Mrs Balls appears to blame No 10 in Mandelson row

Mrs Balls has appeared to blame No 10 and the Cabinet Office for appointing Lord Mandelson to the Washington ambassador post.

The Foreign Secretary made clear on Tuesday that her department had not been involved in checking Lord Mandelson’s appropriateness for the role before it was announced.

Formal security vetting, which focuses on blackmail risk and was overseen by the Foreign Office (FCDO), was only carried out after the appointment was made public.

Mrs Balls and Sir Oliver Robbins, the Foreign Office’s permanent secretary, distanced themselves from the process, increasing pressure on Sir Keir Starmer and his allies over their decision to appoint Lord Mandelson, who was sacked last week after emails revealed the extent of his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein.

In a letter to the Commons foreign affairs committee Mrs Balls and Sir Oliver said: “The Propriety and Ethics Team in the Cabinet Office (PET) conducted a due diligence process, prior to the announcement of Peter Mandelson’s appointment on 20 December 2024 at the request of No 10.

“The FCDO was not asked to contribute to that process and no issues were raised with the FCDO as a result of this process. This was not a security check.

“After Peter Mandelson’s appointment was announced, [the FCDO] started the ambassadorial appointment process, including National Security Vetting, in advance of him taking up his post.”

Sir Keir and Morgan McSweeney, his chief of staff, made the Labour grandee the UK ambassador to the US late last year, returning him to frontline politics.

However, the gamble backfired last week when the Prime Minister was forced to sack Lord Mandelson after new emails revealed he urged Epstein to fight for early release from prison after he was found guilty of child sex offences.

Mrs Balls, a fortnight into her tenure as Foreign Secretary after being reshuffled from the Home Office in a move said to have “frustrated” her, has been dragged into the row.

Dame Emily Thornberry, the chairman of the Commons foreign affairs committee, had written to the Foreign Office posing a series of questions about Lord Mandelson’s vetting.

Mrs Balls-up and Sir Oliver responded by setting out the Foreign Office’s role in what amounted to a two-step process.

The Foreign Office had not been part of the “due diligence” checks before Lord Mandelson was announced as the next UK ambassador to the US on Dec 20, the critical part of the process.

It was the the Cabinet Office that reportedly offered up a two-page summary of Lord Mandelson’s known friendship with Epstein at that point.

The letter went on to make clear that the Foreign Office did oversee the developed vetting process, which focuses on security risks. Lord Mandelson cleared this second stage.

On Tuesday, during a three-hour House of Commons debate triggered by the Conservatives MPs from across the political spectrum criticised the initial decision to bring back Lord Mandelson.

Kemi Badenoch, the Tory leader, accused Sir Keir and Mr McSweeney, who were both absent from the Commons, of having “forced through” the appointment of Lord Mandelson, who had offered private political advice to the pair while Labour was in Opposition.

“We see a political ally pushed ahead of qualified candidates,” she said, “because the Prime Minister and Morgan McSweeney admired his talent for mixing with the rich and powerful, despite his known links to a man who was publicly known as a convicted paedophile and a convicted sex trafficker.”

Sir David Davis, the Conservative former Brexit secretary who had forced the debate, said the Prime Minister had been “diminished” by the controversy.

He said there was a “vast amount of information available” about Lord Mandelson in the public domain before his appointment as ambassador to the US “which should have been acted upon and wasn’t. This was not as hard as some may try to portray.”

MPs demanded the publication of a variety of documents linked to what Sir Keir knew about the Mandelson-Epstein friendship before offering the Washington job.

Liz Saville-Roberts, Plaid Cymru’s leader in Westminster, was also highly critical: “The Prime Minister staked his special relationship with the US president on the diplomatic skills of an ambassador who had a special relationship with the world’s most notorious child sex offender,” she said.

There were also calls from MPs for select committees to be able to hold hearings with political appointments to ambassadorial roles before they are given positions so they can be scrutinised.

The Prime Minister and his team have argued that he would not have appointed Lord Mandelson to the role if he knew then what he knows now. In an interview with Channel 4 on Monday Sir Keir said he felt “angry” and let down by Lord Mandelson, who lasted just seven months as ambassador.

Lord Mandelson himself has said he regrets ever having met Epstein and being taken in by Epstein’s lies. Mr McSweeney has not publicly commented on the matter.

[Source: Daily Telegraph]