←⌂

BMQs

Created: 08 Jan 2026, Modified: 06 Feb 2026

Hello, welcome. No, I can’t explain what this is.

2026-01

2026-01-08

lamont

campbell

[BMQs]

BMQs tracker of how many of Shadow LotH questions the LotH answers: 4/6 answered (↓)

Happened at 10:43. Hansard.

Lamont standing in for the 3nd time, 2nd time in a row as he also did the one before recess.

(Business Questions main exchange. Qs by John Lamont, answers by Alan Campbell.)

(1) ✔️ Q1: Will he give a clear commitment that the govt will stop making significant announcements when parliament is not sitting? → no

LAMONT: I appreciate that the Leader of the House may still be recovering from the excesses of the festive season, so I will try not to add unduly to his discomfort, but I will start with a simple request: will he give a clear commitment that the Government will stop making significant policy announcements when Parliament is not sitting?

I know that you take this issue very seriously, Mr Speaker, but we had another significant announcement made not to Parliament but to the media. While Conservative Members welcome the partial U-turn of the vindictive and cruel family farm tax, it was utterly wrong for the Government to sneak out such a major policy shift just a few days before Christmas, when the House was not sitting and Members could not properly scrutinise Ministers about their change of course.

→

CAMPBELL: He knows my view, because he has quoted it back to me, that wherever possible announcements should be made in this House first, but the reality was we were very aware of the concern among the farming community. We have listened to the farming community, and at the earliest opportunity we wanted to inform them of our plans. I have to say, contrary to the impression he has given today, that the announcement has been warmly welcomed by farmers. We will have an opportunity to debate this matter more fully because I have just announced that we will debate the Finance (No. 2) Bill shortly.

(2) ✔️ Q2: When will the whip be restored to Campbell-Savours? → not a matter for me

LAMONT: Farmers are not daft. They will remember right hon. and hon. Members on the Labour Benches trooping through the Lobby to vote down Conservative attempts to stop the dreadful family farm tax. They will remember Labour MPs clapping like seals from the Back Benches every time the Prime Minister insisted that the tax was the right thing to do.

There was, however, one exception: the hon. Member for Penrith and Solway (Markus Campbell-Savours). He did the right thing. He knows the difference between right and wrong. He stood up for farmers and businesses in his constituency and voted against this disastrous policy because he knew that Labour had promised before the election not to introduce such a tax, and he knew that that pledge had been broken. Now that events have proved him correct, when will the Whip be restored to him? If the Government now accept that the policy was wrong, will they accept that punishing those who opposed it was wrong, too?

→

CAMPBELL: On whipping, I am delighted to say that whipping is a matter for the Chief Whip, no longer for me.

(3) ❌ Q3: What will he do to ensure the govt is better led and more stable and honest? → the public voted for us

LAMONT: Before Christmas, the Leader of the House informed us that he does not make new year’s resolutions—may I ask him please to think again?

In truth, 2025 was a year defined by U-turns. What will the Leader of the House do to ensure that the Government are better led, more stable and more honest with the public in the year ahead? In 2025, we had U-turns on: inheritance tax on farmers and small businesses; a statutory inquiry into grooming gangs; winter fuel payments; the two-child benefit cap; income tax; welfare reform, national insurance; and compensation for WASPI women. The Prime Minister warmly welcomed el-Fattah back to Britain only to claim that he regrets it. The Deputy Prime Minister forced to resign over her tax affairs. The US ambassador Peter Mandelson was sacked for his links to a notorious paedophile, and the Homelessness Minister quit after making her tenants homeless.

→

CAMPBELL: In terms of Government being better led and more stable, it is not in our gift alone to decide that, because that was decided by the country at the last general election, when they were very clear that they voted for a stable, well-led Government, and that is what we are delivering.

(4) ❌ Q4: Does the leader believe the PM will still be in his job next year?

LAMONT: With all that chaos and uncertainty at the very top of Government, does the Leader of the House believe that the Prime Minister will still be in his job this time next year? If the Prime Minister’s beloved Arsenal stay top of the table and win the league this year, will he be enjoying that as Prime Minister or as a punter?

