Alex Burghart MP: speeches

Speeches

• 3 Jun 2026 · Lord Mandelson: Response to Humble Address · Hansard source

  More

  That is entirely true. I believe that the ISC said as much in one of its responses to Government disclosure, saying it was very troubled by the fact that this guidance, which all Ministers are supposed to obey, was routinely being broken. My right hon. Friend and I were both Ministers at the time when that guidance was brought in, and it was brought in for a very good reason. It was to reflect the fact that there are new communications channels and Ministers will want to use them—some of them are very useful for Ministers—but to make it clear that that should not get in the way of the fact that the system needs to retain a record of how decisions are made and what the decisions are. That has clearly not been done in many cases here, not least, as my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) pointed out, in the fact that we have a lot of empty boxes and no record of the Prime Minister assenting to the appointment of Peter Mandelson, even though we know that he did.

• 3 Jun 2026 · Lord Mandelson: Response to Humble Address · Hansard source

  More

  My right hon. Friend is right. The Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister will have heard his remarks, and I hope he will respond to them. Further to what my right hon. Friend said, the Humble Address was in February, but it was not until March that the Government asked Peter Mandelson for his phone, and Peter Mandelson then refused. As I and other Members said on Monday, the Government should seek to go after Peter Mandelson’s exit payment if he denies co-operation with the Humble Address. It is totally unacceptable that the House should be denied this critical information. We have some information that is retained, some information that appears to have been destroyed and some information that appears to have gone missing. I wish to turn to some remarks that the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister made on Monday about his own messages, as he brought them up. I think that will be a useful case study. The Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister said: “I do recall having some limited exchanges with Peter Mandelson over WhatsApp, including those I have already discussed…but these conversations did not involve transacting Government business and were in line with official guidance on the use of non-corporate communications channels at the time.” —[ Official Report , 1 June 2026; Vol. 786, c. 853.] That is all well and good, but who decided that those messages fell into that category? Did the right hon. Gentleman decide that himself? Did he show them to officials, who then decided? Did he show them to the police? Who made the decision? Again, we must ask these questions of all Ministers who were asked to disclose information. Where is it that people have self-edited? Where is it that people have had auto-deletion on their phones? Where is it that people have refused to hand things over? We deserve to know. Something that I believe is missing throughout the three volumes we received on Monday is photos, videos, voice notes and, more significantly, attachments. I would be very interested to hear the Minister’s explanation for the Government’s approach to those types of document. Let me draw attention in particular to document 33, from 15 September 2025. The email explicitly refers to an attachment, which is pertinent to the subject of the Humble Address, but that document is not available. I could have been led to believe that that document may have been retained by the police, were it not for the fact that all attachments seem to be missing and all photos, voicemails and videos are also missing. I cannot help but feel that it has accidentally fallen out of the full disclosure. May we have some clarity on that? Let me turn to Peter Mandelson’s declarations of interest, which are one of the most important classes of document; they are perhaps the most important class of document that we are yet to see. We now know that something definitely does exist—first, because the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister told us on Monday, and secondly, because there are references to a back-and-forth about Mandelson’s contacts in the release. Mandelson pushed back on a number of occasions, saying, “I know a lot of foreign people. I have a lot of contacts. I cannot be expected to disclose everything. There was a suggestion from one official not to worry about it too much, just to get on with it and give them a list.” We appear also to be seeing an absence of documents, such as the mitigations that the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, the right hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury, referred to—Collard’s document. If we add it all together—the absence of the declaration of interests, the absence of the mitigations designed perhaps to handle Mandelson’s relationships with his business contacts when in office, the fact that the documents of certain members of the Cabinet are entirely absent, and the business interests that we know Mandelson had—I think we can reasonably hypothesise about what the police are looking at. That would be—this is speculation—an abuse of his position in Washington to support the interests of his business relations. It is very unfortunate that we will not see that information for some time, because it goes to the heart of one of the problems with the appointment of Mandelson in the first place. [ Interruption. ] I think Madam Deputy Speaker is encouraging me to wind up, so that I will do. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”] I can understand why the Government do not want me to ask them any more questions. In conclusion, there are a number of things that we need of the Government. Most importantly, we need a slightly fresh approach to disclosure where we are told a bit more about what the police have: how many documents in each category, how many WhatsApps and emails of the Prime Minister, Peter Mandelson and Morgan McSweeney, and so on. It is important that the House understands where things have gone missing and can start to put that picture together in its head. I say to the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee that, once the police investigations are complete, it would be interesting for the police officers involved to come before the Select Committee—it may fall to another Committee as well—to discuss what their approach has been and why, and what lessons might be learned for future disclosures to Parliament. I end by turning, rather unfortunately, to the last speech that Peter Mandelson ever made in the Lords, where he said: “I feel very deeply that there will not be anything like the systematic undermining of the Civil Service that we have seen in recent years…when government policy was conducted by private WhatsApp, rather than on properly considered Civil Service advice.” —[ Official Report, House of Lords, 28 November 2024; Vol. 841, c. 830.] This scandal has taken the jobs of the ambassador to Washington, of the Prime Minister’s chief of staff, of the Cabinet Secretary and of the chief official in the Foreign Office—and, ultimately, it will take the job of the Prime Minister.

