords as he faces investigation over leaked email allegations
Sir Keir Starmer has handed police a dossier about Lord Mandelson allegedly leaking highly sensitive information on the economy to Jeffrey Epstein.
On Tuesday morning the Cabinet Office sent the Metropolitan Police details about emails from the then-business secretary to the late paedophile financier.
Starmer told his cabinet that the alleged leaks were “disgraceful”, and has asked officials to draw up legislation to remove Mandelson’s peerage “as quickly as possible”. He added that Mandelson had “let his country down”. Legislation which will remove Mandelson’s peerage and titles is expected to be presented within the next few weeks.
A spokesman for the prime minister said an “initial review of the documents” found “likely market sensitive information around the 2008 crash” seems to have been passed on from Mandelson to Epstein.
Downing Street added that “only people operating in an official capacity had access to this information” and that “strict handling” procedures appeared to have been “compromised”.
The police have been sent an “initial assessment” of the emails contained in the Epstein files by the Cabinet Office, with officials giving their opinion that the rules around handling confidential information had been broken. This is designed to help police determine whether the threshold for the offence of misconduct in public office has been met.
Starmer said he was “not reassured that the totality of the information” about Mandelson and Epstein had “yet emerged”.
Scotland Yard is reviewing the allegations that Mandelson committed a criminal offence by leaking Downing Street emails and inside information to Epstein when he was business secretary.
Baroness Harman, a former Labour deputy leader, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that the government should push ahead with primary legislation to strip Mandelson of his peerage while reforming the Lords “concurrently”.
She said: “What Peter Mandelson has done is pass a stain over not just this government but over politics as a whole. I’m sure the government are in absolutely no doubt about the seriousness of it. It was in the manifesto. There was a proposal of reform of the Lords. In the meantime I think the prime minister could be advising the King to stop him being a privy counsellor.
“I also think he’s on leave of absence at the moment from the House of Lords having stepped out of the Lords to be our ambassador. It would be good for the Lords to pass a motion to say that he’s not to reapply to come back in.
“I think it could be done concurrently. It could be that under the current procedure the government bring in a bill to strip Peter Mandelson of his title of being a peer but at the same time the government bring in through the Lords changed processes to actually modernise the rules.”
The Liberal Democrats said that they would be prepared to work on a cross-party basis to pass a “simple” act of parliament to strip Mandelson of his peerage.
Karin Smyth, a health minister, told Times Radio: “We don’t have a majority in the Lords, which is why … it needs to be approached on a cross-party basis. Legislation on these sorts of matters actually gets quite complicated on the sort of criteria and the rules and how that’s done.”
Smyth said everyone was “learning and seeing shocking levels of emails” from Mandelson, who “was not forthcoming”.
Asked if it reflected poorly on Starmer, Smyth told Times Radio: “This is a shocking state of affairs. There’s absolutely no doubt about that. But at this time, a couple of years ago, Peter Mandelson was very active in all aspects of public life.”
Smyth also said the peer’s interview with The Times, in which he said he wanted to “reset”, showed he was not taking the allegations seriously. Smyth told Sky News it reminded her of “men that have been involved in similar sorts of behaviour” who “seem to not be able to recognise their own self”.
Harman said she had long believed Mandelson to be untrustworthy, but “could never have believed” he would leak information while a cabinet minister.
She said: “I was of the view that Peter Mandelson was untrustworthy from the 1990s, but he was appointed by Tony Blair, he was appointed by Gordon Brown, and appointed again by Sir Keir Starmer.
“But even I, who had a view that he was untrustworthy, I could never have believed that, Gordon Brown having appointed him to the cabinet, that he would sit in that cabinet and leak information whilst the government was struggling to protect the country from the global financial crisis.”
Brown, who was the subject of several of the leaks, said the information in the Epstein files was “shocking” and called for the government to investigate.
Downing Street earlier said it had asked the cabinet secretary to conduct a review of “all available information” about Mandelson’s contacts with Epstein during his time as a minister.
Mandelson has resigned from the Labour Party over the documents, which suggest he was paid $75,000 by Epstein. He said he had no recollection of the payment. Mandelson confirmed that his husband, Reinaldo Avila da Silva, was given $10,000 by Epstein to cover the cost of an osteopathy course.
In an exclusive interview with The Times after quitting Labour, Mandelson said: “The decision wasn’t easy but I feel better for it as I need to reset. I am a New Labour person and always will be wherever the current party situates itself. But I think I want a sea change. I want to be an outsider looking in and not the other way round.”
The documents appear to reveal the extent of Mandelson’s relationship with Epstein. In 2009, at the height of the financial crisis, they suggest he passed on a memo from Nick Butler, a senior adviser to Brown, which suggested the government should sell off assets to pay down debt incurred from bailing out Britain’s banks and also apparently discussed plans for potential tax cuts.
Epstein immediately responded “what salable [sic] assets”. The reply was land and property. Later that year Brown announced plans to sell £16 billion of assets including the Dartford Tunnel and Channel Tunnel Rail Link.
In another exchange it appears that Mandelson forwarded an email sent to Brown’s secret Downing Street email address by Baroness Vadera, one of his closest economic advisers and a minister. The memo exposed divisions at the top of government over the handling of the financial crisis.
In April 2010 Mandelson appears to have sent Epstein a note about a meeting between Alistair Darling, then the chancellor, and Larry Summers, who was then the US treasury secretary. The next day he sent details of a meeting between himself and Summers, including banking regulation.
Days before Labour was lost the 2010 election, Mandelson apparently confirmed details of a planned €500 billion bailout of the euro, telling Epstein it “Sd be announced tonight”.
He also seemed to give Epstein warning of Brown’s resignation as prime minister, claiming he had “finally got him to go” hours before the news became public. On Monday, Brown said he had written to the cabinet secretary last year asking him to investigate the “disclosure of confidential and market-sensitive information from the then business department”.
Butler, whose memo was seemingly passed to Epstein, said Mandelson was guilty of a “disgusting breach of trust” that was “presumably intended to give Epstein the chance to make money”.
Meanwhile the former US president Bill Clinton and his wife, Hillary, have also agreed to testify in person before Congress as part of its investigation into Epstein. They made an 11th-hour offer to appear before the oversight committee after the House prepared to vote to hold them in contempt.
For months, the Clintons had refused to testify, describing the subpoena by the committee’s Republican chairman as “invalid and legally unenforceable”.
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