(5) ✔️ Q5: Can he confirm date of King’s Speech? → spring, it depends

LAMONT: There has been speculation that His Royal Highness the King will open the new Session of Parliament on 12 May. Can the Leader of the House confirm that and when Parliament will prorogue?

→

CAMPBELL: We have said that the King’s Speech will be in spring 2026. That will obviously depend somewhat on the progress of business.

(6) ✔️ Q6: Why does the govt not understand the important role of pubs and hospitality? → we do m8 and you did worse

LAMONT: Finally, the pub and hospitality sector face a bleak “dry” January, but this winter is particularly bad because of the policy decisions taken by this Labour Government to hike their taxes. Hundreds of pubs, restaurants and hotels across the country have now banned Labour MPs from their premises. [..]

Why do the Labour Government not understand the important role that local pubs and hotels play in our economy?

The country is ready to call time on the Prime Minister. It is last orders for his Labour Government. After just 18 months in power, the Prime Minister’s leadership is stale. He is like a flat pint—even the regulars have had enough. Will the Leader of the House commit to make representations to the Chancellor to lessen the tax burden on this industry, and will he tell us if he has been banned from his local pub?

→

CAMPBELL: The Prime Minister has been absolutely clear that we are listening and actively looking at further measures to help the hospitality industry and pubs, whether they are in rural or urban areas. But we are not going to take any lessons from the Conservatives, because a record number of pub closed during their 14 years, and they did nothing to help the situation, which is why we have a job to do, and we are getting on with it.

∗ ∗ ∗

CAMPBELL: I must say that it is a shame that the shadow Leader of the House, the right hon. Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman), is not here today. I understand that he has been described in Tatler as “the last upper-class” Tory MP and the “truest renaissance man in parliament”. He does always bring some class to our proceedings

On the rare moments he is there! I do hope he is well (and that he is not reading this.)

Look at all these questions though, Norman never reached six. His average is ~1.5 and some of those are just “ceremonial” (sometimes asked 0 but it’s always at least 1 in the data).

Spreadsheet

2026-01-15

norman

campbell

[BMQs]

BMQs tracker of how many of Shadow LotH questions the LotH answers: 2/2 answered (↑)

Happened at 11:21. Hansard.

(Business Questions main exchange. Qs by Jesse Norman, answers by Alan Campbell. REMARKs are not questions and do not count for the tracker.)

(1) 📜 REMARK: Strategic defence review not fully costed

NORMAN: [T]he Chief of the Defence Staff was in front of the Defence Committee this week. He revealed that the strategic defence review was not fully costed, despite all the assurances that were given to the Committee and to Parliament at the time.

As a result, the defence investment plan has been repeatedly delayed—until March, as it appears—because the Treasury is apparently seeking to come to terms with the fact that we are in a pre-war situation and that the actual cash spending power of many of our armed forces will barely grow over the next two years.

→

CAMPBELL: As a member of the Defence Committee who takes a keen interest in these matters, he will know how difficult these decisions are, but the Government are committed to increasing defence expenditure and to taking whatever decisions are necessary to defend our country.

(2) ✔️ Q1: Can he assure me that he will speak to no. 10 to ensure the shadow cabinet continues to receive security briefings? → yes

NORMAN: I would be grateful for the assurance of the Leader of the House that he will speak to No. 10 and the Cabinet Office to ensure that my shadow Cabinet colleagues continue to receive the appropriate security briefings that they require to do their job.

→

CAMPBELL: As far as briefings are concerned, he raises an important matter about access to the information that the official Opposition require. He knows that I am a strong advocate of the role of the official Opposition—I spent quite a long time in opposition myself. It is important that the Opposition get access and I will take back to No. 10 and others his request and ensure that that happens.

(3) ✔️ Q2: Can we have a debate about the lack of joined-up policy across govt departments as it concerns pubs and hospitality? → it is joined up

NORMAN: [T]he issue of pubs and hospitality has consumed so much of the power, concern and interest of the House. We are always apt to get lost in generalities. In a way, that is a condition of politics: we debate the laws and the general issues of the country. It is also important, however, to zero in on a particular factual situation from time to time and use that to get a wider sense of what is happening.