• 3 Jun 2026 · Lord Mandelson: Response to Humble Address · Hansard source

  More

  The reason I brought this up is that on Monday the right hon. Gentleman said: “I do recall having some limited exchanges with Peter Mandelson over WhatsApp, including those I have already discussed in the media”. —[ Official Report , 1 June 2026; Vol. 786, c. 853.] I do not wish to push this point too far, but I do wish to understand: there were messages, so who decided that they were not to be submitted under the Humble Address? Please can he explain?

• 3 Jun 2026 · Lord Mandelson: Response to Humble Address · Hansard source

  More

  I am very grateful to my right hon. Friend for his intervention. He is absolutely right: there is no higher authority than Parliament and consequently the Government should bear that in mind when delivering not just on this Humble Address but any future Humble Address. I do not wish to go over all of the ground that we have already covered, but there are clearly some discrepancies between what has been said in public and what has appeared in the Humble Address. There may be good reasons for some of that, but some is much harder to explain. I shall start with the information that appeared in The Guardian last week regarding the contents of the ISC’s summary document. Obviously that has not appeared in this return, as the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, the right hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry), and my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes), who sits on the ISC, have pointed out. We now have a situation in which the readership of The Guardian has been privy to the information that a document contained concerns about Mandelson’s relationships with at least four individuals: a Chinese Minister; Oleg Deripaska; a former Israeli Minister; and an unnamed man with whom Mandelson is said to have had “a relationship”. This information has come out of what, by the Government’s own definition, is a highly secure document, which we were previously told very few people had seen. I suggest that if this is so secure, first, that information should not have come out in any form and, secondly, given that it has, there really ought to be a leak inquiry because this is nationally sensitive information. I hope we can get confirmation later on from the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister that that is what is happening. [Interruption.] I hear that from across on the Treasury Bench, but it would be good to have it formally on the record later. I turn now to the central element that has featured in all of our debates: the Prime Minister’s role and judgment in the process of the appointment of Peter Mandelson. The Opposition established after the first release of documents that the Prime Minister was shown a due diligence document in which he was told that Mandelson had maintained an unhealthy relationship with Epstein after Epstein had been sent to prison. We have often in this House rightly paid tribute to the victims and survivors of Jeffrey Epstein, stating that they should always be in our thoughts, but the Prime Minister’s thoughts were not with the victims and survivors of Jeffrey Epstein after he had read that due diligence document, and I think we should put that clearly on the record.

• 3 Jun 2026 · Lord Mandelson: Response to Humble Address · Hansard source

  More

  I also find that very difficult to believe. We have these comments about the due diligence documents, and we have these comments about Epstein. We also have the comments about Mandelson’s directorship of a Russian company that owned a defence company that supplied Putin’s war effort in Crimea, and about his business relationships in China, to name but a few things in the due diligence document. It can be no accident that on the same day that the due diligence document was given to the Prime Minister, the then Cabinet Secretary said to the Prime Minister, “If you’re going to appoint this man, get the security vetting done first. Make sure that you have done the security vetting and had his disclosure of interests before you confirm his appointment.” But the Prime Minister went ahead and did it anyway. This was an enormous, historic and really terrible error of judgment. What we then witnessed in September 2025, when the Mandelson appointment had completely fallen apart and he had been fired, was that the civil service scrabbled to try to retrofit a justification for what had happened. Chris Wormald, the then Cabinet Secretary, did not do a bad job, but it was clearly inaccurate because we have in black and white what Simon Case had set down. We now have the due diligence document and the fact that the security vetting happened after the appointment. We also now know, thanks to the second return, that in January 2025, Mandelson was sitting in Washington looking at “highly classified” documents—the phrase “highly classified” is used in an email from January 2025— despite not having any security vetting and despite not having special treatment and restricted access procedures, or STRAP, clearance. This is a massive error of judgment and of government. It goes right to the heart of why the Conservative party has been fighting for transparency on this issue: to expose the failings of the senior people in the Labour party at that time. If we look at the second return, and at document 36 released on Monday, we can see that people such as Sir Olly Robbins were saying, while Chris Wormald was writing his note in September 2025, that they could not comment because they had not seen the relevant documentation. That makes one wonder who else had not seen the relevant documentation, because the relevant documentation is not in this release. Had Chris Wormald seen the relevant documentation, or was he just doing what a Cabinet Secretary in a crisis might do, which was trying to protect the Prime Minister? What we do know, again from document 36, is that No. 10 itself signed off Chris Wormald’s note. No. 10 itself approved—and had been given an opportunity to edit—the Cabinet Secretary’s note. Again, this feels wrong. It feels as though the process was very obviously being commissioned by No. 10 and interfered with by No. 10 in order to give the answer that No. 10 wanted, rather than the truth. It was a bogus process. It was designed to get the Prime Minister off the hook, but transparency shows that he was very clearly on the hook. Turning to the broader material, we have some things that have appeared and some things that we can deduce have been retained by the police. We have some things that we know have been destroyed and some things that may have gone missing. I hope that, during the course of this debate, we can get to the bottom of which documents may fall into which category. In April this year, the Foreign Affairs Committee had Morgan McSweeney before it, and the Chair and my right hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Sir John Whittingdale) asked him a number of questions about his messages. This was some time after the theft of his phone in October 2025. In question 970, the Chair said: “Are any of your text messages to Peter Mandelson—or not—going to be available in the Humble Address?” Morgan McSweeney said, “Yes.” In question 1117, my right hon. Friend the Member for Maldon, fearing that the theft of the phone might mean that information had been lost, asked: “Can we take it that your phone would have contained quite a lot of communications, either with Peter Mandelson or about Peter Mandelson’s appointment?” Morgan McSweeney replied: “Probably not much about his appointment that hasn’t already been available to No. 10, because when he was sacked, No. 10 did its own—I don’t want to say investigation, but its own research on what happened and why it happened and, as part of that process, I was asked to share messages and emails about the appointment and also to be interviewed”. So we know that, in April of this year, those messages still existed, that they were not affected by the theft of McSweeney’s phone and that they must have been available to the Government, but they are not in this this tranche of releases. We must therefore conclude that this is because they have been retained by the police, so let us assume that the McSweeney emails fall into that category, unless the Minister wishes to tell us that he has received any subsequent information to say that those messages were irretrievable. We then have the messages from the Prime Minister—or rather, we do not have any messages from the Prime Minister. It seems highly unlikely that the Prime Minister did not exchange any messages with Peter Mandelson at all, at any point. In fact, we must strongly suspect that he did, because there was a report in April in The Spectator by Tim Shipman, which quoted from some of those messages. We might think that those messages would have ended up being retained by the police, but when we look at the quotes that Tim Shipman had, they are incredibly anodyne. It is very unlikely that those messages would have been kept on grounds of national security or because they would be useful to a police investigation. Shipman says that “there is a text message which Keir Starmer sent the night before he made the announcement. ‘You’ll be brilliant in challenging circumstances,’ he told Mandelson. ‘And after many years of our discussions, we get to work together side by side. I really look forward to that.’” That did not age well.

