Lord Peter Mandelson’s “singular talents” meant he was deemed “worth the risk” to appoint as ambassador after checks were carried out, a Cabinet minister has said.
The Labour grandee was sacked from his post on Thursday morning after emails were published showing Lord Mandelson sent supportive messages to paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein even as he faced jail for sex offences.
Business Secretary Peter Kyle rejected that Lord Mandelson was appointed as the UK’s top diplomat in Washington before security checks were completed.
The Cabinet Office undertook an independent inquiry and presented information to the Prime Minister, he said.
He said there were then “political conversations done in No 10″ in an apparent reference to follow-up questions Sir Keir Starmer is understood to have put to Lord Mandelson based on that information.
These are understood to have included why he continued contact with Epstein after he was convicted and why he was reported to have stayed in one of the paedophile financier’s homes while he was in prison.
“Now both of these things turned up information that was already public and a decision was made that based on Peter’s singular talents in this area, that the risk of appointing knowing what was already public was worth the risk.
“Now of course we have seen the emails which were not published at the time, were not public and not even known about, and that has changed the situation,” he told Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips on Sky News.
Lord Mandelson’s friendship with Epstein was known before his appointment, but reports this week showed their relationship continued after the financier’s crimes had emerged.
Emails published by Bloomberg on Wednesday included passages in which Lord Mandelson told Epstein to “fight for early release” shortly before he was sentenced to 18 months in prison.
He is also reported to have told Epstein, “I think the world of you”, the day before the disgraced financier began his sentence for soliciting prostitution from a minor in June 2008.
The emails were sent from an account which had long been closed and were not available during the vetting process.
The Cabinet minister was asked whether Downing Street was aware of the emails on Tuesday, two days before Lord Mandelson was removed from his post and a day before Sir Keir Starmer backed him at Prime Minister’s Questions.
He said No 10 had “extracts” of the emails on Tuesday.
“They had what was public – which was extracts of the emails and … and immediately, upon having being alerted to extracts of emails, the Foreign Office contacted Peter Mandelson and asked for his account of the emails and asked for them to be put into context and for his response.
“That response did not come before PMQs and then after PMQs the full emails were released by Bloomberg in the evening.
“By the first thing the next morning, when the Prime Minister had time to read the emails in full, having had them in full, and reading them almost immediately of having them, Peter was withdrawn as ambassador.”
He said the UK-US relationship was in a “perilous state” when Lord Mandelson was appointed and that while “a lot was known” about his relationship with Epstein, he had apologised and those two things were “weighed up”, speaking to the BBC’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg.
“And then I have to say that in that period, we have navigated the most difficult period in the US-UK relationship since the Second World War, and we have delivered for people in Britain time after time after time.”
Sir Keir is facing questions about his judgment as well as when he knew key details about his ambassador’s relationship with Epstein.
Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch has accused the Prime Minister of lying.
The party will pushing for information next week and will use “every mechanism that is available to us to force the truth to come out”, shadow education secretary Laura Trott told the BBC.
She said: “We need these documents.
“We need to understand what advice went to the Prime Minister and when who made these decisions.
“How have we ended up in a situation where the advice for the Prime Minister is to appoint the best pal of a convicted paedophile to be US ambassador?”
Dame Emily Thornberry, chairwoman of Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee, has demanded answers from the Foreign Secretary on the department’s “developed vetting” process.