I will put before the House the facts of a specific case relating to hospitality. In my constituency, the Bay Horse Inn is a great country pub that sits on the outskirts of Hereford. It supports local people and serves my constituents. From April, its business rates are scheduled to rise from £31,000 to over £51,000 a year—a 67% increase. The landlord Neil tells me that energy costs have also risen to £5,500 a month. Unlike households, there is no price cap for commercial energy. Indeed, pubs are charged risk premiums and are locked into prices of nearly 40p a unit, while domestic customers pay around 28p.

The pub already pays above the minimum wage. Neil estimates that the rise in the national living wage will add £18,000 a year to his costs. Meanwhile, monthly national insurance contributions have risen by nearly 170%, and that is made worse because the higher employer contributions now exhaust the employment allowance more quickly. That is a direct tax on employing people, especially young people, and it lands hardest on small, labour-intensive businesses such as pubs. Neil has a few guest rooms at the Bay Horse, so he does not even know if he will be helped by the latest rumoured U-turn on rates support.

That is the reality of the Government’s unwillingness or inability to join up policy in relation to a key set of sectors in the economy that affect hospitality. All those increases are the result of current ministerial decisions. Every Member of the House—including every Government Member—will have pubs and hospitality businesses in their constituency in the same situation. [..]

When will Ministers start talking to each other? When will they put away the rhetoric of helping and actually get on with assisting small businesses? Can we have a debate in the House that goes into not just the specific issue of hospitality, but the generality of all the different Government policies across different Departments that make life so difficult for these hard-working, struggling local businesses?

→

CAMPBELL: The right hon. Gentleman is perfectly entitled to raise the issue of pubs, and there are some fantastic pubs in his constituency and that part of the country. I would gently remind him that 7,000 pubs closed under the Conservatives, and in the Budget we put in £4.3 billion of support over three years to help pubs deal with the transition from the support that they previously received. On top of that, other measures that we have taken include easing licensing to help pubs offer drinks more flexibly, maintaining our cut to draught alcohol duty and capping corporation tax.

We do recognise that pubs are still worried and many of them are in a difficult situation, and that is why the Chancellor has commissioned work examining a pub support package. That is not just words, as the shadow Leader of the House suggested: it is action.

In terms of joined-up policy across Government, of course the Government are joining up our approach, especially on the economy. The House may have noticed this morning that performance statistics show that waiting lists are down by 312,000, and more people are being treated within 18 weeks. November saw the second biggest monthly drop in waiting lists in 15 years. [..followed by more positive stats]

∗ ∗ ∗

CAMPBELL: I am glad to welcome the shadow Leader of the House back to his place. Last week he was on a shadow Cabinet awayday. I thought that he might want to give us a read-out on that and whether a place was set at the top table for the Leader of the Opposition’s new adviser, Nadhim Zahawi, who shortly afterwards had his own awayday when he defected to Reform. I understand from breaking news that things have got worse for the Leader of the Opposition, who has just sacked her rival and shadow Justice Secretary amid rumours that he was about to join Reform too. We watch developments with interest.

∗ ∗ ∗ 2

CAMPBELL: And today, Madam Deputy Speaker, is national pothole day. The Leader of the Opposition might think it’s national dig-yourself-into-a-hole day, but it’s actually national pothole day.

Spreadsheet

2026-01-22

debates coming up chagos removing child limit genocide in palestine

norman:

campbell:

[BMQs]

BMQs tracker of how many of Shadow LotH questions the LotH answers: 1/1 answered (-)

Happened at 10:36. Hansard.

(Business Questions main exchange. Qs by Jesse Norman, answers by Alan Campbell. REMARKs are not questions and do not count for the tracker.)

(1) 📜 REMARK: Drones degree

NORMAN: I cannot let this week pass without noting that on Tuesday our new specialist technology and engineering university in Hereford, the New Model Institute for Technology and Engineering, formally launched its new autonomous robotics degree, which is sponsored, designed and delivered in collaboration with the British Army. I thank the Defence ministerial team, and in particular the Minister for the Armed Forces, for coming up to Hereford and supporting that. I believe that it is the UK’s first undergraduate drones technologies degree. It starts in September 2026, which is light speed compared with the normal progression of these things in higher education.

→

CAMPBELL: I certainly congratulate his constituency on the developments in higher education. He is a man who hides his light under a bushel—perhaps not quite so much this morning—because he has played a huge role in those developments in higher education in his constituency, and we should recognise that.