• 3 Jun 2026 · Lord Mandelson: Response to Humble Address · Hansard source

  More

  I thank my right hon. Friend for that timely spelling out of exactly what the Prime Minister read—and yet he went ahead and made the appointment anyway. I take the remarks of the Paymaster General and other Ministers totally at face value and totally sincerely, but it is clear that the Prime Minister was not thinking in that way.

• 3 Jun 2026 · Lord Mandelson: Response to Humble Address · Hansard source

  More

  I open my remarks by paying tribute to Sir Alex Younger, the former head of MI6, who we learned had passed away during this debate. He was an incredible public servant who gave an enormous amount to his country. He was incredibly wise and generous, and I know that everyone in this House will miss him very much. In all these parliamentary encounters, we have been talking about a seeping of a great poison. The evil of Epstein seeped into his relationship with Peter Mandelson, which seeped into Mandelson’s influence on Government, which is still seeping into the way in which the Government have allowed themselves to behave. It is time for that to stop. Although we are approaching the point when we might be able to draw a line, that point is still quite a long way away, because we are dependent on the police releasing their documents. With that in mind, I ask the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister to try a new approach: for us to build on what has already happened and go further, so that the House can be more reassured about what it is and is not being given sight of. As far as anyone can see, there is no good reason why the Government cannot tell the House more at the high level. As I said earlier, on Monday the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister gave us something more high-level in the four categories, but we can go further. There is no good reason why the information that has been given to the police cannot be given to the ISC. The Government could unilaterally decide to do that; they do not need to ask anyone’s permission. As has been raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) who used to be Chair of the Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes), who is not in his place, who is a current member of the Committee, and my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Sir Jeremy Wright), who is still on the Committee, this House has complete trust in the ISC. It entrusts it with the most confidential material that the state has on offer—STRAP-level material—so I do not think anyone here would believe that sharing the material given to the police with the ISC would in any way run the risk of prejudicing a trial. Consequently, I genuinely invite the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister to give the House that. All of us, even those who are not members of the ISC, should be entitled to know a bit more. We should be entitled to know about the number of messages being withheld. We should be given a degree of detail, because there is no reason why that would prejudice an investigation or a trial. I will go through a few points and then I will sit down and let the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister respond. I want to return to the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister’s own messages, not because I think he has done anything wrong—I do not believe he has—but because he disclosed to us the other day that he had messages that he did not feel were relevant and I wonder if he could tell us about them. They are obviously not in the returns, but because the Humble Address required the disclosure of messages between Ministers and Peter Mandelson, we need to know the process that was gone through with messages that were not in the Humble Address returns. Were they deleted? Were they deleted after they had been shown to officials? Were they shown to officials and it was decided they were not to be disclosed? It would be very good to have clarity, because it might give us insight into how other such messages were treated. Secondly, on the question of Morgan McSweeney’s messages, which we know still existed in April this year when he talked to the Foreign Affairs Committee about them and said that they were already in the possession of the Government because of the inquiry that Wormald had done in September last year, will the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister confirm that the process discovered those messages and consequently that Morgan McSweeney was telling the truth to that Committee? Do those messages exist? I do not think it prejudices an investigation or trial to know that those messages exist. Similarly, with Morgan McSweeney’s messages, the Prime Minister’s messages, the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s messages, and so on, we deserve to know how many messages are being withheld. There is nothing in that data that would prejudice an investigation or a trial. That is what we care about—I know that is what the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister cares about—and if the Government were to co-operate in that way, it would show a willingness and a transparency that we have not previously had. Related to that is the issue that I and several Back Benchers raised about other forms of electronic communication, particularly pictures, videos, voice recordings and attachments, none of which have made their way into the Humble Address returns. It seems very unlikely that all of them have been retained by the police, particularly when the messages they are related to are in the Humble Address returns. It feels like they have slipped through the net. Can the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister tell us a bit more about that? Lastly, to return to the point made by the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, the right hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry) and by my right hon. Friends, during the course of this debate I believe we have ascertained that the ISC did not see the mitigations. The Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee has not been able to detect any mitigations. I think we deserve to know whether there were any mitigations. Even if we cannot be told what they were, and even if we are told that they are being retained by the police, there is no good reason why we should not be told whether or not they exist. There is nothing in that information that would prejudice an investigation or a trial. It is time for the Government to take us to the next level of transparency. I very much hope that that is what the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister wants to do, because ultimately, all of this will come out in due course. If it does, and it turns out that the Government were unnecessarily withholding information, the scandal will continue again and again and it will infect more and more people. It does not need to do that. Let’s clear this up now.

