Pressure mounts on Mandelson to quit Lords over Epstein links

Sir Keir Starmer has urged Lord Mandelson to quit the House of Lords as the police faced calls to investigate the leaking of sensitive information to paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein.

Downing Street said Sir Keir believed the former ambassador to the US “should not be a member of the House of Lords or use the title”, but the Prime Minister does not have the power to strip him of his peerage.

The country’s top civil servant has also been tasked with carrying out a review after documents apparently showed Lord Mandelson passing information to Epstein while the peer was was a cabinet minister in Gordon Brown’s government.

Downing Street said Sir Keir had asked Cabinet Secretary Sir Chris Wormald to conduct “an urgent review” looking at “all available information regarding Mandelson’s contacts with Epstein during his period as a government minister”.

Former prime minister Mr Brown said he had asked Sir Chris to investigate the disclosure of “confidential and market sensitive information” during the global financial crisis.

Documents released by the US Department of Justice indicate Epstein was sent details of internal discussions from the heart of the UK government after the global financial crisis.

Lord Mandelson, then the business secretary also appeared to tell Epstein he would lobby ministers over a tax on bankers’ bonuses in 2009, and to confirm an imminent bailout package for the euro the day before it was announced in 2010.

The Liberal Democrats, SNP and Plaid Cymru called for Lord Mandelson to face a police investigation for potential misconduct in public office.

Senior Labour MP Dame Emily Thornberry said it was “not a matter of whether Peter Mandelson should be in the House of Lords, this is a matter of whether the police should be involved”.

Cabinet minister Bridget Phillipson told BBC Radio 5 Live it was “as serious as it gets” and was “not the conduct befitting a government minister”.

She added: “If there is evidence of criminality then of course that should be pursued.”

The Prime Minister’s official spokesman said Sir Keir “believes that Peter Mandelson should not be a member of the House of Lords or use the title”.

“However, the Prime Minister does not have the power to remove it,” the spokesman added.

Lord Mandelson, who is on a leave of absence from the upper chamber, could resign voluntarily.

Under current arrangements, a new law would be required to remove a peerage, something that last happened more than 100 years ago to deal with members of the nobility who sided with the Germans in the First World War.

There is no precedent for using a new law to remove a specific person from the Lords.

Sir Keir urged the Lords to work with the Government to modernise disciplinary procedures to make it easier to remove disgraced peers.

Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister Darren Jones said the Government was writing to the appropriate authorities to start the process on Monday.

He told MPs the Prime Minister was calling on all parties including the Conservatives to back the changes.

“It would be better … to update those procedures so that they apply to all members of the House of Lords, instead of having to introduce complex hybrid Bills for each individual peer who has brought the other place into disrepute,” he said.

While he was business secretary, email exchanges from December 2009 suggest Lord Mandelson was lobbying to change a tax on bankers’ bonuses, with encouragement from Epstein.

The emails came at the time the so-called “super tax” was being introduced by then-chancellor Alistair Darling to clamp down on bank profits being used to pay large bonuses for bankers after the financial crisis.

An email dated December 15 2009, which appears to be from Epstein, reads: “Any real chance of making the tax only on the cash portion of the bankers bonus.”

The reply, apparently from Lord Mandelson, said he was “trying hard to amend”, adding: “Treasury digging in but I am on case.”

Two days later, an email discussion indicates Lord Mandelson encouraged JP Morgan’s boss Jamie Dimon to call Mr Darling and “mildly threaten” him.

Emails show internal discussions from the heart of the Brown administration were passed to Epstein in 2009.

One was an analysis of business lending in August 2009 drawn up by government minister Baroness Vadera.

The sender of the message to Epstein has been redacted, but Lord Mandelson was involved in the government email thread.

In an earlier email, the peer wrote to Epstein in June 2009 about an “interesting note that’s gone to the PM”, forwarding an assessment by Mr Brown’s adviser Nick Butler of potential policy measures including an “asset sales plan”.

Epstein responded by asking “what salable assets”, with a reply from a redacted email address saying “land, property I guess”.

On May 9 2010, in the last days of Mr Brown’s government, Epstein emailed Lord Mandelson saying: “Sources tell me 500 b euro bailout, almost complete.”

The reply, from a redacted address or number, said “sd be announced tonight”. A massive rescue package was agreed by Brussels in the early hours of May 10.

Mr Brown said he had asked the Cabinet Secretary in September last year to examine communication about the sale of assets between Lord Mandelson and Epstein but was told “no departmental record could be found”.

The former prime minister said he wanted a “wider and more intensive enquiry to take place into the wholly unacceptable disclosure of government papers and information during the period when the country was battling the global financial crisis”.

Bank statements from 2003 and 2004 appeared to show Lord Mandelson received payments totalling 75,000 US dollars (£54,000) from the financier.

Epstein is also said to have paid for an osteopathy course for Lord Mandelson’s husband in 2009.

On Sunday night, Lord Mandelson resigned his Labour membership and the party revealed he was facing a disciplinary process.

In his letter, he said: “Allegations which I believe to be false that he made financial payments to me 20 years ago, and of which I have no record or recollection, need investigating by me.

“While doing this I do not wish to cause further embarrassment to the Labour Party and I am therefore stepping down from membership of the party.”

Lord Mandelson was sacked as the ambassador to Washington last year after details emerged of his continued contact with the financier after Epstein’s guilty plea in 2008 to soliciting prostitution and soliciting a minor.

In his letter, he added that he wanted to “repeat my apology to the women and girls whose voices should have been heard long before now”.

Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey said: “The Epstein files suggest Peter Mandelson leaked sensitive government information to a convicted sex offender while serving as a minister, and even suggested a US bank should threaten the government to lower its tax bill.

“These allegations are incredibly serious, it is now only right that the police investigate Peter Mandelson for potential misconduct in public office.”

The Metropolitan Police and Lord Mandelson have been contacted in relation to the allegations.