(2) 📜 REMARK: Davos, or: Norman exercising his quadriceps

NORMAN: [W]hat a week this has been! Rising international tensions, heated public disagreement, desperate attempts at diplomatic solutions—and that is just Brooklyn Beckham’s Instagram account. Talking of elites, we have had the amusing spectacle this week of that self-proclaimed friend of the people, the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage), hoovering up the free food and glugging down the champagne with the global bullshiterati in Davos.

HOYLE: Order. No, no, no, no. [Jesse Norman rose—] TEH- No, I have not even spoken. [Jesse Norman rose—] AH! AH! AH! I am going to speak first. I want temperate language, and I am sure you would love to withdraw that little message you had for us.

NORMAN: I thank you, Mr Speaker, for allowing me to exercise my quadriceps on several occasions. Yes, of course I unhesitatingly withdraw that appalling term from the record.

All this, I should say, comes from the hon. Member for Clacton after a lifetime spent denouncing Davos as a hub of evil globalist elites where, in his words, there is “no space for the little man” [that is also a gag]. At least we know that that is not true any more.

Oh, the irony of it all, Mr Speaker! A wildly anti-establishment figure and long-time member of the Reform club—no relation—now joining the globalist elites. Can it be long before he aspires to join the Garrick club, or indeed joins the Prime Minister in professing publicly that he prefers Davos to Westminster?

→

CAMPBELL: The shadow Leader of the House has clearly had his Weetabix this morning.

He had a joke prepared about Reform too:

This weekend is also the annual Big Garden Birdwatch, when the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds asks people to observe their garden for an hour and count the number of birds they see. I understand, however, that Members on the official Opposition Benches have been warned not to take part by the Leader of the Opposition, who says that they should be spending less time watching the bird table and more time watching the shadow Cabinet table. There is clearly concern about more migration from her party to join the lesser spotted Member for Clacton, but surely there is a limit to the number of cuckoos that will fit into the Reform nest.

(3) ✔️ Q1: Can have a debate on the economic consequences of the Energy Secretary?

NORMAN: Last week, the Government published the results of the latest auction for renewable energy, which set a floor price for renewables of £91 per kilowatt-hour. No one in this House disputes the importance of green energy, or the importance of renewables in the energy mix—[dissent] Few sane people dispute the value of green energy, but energy prices are already unfeasibly high for British businesses and, despite the Government’s promises, are set to go higher still, especially once the cost of new nuclear is added in. The effect of the policy will be to punish taxpayers, and of course bill payers, but it is also a form of corporate welfare, because the only benefits will come to the better-off.

Meanwhile, the Government have decided to ignore North sea oil and gas, gravely damage the north-east of Scotland, undermine the employment of thousands of skilled workers, in disagreement with their own unions, and import gas from overseas at greater cost, with more carbon and more carbon miles. In its own way, this is a repetition of the private finance initiative scandal of 30 years ago, in which the country paid tens of billions of pounds more than it should have for public infrastructure, and a lot of wealthy people in the City of London—now resident in overseas countries—made out like bandits.

In 1919, John Maynard Keynes wrote a little book called “The Economic Consequences of the Peace” about the disastrous effects of the treaty of Versailles and the demands that it made for payment from the other side in the first world war. I am not suggesting for a second that there is any comparison between these times and those, in Weimar Germany and the rest of it, but I will say that we are facing severe economic constraints as a result of energy prices. I therefore ask the Leader of the House whether we can have a debate on the economic consequences of the Energy Secretary.

→

CAMPBELL: The shadow Leader of the House said that no one disputes the importance of green energy, but I think he is stretching the point a bit. It is not simply Members of Reform; there are still Members in his party who dispute the importance of green jobs.

He talks about the benefit to the better off, but I remind him that every household will benefit from the £150 cut to energy bills, and it is not just households that will benefit. The other side of it is the thousands of green jobs, not least in my constituency and my region.

Finally, I welcome his conversion, perhaps belatedly, to Keynesianism. It is perhaps another sign of his not quite fitting in with the mainstream of his party.

Spreadsheet

2026-01-29

norman:

campbell:

[BMQs]

BMQs tracker of how many of Shadow LotH questions the LotH answers: 2/2 answered (-)

Happened at 10:43. Hansard.