• 3 Jun 2026 · Lord Mandelson: Response to Humble Address · Hansard source

  More

  I just want to make sure that I understand—I hope the Minister will forgive me if I do not. In his case, was it his permanent secretary as the accounting officer who verified that the messages he had were not admissible to the process?

• 1 Jun 2026 · Lord Mandelson Humble Address: Government Response · Hansard source

  More

  I thank the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister for advance sight of his statement. If the story in The Times is to be believed, he may be positioning himself to be the chief successor to the Prime Minister. I also thank the right hon. Gentleman for giving me advance sight of the material that was published today, which I was fortunate enough to see this morning. However, it is important to put on record that only a very few Members of this House were able to see it this morning. It was available at 9.30 am, yet it was published only at 2 pm, so here we are today with hon. Members not having had a chance to read it and yet being expected to ask the right hon. Gentleman questions. I know the response will be that we are going to have a general debate on Wednesday, but as Government Members will know, if the Minister chooses not to take interventions in a general debate, there is no scrutiny at all. At worst, this is obfuscation; it is an attempt to deny scrutiny in a way that is unnecessary. The documents should have been published at 9.30 this morning in advance of this statement.

• 1 Jun 2026 · Lord Mandelson Humble Address: Government Response · Hansard source

  More

  It was on the news. The case of Peter Mandelson’s appointment remains of the utmost national importance simply because it touches on national security and on the Prime Minister’s honesty, integrity and competence. I want to make two basic points about the material before us today: the first is about disclosure, and the second about the process by which Peter Mandelson was appointed. On disclosure, although we have a huge number of documents, it is clear that very many are missing. Some have been withheld, some have been lost, and it is clear that some have probably been destroyed. Because of the approach the Government are taking, however, it is impossible for hon. Members to know which documents fall into which category. We are told that the Metropolitan police has requested that certain documents be retained, but the Government have refused to tell us which documents are being retained. I respect the fact that the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister has told us about three broad categories now—this is progress. We did ask for those categories some time ago and were told that we could not have them, but it turns out that we can have them. We know there is no good legal basis for the Government not to disclose to this House which documents are being withheld. The Government should tell us. Indeed, it would be possible for them to disclose those documents to the ISC or to certain Members of the House on Privy Council terms. Again, this is obfuscation. It is an unnecessary attempt to defer or deny scrutiny, and the Humble Address did not allow for the Government to redefine the request in this way. If the Government wish to retain documents because the Met police has asked them to do so, they should come back to the House and change the terms of the Humble Address. They have not done that and, consequently, they risk being in contempt. Some Ministers have duly handed over their WhatsApp messages; it is clear that some have not. Are we to believe that there was no WhatsApp exchange at all between the Prime Minister and Peter Mandelson? We know that there was, because it has been reported in the press, and yet those messages reported in the press do not appear in the release today. It is clear that some messages have gone missing. It is also the case that, in all these documents, the Prime Minister’s presence is almost non-existent. Despite the fact that he was appointing a man to be head of our most senior mission, we have almost nothing in his name. It is as though somehow he appointed Peter Mandelson as ambassador without leaving any documentary trace of that decision at all. It really beggars belief. Take, for example, the former Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, well known to be a friend and ally of Mandelson. He appears to have submitted a nil return on his WhatsApp messages. I hope the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister will tell us why. Why was it that there were never any messages? That seems unlikely. Was it that those messages have been deleted? The House has a right to know. The House has a right to know in each case whether information has gone missing or it has not been handed over. We know that Peter Mandelson has refused to hand over his phone—it is in the document. We know that he was asked to give over his phone on 31 March, some time after the Humble Address. He has declined to do so, and it is simply not acceptable that the Government should allow this to pass without some sort of pushback. The Government has within their power the opportunity to take legal action to recover the exit payment they gave to Peter Mandelson if he is not playing ball with the Humble Address. There is then the matter of redactions. There are acres and acres of white space, a constellation of asterisks—perhaps all too appropriate for a Labour document. It is clear from the reports in the press that the ISC has had serious concerns about the redaction process. I listened to what the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister said, and I will listen with interest to what members of the Committee say in a moment. There are a huge number of redactions under the heading “Third Party”. On what grounds have those redactions been made? For example, on page 251 of part III, Mandelson refers to someone who is “currently staying” with him in Government property. This name is redacted. Why has it been redacted? Why cannot the House be told who was staying in Government property with the ambassador? On the national security vetting material, it seems once again that the Government are happier to provide The Guardian with more information than they are prepared to provide to Parliament. Preparation of the security vetting document for publication appeared in recess, leaked by someone in Government who was familiar with it, and then we have seen that The Guardian has multiple sources saying that concerns were raised by the vetting agency about Peter Mandelson’s foreign contacts with the Chinese Minister, with Oleg Deripaska, with Tamir Hayman and so on. There were multiple sources, and yet we are being asked to believe that this information was only seen by a tiny handful of people within Government. Someone somewhere is not being frank with us. If we had time, and we will have time on Wednesday, we could talk about the concerning information about Chagos. We could talk about the fact that Peter Mandelson, after he had been appointed, asked whether he could do paid work in Shanghai on a private basis. We could talk about the fact that Peter Mandelson wrote to the then Foreign Secretary saying, “if you were minded to appoint me I would make sure you never regret it.” The truth is that we must return once again to the process by which Peter Mandelson was appointed. Everything in the documents released today shows that the Prime Minister did not follow the instructions he was given by the then Cabinet Secretary on 11 August 2024. He was told to get security vetting done before the appointment was confirmed, which he did not do. He was asked to do that because the Prime Minister had been provided with a due diligence document by the Cabinet Office that said that Peter Mandelson had an ongoing friendship with Epstein after he had been sent to prison, that he had been a director of a Russian defence company that had supplied arms to Putin during his invasion of Crimea, and that he had maintained unhealthy business relations in China. Despite this, the Prime Minister did not get the security vetting done before he made the appointment: he went ahead and made it anyway. The rest of the system was then scrabbling around afterwards to try to make up for the error, but it was the Prime Minister’s error. It was clear that due diligence was not followed. It is a failure that is visible from space, it is a failure that will define this Prime Minister’s premiership and it is a failure that will be written as his political epitaph.

