[0:00]In fact, we're going to dispel with the uh headlines because we've had two major breaking stories in the last few minutes. But let's start with the one here in the UK and that is the release
[0:08]of 135 uh pages uh a document relating to the appointment of Lord Peter Mandelen uh the former ambassador to Washington. And what we learned from
[0:19]these documents is that Sakia Starmer was warned there was a general reputational risk over Lord Peter Mandelson's relationship with the pedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein and
[0:29]he was warned of that before giving him the role of ambassador. Just over an hour ago, the government released that initial batch of papers. It's not uh a full account of what went on. There is
[0:40]still a criminal inquiry ongoing, but a due diligence document drawn up in December 2024 before the appointment to Washington noted a series of reports
[0:51]detailing Lord Mandlesson's links with Epstein. The documents that have been released highlight that Lord Mandlesson received a payoff of £75,000 after initially asking for an
[1:02]entitlement of more than half a million pounds. The files also show that a meeting which was facilitated by Peter Manslson between the prime minister uh
[1:11]Tony Blair and Lord and Jeffrey Epstein at the time uh did not take place. That of course was while he was a member of a previous government. The chief secretary to the prime minister Darren Jones
[1:23]delivered a statement to the Commons a short time ago on the release of those documents. Madame Deputy Speaker, the Prime Minister has taken responsibility
[1:33]for Peter Mandlesson's appointment as ambassador to the United States. He has acknowledged it was a mistake and has apologized, not least for believing
[1:43]Peter Mandlesson's lies. As the government has said previously, there are specific documents that this government would like to have been able to disclose today, but which the
[1:55]Metropolitan Police have asked us not to do so yet in order to avoid prejudicing their ongoing criminal investigation into Peter Mandlesen.
[2:05]We have agreed to that request. We will therefore publish these documents in the future as soon as the Metropolitan Police have confirmed it will no longer prejudice their investigation.
[2:16]Darren Jones, chief secretary to the prime minister. Let's go live to Westminster. Our political correspondent Damian Grammaticus has had uh some time to have a look through all the
[2:26]documents. When we spoke initially uh Damian, we were really putting you on the spot as to what they contain, but I think really the pertinent two pages of this document is the due diligence part
[2:37]uh that was done ahead of the appointment. What conclusions can we draw from that? I >> I think you're right. Uh absolutely, Christian. I have that right in front of
[2:45]me and the main conclusion is it says in bold type at the bottom of that document to note general reputational risk. That
[2:56]is the summary in three words uh general reputational risk of what this uh this due diligence document laid out and was
[3:07]handed to Saki Starama and shown to him. So that I think is going to be the headline that everyone is going to focus on. Karma was warned about the reputational risk of appointing Peter
[3:18]Mandlesen even just based on the publicly known information at the time. And that's what that document sets out. It sets out uh as you've been saying in the last, you know, 20 minutes or so,
[3:29]all of the different things that were known publicly about Peter Manslson's connections with Jeffrey Epstein. uh the report by JP Morgan in 2019 that found he maintained a particularly close
[3:40]relationship uh with between Lord Mansison with Epstein uh that continued uh after Epstein was first convicted of
[3:48]procuring an underage girl in 2008. uh and uh that Lord Manson also continued as late as 2014 relationship
[3:59]with a charity that was funded by Epstein set up by Gileain Maxwell uh who was also prosecuted uh in connection with those offenses. So that's very clear there. The other things that are
[4:11]in there too and I can tell you is that the the question so Downing Street have raised this issue that there were subsequent questions posed to posed to Lord Mandlesson in this vetting. We
[4:22]don't know exactly what the questions are and we don't know what the answer are because the police have asked that that be withheld while their investigations happened but the documents do give us give us a suggestion of that. So elsewhere they
[4:33]say that the from what we can understand of these documents I think that those questions related to the continued contact with Epstein uh after his first conviction for soliciting prostitution
[4:44]the minor reports that Manderson had stayed at Epstein's home while the financier was in prison. uh I think something Lord Manson said he he didn't then do subsequently or stay in that house and his association with the