(Business Questions main exchange. Qs by Jesse Norman, answers by Alan Campbell. REMARKs are not questions and do not count for the tracker.)

(1) 📜 REMARK: Burnham

NORMAN: This week, the Prime Minister demonstrated his genius and political touch once again by getting Andy Burnham barred from standing in the Gorton and Denton by-election, in which he would almost certainly have been hammered if he had stood—problem solved.

(2) 📜 REMARK: The cost of U-turns and of borrowing

NORMAN: Meanwhile, the Resolution Foundation has calculated that the extra uncertainty created by the Chancellor’s repeated U-turns has already cost, or will cost, this country £8.2 billion, which will only increase over time. The figure is based on official Office for Budget Responsibility numbers and includes the Government’s U-turns on personal independence payments, universal credit and the winter fuel allowance, but not the additional uncertainty created by their recent U-turns on business rates for pubs and inheritance tax rules for farmers. Those will take the cost closer to £9 billion-worth of unnecessary extra burden on the people of this country created by the Government since July 2024. And lest we forget, even without any U-turns, the extra cost of servicing UK Government debt since July 2024 has been, and remains—again, thanks to the Chancellor of the Exchequer—higher than in either the US or the eurozone. That is according to Labour’s own friendly think-tank, the Institute for Public Policy Research.

→

CAMPBELL: He referred to the cost of what he calls U-turns. I notice that he did not welcome in his remarks the changes that we made to farmers’ inheritance tax and, indeed, the help that we brought forward for pubs. He cannot have it both ways.

He talks about the cost of borrowing. It is, of course, important that that cost, and indeed borrowing, is brought down so that money is spent on better things, including public services. I gently ask him, however: who ran up the borrowing in the first place? Why is the cost of borrowing so high in this country? The answer is that it is because of the Truss Budget, which crashed and trashed the economy.

(3) 📜 REMARK: Tony Blair on board of peace

NORMAN: [E]xtraordinarily—irony of ironies—we hear that Sir Tony Blair will sit on President Trump’s so-called board of peace for the reconstruction of Gaza, to which one can only say, in the words of the late, great Tom Lehrer, “Satire is dead.”

(4) ✔️ Q1: Can he raise the matter of breast cancer drugs not being available for reimbursement in England with his colleagues?

NORMAN: I note that AstraZeneca is accompanying the Prime Minister on his trip to China. As the House will know, AstraZeneca is the single biggest investor in research and development in the United Kingdom. Its best-selling, global best-in-class breast cancer drug, Enhertu, is available for reimbursement in America, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Scandinavia and Japan. Within these islands, it is available for reimbursement in Scotland, but not in England, outside a few special cases.

That is an insult to AstraZeneca, but still more to the 46,000 women a year who are diagnosed with breast cancer in England, and the millions more who have had breast cancer, who are at risk and who are unable to be treated affordably as a result. There is deep concern among all Members of the House about this issue. Does the Leader of the House share my view of it, and will he take up the matter urgently with his Cabinet colleagues?

→

CAMPBELL: I accept that there is concern, but this Government are determined to do more to address not just breast cancer but other cancers. I will draw his remarks to the attention of the Secretary of State.

(5) ✔️ Q2: Could the House have an up-to-date statement on the issue of police numbers?

NORMAN: Finally, data from this week shows that over the last year police numbers have fallen sharply. Between September 2024 and September 2025, the number of full-time equivalent police officers fell by 1,318. Police staff were down 529, and police community support officers were down 204. The number of special constables was down 514, and police volunteers were down 429. In total, around 3,000 fewer people are now involved in policing our communities. Those figures compare the same point in both years, precisely because recruitment happens in cycles, so there can be no statistical disguising.

I actually rather agree with Commissioner Rowley, who has said that police should be judged by outputs rather than inputs—a very welcome corrective to the endless tendency started, I am afraid, under Messrs Blair and Brown to trumpet increased spending as though it is the same thing as results—but that hardly applies to the number of volunteers and specials, both of which are down. In general, fewer officers and staff mean fewer crimes investigated, fewer patrols on our streets and slower responses to 999 calls.