• 28 Apr 2026 · Referral of Prime Minister to Committee of Privileges · Hansard source

  More

  This has been a long and sometimes interesting debate. We have had some revelations. I was interested to hear the speech by the leader of the Liberal Democrats, the right hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Ed Davey). I am sure we are all delighted to hear that the Liberal Democrats are now opposed to sanctimony. I was also interested to hear from the Father of the House, my right hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh), that he is not particularly political. I welcome the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister back to his place. I congratulate him on the fact that, on the “Today” programme this morning, he was being lauded as the Prime Minister’s right-hand man. I hope that he will be not made too anxious by what has happened to all the Prime Minister’s other right-hand men. The motion before us is very simple. It is about starting a process that will take what has been discussed in this House and put it in the hands of a Committee of our peers, who will get to adjudicate, because there is no agreement on these points. That process has long existed in this House to resolve issues such as these. We are doing this for a reason. It is simply because— [ Interruption. ] Yeah, okay. Come on. We are doing this for a reason. It is because Members of all parties have reason to believe that the Prime Minister may have misled this House. Those Labour MPs who said sanctimoniously, to the horror of the Liberal Democrats, that this was some sort of political stunt— [ Interruption. ] Okay. All right. Do they think that the hon. Member for South Shields (Emma Lewell) was part of a political stunt when she said that “good, decent colleagues will be accused of being complicit in a cover-up”, or when she said that this was “a matter for the Privileges Committee”? Was she part of a political stunt? Was it all about the local elections for her? The hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Sorcha Eastwood) explained that she had no Labour opponent and did not have any local elections; was she part of a political stunt? When the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull East (Karl Turner), who is not in his place, said that he does not believe that the House was misled by the Prime Minister, but does think that the Prime Minister should be referred to the Committee, was he part of a political stunt? This claim falls away at the first hurdle. Labour’s objection to the motion is political, because the Labour party knows that the Prime Minister may well be in the wrong and is scared of referring him. That is the only reason why the Government needed to put in place a hard three-line Whip and started twisting arms. Do they really believe that the hon. Members for Alloa and Grangemouth (Brian Leishman), for Nottingham East (Nadia Whittome) and for Clapham and Brixton Hill (Bell Ribeiro-Addy), who is absent and has tweeted that if she was here she “would be voting for the motion”, were part of a political stunt? No. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson) said at the start of the debate, if the Government have nothing to hide, they have nothing to fear from the Privileges Committee. A number of Labour MPs have objected, saying that they think the Prime Minister is innocent, and they are perfectly entitled to make that case. We think that case is wrong. As my hon. Friend the Member for Gordon and Buchan (Harriet Cross) elegantly pointed out, that is why we need the Privileges Committee to adjudicate. A number of Labour MPs thought that the Prime Minister should have referred himself; indeed, he should have. It would have been the simplest way of moving on this whole process without any further need for the House to agonise over it. As for those Labour MPs who said how sad it was that they could not debate all the other things that they wanted to debate today, they could have done so if the Prime Minister had referred himself. This ground has been well trodden this afternoon, but I will make the case again briefly. It rests on two points: full due process, and pressure. We know because of the Humble Address—and only because of it, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart) eloquently said—that the then Cabinet Secretary, Simon Case, set out in November 2024 what full due process looked like: the Prime Minister’s appointee had to have security clearance before he was appointed, and he had to declare his interests before he was appointed. So far, the Government, despite being asked on many occasions whether Peter Mandelson filled in a conflict of interest document, have been unable to tell us. They did not release it following the Humble Address, and have not even been able to tell us whether such a document exists. On the security clearance aspect of the case, we know that process was not followed. We know that the Prime Minister immediately went ahead and made the appointment anyway, despite being told by the Cabinet Secretary that he should not. There are plenty of other reasons why we know that full due process was not followed. It does not require any great experience of government to know that full due process does not involve reading a due diligence document by the Cabinet Office that says that Peter Mandelson was a director of a Russian company during the Russian invasion of Crimea, and then thinking, “Well, we just need security clearance later.” That is obviously not full due process. It is obviously not full due process to ask Peter Mandelson’s Labour Together friends to complete the clearance process for him. It is not due process to not keep any records of meetings, calls or decisions in a way that is clearly in violation of all the guidance given to civil servants. In no way was that full due process, although people have nobly tried to make the case that Wormald, the later Cabinet Secretary, said that all that was done was fine. Let us remind the House that Wormald’s letter to the Prime Minister was written on 16 September. By that time, the Prime Minister had already told the House that “full due process was followed” —[ Official Report , 10 September 2025; Vol. 772, c. 859.] The system was trying to defend a position that the Prime Minister had already made