[4:56]charity exactly those uh questions that were in the public domain were asked uh we don't know what the answers are and that's where Kamra said he was uh he
[5:06]believes he was lied to Lord Manson said he answered truthfully so that's the first thing I think that's really important those those details and the warning and the diligence but then the
[5:17]other thing is the warnings coming separately from others in government, from the civil servants, from the prime minister and the top people advising the government. So the prime minister's
[5:27]national security adviser Jonathan Powell, there's a note here uh at the time that Epstein was that Mandlesson was sacked. Jonathan Powell talking to the prime minister's legal chief legal
[5:38]at council saying that the appointment had been weirdly rushed uh and that they had uh he doesn't uh he'd raised concerns about the individual and the
[5:49]rep his reputation and the damage that could bring to uh those in Downing Street. So that's raised there and also warnings raised by the chief civil
[5:59]servant in the foreign office that uh here Jonathan Powell saying that he is also noting that Philip Barton top civil servant in the foreign office also had
[6:10]reservations about the employment now that's secondhand that's through Jonathan Pal but those are the two most senior figures there. So makes it very clear that those involved in this
[6:19]decision were the political figures Sakir Tama and those around him because the vetting we see here was uh it seems the questions posed because of the vetting the the kind of diligence was
[6:31]being done by the prime minister's uh his chief of staff and his director of communications. Now, that's not something I think that's been focused on yet, but that might raise real questions
[6:41]about the responsibility and how how how much sort of diligence was done if this was a politically handled vetting process ultimately more than a a civil
[6:52]service one. That's where the final kind of decisions and questions were put to meet Manson brought back. We don't know the the content of those obviously that will come later. But that's a key point, too. I think >> we should talk about the payoff. Damian,
[7:04]what will anger an awful lot of people is that Peter Manslson received a severance payment. Uh, and that will frustrate hugely the victims, Jeffrey Epstein's victims. So, there were
[7:15]negotiations to pay out the remainder of the four-year salary. Uh, which the government estimated at £547,21,
[7:24]over half a million pounds. Um, and they settled uh on 75,000. Now Darren Jones said he reminded the house that Peter Manslson at the time was a civil servant
[7:35]not a politician. So he had a right on his dismissal to take his case to an employment tribunal. It was the view of the treasury. He said that they didn't want to pay the legal cost which would
[7:46]have been expansive around that particular case and so they agreed a nominal fee £75,000 which incidentally is around the same sort of money that
[7:57]politicians get for their yearly salary. So he was given £75,000. Um and many people will question why.
[8:07]>> Yes. And clearly that question or that possibility is is being considered by the government here. It's worth explaining I think when you look at these documents they they give some of
[8:17]the the kind of reasoning for what was going on there. Now important thing to say here is none of this is is quote is directly quoting Peter Mandelen. So what
[8:28]we have is is the cab is the civil servants uh saying that he has asked for £547,000
[8:37]in payment when he was uh sacked and the reasoning for that appears to be that that is the he was sent to Washington for a 5-year term as ambassador. He
[8:46]served one year and that he's asking for the other four years balance of his salary to be paid to him. Uh that's my reading of it. Uh again this is the
[8:57]civil servants saying that this is what's being asked and then that is negotiated down and there is a note here an email from the cabinet office a cabinet office official uh saying once
[9:08]it was not negotiated down to this £75,000 figure um which I think was a you know account you know is a matter of months of of his salary. If there's any
[9:19]push back, it might be worth mentioning he opened negotiations asking us to pay out his contract uh over 500k. Uh Mark, the civil servant involved did very well
[9:29]to get the settlement down this low with minimal fuss. Uh and I guess the minimal fuss thing reject is
[9:38]about the potential for those any legal challenge. But as you say even at that level 75,000 there will be many who are saying why was this uh payment handed out and you heard the political reaction
[9:50]in the commons criticism of the government saying you shouldn't have done that uh you should have you know the risks of a legal challenge to this were ones you maybe should have tak born uh because you shouldn't have handed out