The Home Secretary’s announcement earlier this week was silent on protecting overall police numbers, so could the Leader of the House spell out whether the Government’s policy is to allow police numbers to decline over time? Could the House have an up-to-date statement on that specific issue?

→

CAMPBELL: [T]he right hon. Gentleman mentions police numbers, but forgets that the number of police officers fell by 22,000 under the Government he supported. When they did recruit officers, they put them into offices. I don’t mean officers, I mean offices; they were not on the frontline. The Home Secretary has been absolutely clear that we need to get more officers on to the frontline and we are determined to do that.

The right hon. Gentleman wants me to spell out our ambitions for that, but he will need to wait slightly longer. I have just announced the business, which includes a debate on police funding on 11 February, when we will not only be able to spell out our plans for increasing the number of police officers, but be happy to compare our record against that of his Government.

∗ ∗ ∗

CAMPBELL: [T]hrough you, Madam Deputy Speaker, may we send our best wishes to Mr Speaker and wish him a speedy recovery from his recent injury?

What happened to Hoyle?

∗ ∗ ∗ 2

CAMPBELL: During Cabinet we heard from Mala Tribich, who shared her testimony. She actually sat in the Cabinet Room, which is the first time a Holocaust survivor has done that.

Spreadsheet

2026-01-29 21:13 i rapidly checked yesterday to see if the answer to waht happened to hoyle is obvious if one looks at yesterday (pmqs) and hoyle was there so whatever happened to him must have happened after

2026-02

2026-02-05

uk-india free trade agreement, increasing survival rate of brain tumours, pension increase, benefits uprating, .., extensions of veterans relief, lgbt+ history month, mobile connectivity in rural areas, february recess conclusion of 13th until 23rd, debate on estimates 2nd march

norman

campbell

[BMQs]

BMQs tracker of how many of Shadow LotH questions the LotH answers: 1/2 answered (↓)

Happened at 10:41. Hansard.

(Business Questions main exchange. Qs by Jesse Norman, answers by Alan Campbell. REMARKs are not questions and do not count for the tracker.)

(1) 📜 REMARK: Market-sensitive information given to Epstein

NORMAN: I do not think that this is a moment for normal business.

[..] Peter Mandelson, when Business Secretary, advised Jeffrey Epstein that Jamie Dimon, the CEO of J. P. Morgan, should “mildly threaten” the Chancellor at the time—his colleague, Alistair Darling—over the planned tax on bankers’ bonuses, as Jamie Dimon, still the chief executive of J. P. Morgan, duly did.

Mandelson forwarded market-sensitive information to Epstein that related to the 2009 sale of up to £20 billion in state assets, describing the internal Downing Street memo—internal, I stress—as an “Interesting note that’s gone to the PM.”

Mandelson gave Epstein advance notice of the EU’s 2010 €500 billion bail-out the night before the official announcement, and he warned him in advance of the departure of Gordon Brown from No. 10 Downing Street—a further highly market-sensitive piece of information.

(2) 📜 REMARK: PM inadvertedly misled the House yesterday about Labour always including national security exemption in Humble Addresses

NORMAN: In 2008, Jeffrey Epstein was convicted in Florida under a state plea bargain on two sample felony counts: solicitation of prostitution from a minor and procurement of a minor for prostitution. The Prime Minister was specifically asked at Prime Minister’s questions yesterday whether he knew that Mandelson had continued his friendship with Epstein after the conviction. He said: “when we drafted Humble Addresses in opposition, we always included an exemption for national security”.

Unfortunately, that is plainly untrue—it must be inadvertent. When the Labour party presented its Humble Address for impact assessments on Brexit to be released on 1 November 2017, that address did not mention national security at all. The second name on that motion was that of the Prime Minister. I hope the Leader of the House will encourage the Prime Minister to correct the record when he next appears at the Dispatch Box.

→

CAMPBELL: He talked about yesterday’s Humble Address and the remarks of the Prime Minister. I think there is an assumption with Humble Addresses—I have drafted a few in my time—that national security matters will be exempted from them, but as I think we found out yesterday, there is a degree of confusion about that.