very clear in the House repeatedly. At that moment in time, on 10 December when he told my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition that full due process was followed, the last piece of advice given to him by a Cabinet Secretary was from Simon Case. He knew that he had not followed full due process. On the point about pressure, it is very clear that the Prime Minister mis-spoke, at the very least, in the House last Wednesday. He said that Sir Olly Robbins “went on to say: ‘I…have complete confidence that…recommendations to me and the discussion we had and the decision we made were rigorously independent of’ any ‘pressure.’” —[ Official Report , 22 April 2026; Vol. 784, c. 316.] But what Sir Olly actually said to the Foreign Affairs Committee was, “I also have complete confidence that their recommendations to me and the discussion we had and the decision we made were rigorously independent of that pressure.” There is a difference between no pressure and there being pressure. Sir Olly made it clear throughout his testimony that he and his office were put under pressure, so when the Prime Minister said, “Sir Olly was absolutely clear that nobody put pressure on him to make this appointment”, —[ Official Report , 22 April 2026; Vol. 784, c. 316.] that was manifestly false. What Sir Olly actually said was: “Throughout January, honestly, my office and the Foreign Secretary’s office were under constant pressure… While I think the Department felt under pressure, we were proud of the fact that we had not bowed to that pressure.” He also said that he found an “atmosphere where this was not just, ‘Please get this done quickly,’ but, ‘And get it done.’” That was— [ Interruption. ] Well, it deserves to be said loudly, because it is important. The Prime Minister appears to have misled the House and not corrected the record. Ministers sometimes make mistakes, but as everyone knows, under the ministerial code, they must come and correct the record at the earliest available opportunity. The earliest available opportunity was Thursday. We could probably have squeezed that to include Monday, but it is now Tuesday, and the Prime Minister is still pretending that he has done nothing wrong, even though what happened is here in black and white, for everyone to read. There is clearly a case to answer. I have sympathy for all those Labour MPs who have spoken in this debate and have deep concerns and grievances about this. I also have a great deal of sympathy for those who feel the same way but have not spoken. The Prime Minister’s failure to self-refer, as several Labour MPs have suggested he should, has put them in this position. They are being whipped to support something that they know is wrong. They are being whipped to support something that they know their constituents will hate. They are being whipped to defend the Labour Together machine, which has brought such shame on the Labour party. [ Interruption. ] You can get angry, but you have all taken money from them! Well, not all Labour Members, to be fair—some of them have called for an investigation of Labour Together, and rightly so. They are being whipped by a Prime Minister who will lead them over the edge of the cliff, if they let him. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Herne Bay and Sandwich (Sir Roger Gale) said powerfully, in politics, it is important to be able to look at oneself in the mirror at the end of the day. I know that many Labour MPs will struggle to do that after going through the Lobby tonight, but they need not vote against the motion. They all know where this ends. It ends with the Prime Minister not fighting the next general election. It ends with them having to justify what they have done. It ends with them having only what is left of their reputation.

• 27 Apr 2026 · Dunmurry Police Station Attack · Hansard source

  More

  I congratulate the hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Sorcha Eastwood) on having secured this urgent question. I associate myself with her remarks and those of the Secretary of State, although I gently say that it would have been better if this had been a Government statement. I cannot help but feel that had that car bomb been placed outside a police station in Westminster or Birmingham, Government Ministers would have come to the House with a statement. It is, of course, profoundly depressing that we should be discussing this issue at all. However, it is an enormous relief that we are not today talking about casualties. As the hon. Member for Lagan Valley said, but for the grace of God, we would have been; but for the bravery of local people, we would have been. I pay very deep tribute to all those brave men and women in the Police Service of Northern Ireland who serve and keep our country safe. They were the target of this despicable operation, and it will be their hard work that brings its perpetrators to justice. The people who have attempted to break the peace in Northern Ireland have no mandate and no public support—they represent only themselves, and are seeking to serve only their macho egos. The silver lining is, of course, that we are watching people in Northern Ireland from all communities come together this morning, united against them. We have come an incredibly long way, but as the Secretary of State referenced, this does appear to be the start of a pattern of new and deeply concerning behaviour. That is reflected in what happened in Lurgan last month, but also in the marching of masked paramilitaries in Easter parades. Will the Secretary of State confirm to the House that the PSNI is going after those people who broke the laws that were laid down during the peace process, just as I know they will be going after those who tried to blow up the police station in Dunmurry? The attack on Sunday raises a number of questions to which I hope the Secretary of State can provide answers, because he has responsibility for national security in Northern Ireland. Can the Secretary of State assure the House that the Chief Constable has the resources he needs? I say that because, notwithstanding his remarks about funding, the Northern Ireland Troubles Bill is going to put a huge additional financial burden on the PSNI. Even if the Chief Constable believes he has the resources he needs today, he will not have them tomorrow.

