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Lord Mandelson: Response to Humble Address Motion

If I listened to the Chief Secretary correctly, which I think I did, he said, “His victims must be our first priority.” Let us be clear: for the Prime Minister, they were not. On 11 December 2024, he received advice that says,

“Epstein was first convicted of procuring an underage girl in 2008”.

The following sentence says,

“Mandelson…stayed in Epstein’s House…in June 2009.”

I repeat: the victims were not the Prime Minister’s first priority.

That being the case, how can the Chief Secretary stand at that Dispatch Box, with a straight face, and say,

“We must all learn this hard lesson and end a culture that dismisses women’s experiences”,

when it was the Prime Minister who chose to ignore those experiences, ignore those facts and appoint Peter Mandelson in the first place?