(3) 📜 REMARK: The PM appointed Mandelson despite knowing about the relationship with Epstein because McSweeney told him to

NORMAN: The Prime Minister also said yesterday: “we went through a process. There was a due diligence exercise, and then there was security vetting by the security services. What was not known was the sheer depth and the extent of the relationship. Mandelson lied about that to everyone for years.”

Let us think about that for a moment. The Prime Minister is saying that if only he had known about the depth and the extent of the relationship between Mandelson and Epstein as it continued after 2008, he would have rejected the appointment. It was not enough that he knew Mandelson had a continuing relationship with this convicted paedophile and sex trafficker. He knew it—indeed, the fact that Mandelson had stayed in Epstein’s mansion had been reported to him by public sources, and he ignored it. Not only that, but the Prime Minister had the public information further confirmed and reinforced by the security vetting that was done after the appointment but before Mandelson had signed his contract of employment. That was a further chance for the Prime Minister to reject the appointment, and he ignored that too.

The leader of the Liberal Democrats, the right hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Ed Davey), asked the Prime Minister yesterday: “can he tell us whether he thought at all about Epstein’s victims?”

Those victims are the many dozens—perhaps hundreds—of girls and young women who were trafficked and abused by and through Jeffrey Epstein. It is clear that the Prime Minister did not consider them at all, or he could not have possibly taken the decision he did. So why did he choose Mandelson? Why did he take that decision? He did so because Morgan McSweeney told him to. McSweeney was Mandelson’s protégé, and McSweeney was paying back his long-time mentor and political sponsor for all those good works with his appointment.

→

CAMPBELL: The shadow Leader of the House asks about the actions of the Prime Minister, and that will, of course, be part of the outcome of investigations and inquiries. We must ensure not simply that a robust inquiry is in place, but that we trust people to get on with it.

[..] Let me say—I should also have said this at the beginning—that I absolutely agree with the shadow Leader of the House not just on how awful this is, but that the victims of Epstein should always be at the forefront in our deliberations. They are brave, and we must ensure that we rise to the challenge of ensuring that they get some kind of justice at the end of it all.

(4) 📜 REMARK: Incredible damage to our political system

NORMAN: This whole episode has done incredible damage to the already fragile nature of trust in politics. Every Labour Prime Minister since 1997 has given Peter Mandelson a senior job and been betrayed by him. The present Prime Minister will be seen to have had his own reputation destroyed by this scandal. But let us be clear: every Member of this House and our entire political system have been harmed by it and will continue to be until effective measures are taken to clean it up.

(5) ✔️ Q1: Can he assure documents provided will not be redacted?

NORMAN: Can the Leader of the House give an undertaking that the documents to be provided to the Intelligence and Security Committee will not be redacted?

→

CAMPBELL: I expect the ISC to get whatever it asks for, and in the form in which it asks for it. It may have been missed yesterday, but the National Security Act 2023 states that the ISC can ask for documents. I hope we do not get to this situation, but if the ISC does not get those documents, it ends up in court with a judge deciding on such matters. I would not recommend anybody trying to over-redact or leave out documents, because I think we are in a situation where everything, however painful, needs to be out.

(6) ❌ Q2: Can he ask to review the appointment procedure taken in this case?

NORMAN: In order to reassure the House, can he ask the Cabinet Secretary to review the appointment procedure undertaken in this case—both the public due diligence and the developed vetting process—and set out in writing why those failed so badly in this case and how they will be improved?

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CAMPBELL: The Prime Minister has made it absolutely clear that Peter Mandelson should not be a Member of the House of Lords, and although Mandelson has himself retired, we will be bringing forward legislation to strip him of his title—as ever with these matters, it is slightly more difficult to achieve that than it is for me to say it from the Dispatch Box. The Prime Minister has agreed with the King that the former Lord Mandelson should be removed from the Privy Council. The matter has been referred to the Metropolitan police. They have requested that they be allowed to get on with the job, and I absolutely endorse that.

Over this week we have had a statement from the Dispatch Box on these matters, then Prime Minister’s questions, which was rightly dominated by them, and yesterday we had the not extraordinary but still unusual circumstances of six hours of debate on them, giving Members the opportunity to have their say. We have listened, and we are listening to the House, and indeed to the country more widely, to ensure that we get to the right place in what is an absolute tragedy, not just for the victims but also for the political process itself.

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