• 27 Apr 2026 · Northern Ireland Troubles Bill (Carry-over) · Hansard source

  More

  I will give way now.

• 27 Apr 2026 · Northern Ireland Troubles Bill (Carry-over) · Hansard source

  More

  My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and there will be ample opportunity for them to do so tonight. Tonight the Government and Labour Back Benchers have a choice, and the choice is simple: to reject this controversial and unloved legislation, which promises much but would do no good.

• 27 Apr 2026 · Northern Ireland Troubles Bill (Carry-over) · Hansard source

  More

  I happily give way to the hon. Gentleman.

• 27 Apr 2026 · Northern Ireland Troubles Bill (Carry-over) · Hansard source

  More

  We will get to immunity in a moment, but the Labour party needs to look down within its soul and its history before it says such things. The Bill will reopen the door to vexatious litigation. It will drag old soldiers through the courts and subject split-second decisions taken under high stress decades ago to the post hoc algorithm of a legal framework that did not exist at that time. The hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead (Mr Bailey) said that military forces were not given adequate protection at the time—what has happened subsequently is that the legal framework has changed beneath their feet and held them accountable in a way that could never have been intended at that time.

• 27 Apr 2026 · Northern Ireland Troubles Bill (Carry-over) · Hansard source

  More

  I have read the Saville inquiry, and the hon. Member will have just heard me say that even after one of the longest, most expensive and detailed public inquiries in British legal history, it was impossible to get a conviction. Yet we are asking victims in Northern Ireland to believe that there will be some magical moment where suddenly it would be possible to get convictions in other cases. That, the House must understand, is for the birds; it will not happen. Victims will have their hopes raised and dashed in front of this legislation.

• 27 Apr 2026 · Northern Ireland Troubles Bill (Carry-over) · Hansard source

  More

  The hon. Gentleman raises a significant issue about the terrible events of Bloody Sunday, but I will not attempt to relitigate the whole of the Saville inquiry this evening—I understand the remarks that both the hon. Gentleman and the hon. Member for Foyle (Colum Eastwood) have made. Similarly, over the past few months, very senior veterans, senior generals and former members of the special forces have come out decisively against the Bill. On Armistice Day, in an unprecedented intervention, nine four-star generals wrote to warn that highly trained members of the special forces are already leaving the service. In January, seven SAS commanders wrote of the acute dangers of how “a peacetime human rights framework” now wields “an effective veto over efforts to close the past.” Last month, Generals Wall and Parker wrote that “those who…did their duty in circumstances not of their making…are left exposed, without the shield of context or accountability that should rightfully belong to the state”. This month, we read public reports that members of the special forces are quitting because they sense that the lawyers of the future will come after them. I implore the House, on moral, practical and political grounds, not to support the Bill. I know that Labour Members will not wish to take it from me—and they do not have to—but they should take it from generals and special forces veterans who have dedicated so much of their lives to protecting their country and do not want to see their comrades-in-arms persecuted or their country weakened and put at risk. As politicians, I draw the attention of Labour Members to the fact that the Bill is not beloved by their constituents. They are being sent through the Lobbies tonight by people who may well change their position tomorrow. The failings of the Bill, should it be passed, will be quickly seen but long felt. The House has the power to stop it tonight. If we do not, and the Government persist, the next Conservative Administration will repeal it and once again draw a line under the troubles.

• 27 Apr 2026 · Northern Ireland Troubles Bill (Carry-over) · Hansard source

  More

  I genuinely respect the hon. Lady and the work that her Committee does, and she will remember that I was at that Westminster Hall debate. I must respectfully say that my outrage is not faux; I feel this very deeply. I have spent a lot of time talking to the people who are affected by this. When the peace process was going through, when Labour was in power, it had no problem at all with creating immunity, and in 2005—as the Secretary of State will remember, because he was in the Cabinet at the time—Peter Hain, the then Secretary of State, brought forward a Bill that would have given immunity to terrorists, and terrorists alone. It was removed only when, under pressure from the Conservative party, the Government agreed to introduce immunity for veterans and Sinn Féin pulled its support, so the Government pulled the Bill. Immunity is one of the things on which the peace process was founded, yet now in government, the Labour party has forgotten all about this and said it cannot possibly apply to anyone again. The Labour party has said that it cannot support immunity, and yet it used to. Similarly, the Government have said that they cannot support our legislation on the grounds that there was no support for it in Northern Ireland, but I am afraid that by that criterion this legislation has also failed, because where is the support for it in Northern Ireland? It is not there among Northern Ireland Members, and it is not on the streets of Belfast. This is an unloved Bill. There are lots of people who appreciate that this is the wrong way of going about things.

• 27 Apr 2026 · Northern Ireland Troubles Bill (Carry-over) · Hansard source

  More

  My hon. Friend is quite right. The process has become the punishment. The process is being used to continue the conflict by other means.

