Lord Mandelson to be asked for personal phone messages for release of files

Lord Peter Mandelson will be asked to supply messages from his personal phone as part of the disclosure of files related to his appointment as Sir Keir Starmer’s ambassador to the US.

Concerns have been raised that exchanges relating to the appointment could be lost after the theft of former No 10 chief of staff Morgan McSweeney’s mobile phone last year.

MPs moved in February to force the publication of tens of thousands of documents amid questions over how much was known about Lord Mandelson’s links to Jeffrey Epstein before the peer was handed the Washington job.

The Cabinet Office is working on an information-gathering plan and will ask the ex-Labour grandee to provide everything he holds in scope of the humble address used to compel the release of correspondence, according to Government sources.

They say this will include requesting data from his personal phone and stressed this had already been part of the plan.

The Times reported that the Cabinet Office had not asked Lord Mandelson for any messages on his personal device and instead were attempting to piece together correspondence by asking ministers and officials to provide it from their side.

Lord Mandelson, a political appointment rather than a career diplomat, was sacked from his Washington role in September last year over his links with Epstein, who died in 2019.

The first tranche of documents related to the decision was published earlier this month after a demand for transparency by MPs, with more to follow.

Mr McSweeney quit Downing Street last month, with many blaming him for pushing Lord Mandelson’s appointment.

Since it emerged that the phone of the Prime Minister’s then-top aide was stolen in October 2025 and not backed up, concerns have been raised about it leading to the loss of the correspondence.

The Prime Minister called it “far-fetched” to suggest the theft was linked to the release of files on Lord Mandelson.

Downing Street has sought to emphasise the theft happened “months before” the Commons motion compelling the Government to release the files.

Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch has suggested “something fishy” is going on in relation to the theft.

She posted on X: “Keir Starmer can’t – or won’t – tell us if he spoke to Peter Mandelson before appointing him as ambassador. The strange absence of Starmer’s opinion in the Mandelson files.

“Now the curious case of McSweeney’s ‘stolen’ phone. There’s something fishy going on.”

Police have taken the unusual step of releasing a transcript of Mr McSweeney’s 999 call reporting the phone theft.

In the call, he gives his name, a personal email address and a home address outside London, and says the device is a Government phone and that he has called his office to get it tracked.

The Metropolitan Police wrongly recorded the theft as having taken place in east London rather than Westminster after Mr McSweeney wrongly gave his location as Belgrave Street rather than Belgrave Road during the October 20 call.

This meant officers checked the wrong CCTV and concluded there were no realistic lines of inquiry to follow. This is now being reviewed.

Sir Keir has said he “dwells” on his appointment of Lord Mandelson to Britain’s top diplomatic posting abroad despite his association with paedophile Epstein.

Speaking to Sky News’s Electoral Dysfunction podcast, the Prime Minister said: “Nobody has been harder on me in relation to the mistake I made there than me.”

He added: “It’s certainly not a mistake I’d ever repeat.”