• 27 Apr 2026 · Northern Ireland Troubles Bill (Carry-over) · Hansard source

  More

  I fear that the hon. and learned Gentleman is right. This morning, we saw that Sinn Féin have spoken out in opposition to the very idea of amendments, so we wonder how it will be possible for the Secretary of State to table amendments without the agreement of Dublin, without the agreement of Sinn Féin, and without the whole framework he has built collapsing beneath him. The Bill promises victims the earth. It raises their hopes, but I am afraid that in practice it will offer nothing in the way of conclusion or finality. That is because although there will be court cases, inquests, trials, reviews and challenges, as the Secretary of State himself has said, the prospect of conviction now is vanishingly small. The number of answers that victims will get will be minimal. All the while, veterans will be hauled before the courts, investigated for years and subjected to all the pain and ignominy that that will bring. The process has become the punishment. That is why none of the amendments that the Government are speculating to the press about tabling will do anything to solve the problem before us. The Opposition have long argued that a different approach is necessary: one that draws a line under the conflict, draws a line under the legal conflict that has subsequently followed and builds a new system that builds on the strengths of the peace process as it was defined in 1998. In 1998 it was understood that there could be immunity in return for information; it underpins the legislation brought forward to support the peace process. That is why we have legislation on the destruction of weapons; it enables forensic information to be destroyed. It is why we have legislation that enables people to come forward and reveal where bodies are buried without fear of prosecution; that is immunity. It is why we had letters of comfort and royal pardons of mercy. It was understood that immunity would be an essential part of the peace process, for everyone who was not a veteran.

• 27 Apr 2026 · Northern Ireland Troubles Bill (Carry-over) · Hansard source

  More

  I strongly encourage the hon. Gentleman to take time to read the Armed Forces Bill amendment paper. The two gentlemen sitting either side of me, my right hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) and my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge), have tabled very many amendments. I encourage the hon. Gentleman to go out this evening and to try to find one veterans organisation that supports what his party is trying to do with this Bill.

• 27 Apr 2026 · Northern Ireland Troubles Bill (Carry-over) · Hansard source

  More

  At the outset, I pay tribute to the veterans who came to Parliament Square today, the veterans who have sent messages of support and are watching at home, and the veterans who are with us in the Gallery. I also pay tribute to the shadow Defence team, who have done so much to hold this Government to account for the mistake that they are making.

• 27 Apr 2026 · Northern Ireland Troubles Bill (Carry-over) · Hansard source

  More

  I must agree with the right hon. Gentleman that this is clearly what vexatious litigation looks like. This is vexatious litigation moved against men who did nothing wrong but are now confronted with a legal framework that creates endless potential for challenge against them.

• 27 Apr 2026 · Northern Ireland Troubles Bill (Carry-over) · Hansard source

  More

  My hon. Friend always speaks incredibly powerfully on this point. The Government have also argued that our Bill was found to be incompatible with human rights legislation, but that is only partly true. The truth is that the Government failed to challenge the findings in the courts, and those findings themselves were highly questionable. There are high-level, highly credible legal arguments that show that the legacy Act may well have not been incompatible, precisely because the same logic around immunity had been used in 1998. So unless we are prepared to say that the legislation passed during the peace process is itself potentially incompatible with human rights law, the argument on the legacy Act falls. This is what is being considered in the case of Dillon before the Supreme Court now. The Government cannot argue that that legislation was incompatible with human rights, because they failed to see the process to its conclusion. All of that has been made clearer and clearer over the lifetime of this law’s delay. In the time that it has taken the Bill only to get through its Second Reading, we have seen, starkly and painfully, regular real-life examples of the problems it will perpetuate. I will give a few small examples. In February, this House debated the terrible ruling in the Clonoe case. This was the case from February 1992, when four men—known terrorists armed with semi-automatic weapons and a Dushka machine gun capable of firing 600 rounds a minute at a range of 1,100 yards—attacked a Royal Ulster Constabulary police station and were in transit to commit further crimes. They were confronted by members of the armed forces, who killed them. Those terrorists called themselves an army, carried weapons of war, sought to kill and operated entirely outside the bounds of any law, yet we were asked to believe that the use of lethal force against them was not justified. I am afraid that that case is now being challenged, and the men involved are being subject to unjust and unfair scrutiny of decisions they made in a split second, decades ago. Nothing in the amendments that the Secretary of State has discussed with the press will do anything about that. In November, we debated the findings in the case against Soldier F from Bloody Sunday. He was found not guilty after the longest and most intricate inquiry in British legal history. Indeed, Judge Patrick Lynch told Belfast Crown Court that the evidence even then fell “well short” of the standard required. He said: “A 53-year-old statement cannot be cross-examined, nor can I assess the demeanour of a sheet of A4 paper”. The House must see again that it is becoming vanishingly difficult to get convictions, because the 1998 agreement was 27 years ago and the ceasefire began 31 years ago. Nothing in the Secretary of State’s proposed amendments or in this Bill will do anything to right that situation. Several times the case of Soldier B, a former SAS officer, has been raised in the Commons. In October, the case was thrown out by a court in Belfast, where the judge described it as “ludicrous” and said it should never have come to his court—but not before the man in question had been investigated for four years. A further challenge was then mounted despite the judge having said it was “ludicrous”, and only recently has the veteran in question been freed from the weight of that. I am afraid that if the Government’s Bill goes ahead, we will see a return to this repeat investigation of innocent men who will be dragged through the courts, and then at the end the legal cavalcade will move on, leaving them bearing the emotional burden of being investigated for having done nothing wrong. Nothing that has been speculated about in the press this weekend will do anything to right that wrong.