[10:01]that payout. So again that I think will be will you know be something that opponents will seize on uh and attack the government and K star over saying his judgment not only appointing Peter
[10:12]Manson but then handing him a payout at the end. >> Yeah, that's the point that the conservative Alicia Ken is making on social media that he should have been sacked for gross misconduct which she says would have nullified any payoff. Damian, for the moment, thank you very
[10:23]much. Uh let's bring in Megan Kenyon who's a political correspondent for the New Statesman. Thank you for your patience. I know you've been waiting as we tried to get through. Uh there's an enormous amount of detail actually
[10:33]across 135 pages, but perhaps our international viewers who are with us might wonder what it all amounts to. >> Yeah, I think it's it's quite interesting. This story has been
[10:43]rumbling on obviously since September when um Peter Mandlesson was initially sacked and then we it kind of came up again in January when the Epstein files were released and sort of you know the
[10:54]extent of Peter Mandlesson's relationship with Jeffrey Epstein kind of came to the four some of those um emails that kind of revealed uh details
[11:04]he was sending to Jeffrey Epstein while he was Gordon Brown's business secretary. Um and then the government at that time said that they would release uh the documents relating to Peter
[11:15]Mandlesson's appointment and we've obviously got the first trunch of them today with more expected I think in the next few weeks. >> Peter Mandlesson was appointed to the
[11:26]highest diplomatic role that exists within the foreign office in Washington. Uh can you explain to people what the vetting procedure for a job of that
[11:37]enormity should be? I guess it must involve, you know, obviously senior civil servants and I think this this involved uh Morgan Mcweeny, the prime minister's former
[11:49]chief of staff um and just ensuring as we kind of saw in the documents um that anything in that the person who is looking who the government is looking to
[12:00]appoint background um whether there's anything in there that could represent a reputational risk to the government. I mean what's interesting in this report and as you covered um with some other
[12:11]people on on your show uh already is that the prime minister was informed of the reputational risks of in of uh uh
[12:23]appointing Peter Mandlesson particularly around his relationship to Jeffrey Epstein. But you know obviously in that document it also said um warned about reputational risk of the fact that Peter
[12:34]Mandlesson when he was um a minister in the new labor years resigned twice then uh over other scandals. So I think that's that's an interesting element to
[12:45]draw out I think is that obviously the prime minister has claimed that Peter Mandlesson lied to him but I think especially among Labour MPs there's a little bit of sort of well we all know
[12:54]what Peter Mandlesson is like. he has had gained the nickname the prince of darkness I think the dark lord once he was appointed to the house of lords how
[13:04]willing are MPs to kind of believe that reasoning when we're now seeing that the the amount of information that the prime minister was given but also considering
[13:14]Peter Mlesson who he isn't and and how he has operated politically >> Megan Kenyon thank you very much indeed for that also with us I'm mckelvoy
[13:23]executive editor at of politics at polit Politico and good to see you. Um, Ed Davyy called it a catastrophic failure of judgment.
[13:34]Can you make a case for the defense? Thank you for that one. I mean, I'm finding that harder to do as the day goes on with the with the revelations.
[13:43]The case for the defense as Karma saw it was that he wanted someone he could have a close political conversation with
[13:53]because handling Donald Trump is as much about the politics as the diplomacy as we know the way that Donald Trump goes at things whether it's trade deals whether it's wars that we're seeing at the the moment where Peter Madison would
[14:05]of course have been in place and would have been pivotal to the relationship relies very much on smoothing over choppy waters personal affinities, personal favors, and that this was the
[14:16]world in which Peter Manderson, your last guest, was describing it very well. This is the world in which he operated, that he was a light and shade character. He was very persuasive. He had a great
[14:27]convening power, as we now call it. People who often didn't sort of in a sense, so they didn't like him very much, still wanted to be close to him. He had a certain magnetism. Now you
[14:36]could then say the downside of that was this person is probably not going to be come up absolutely squeaky clean on their resumes and that Kstarma thought
[14:47]well this is Donald Trump's America now you know we're going to have someone who who is a bit more kind of rough at the edges in terms of some of his practices and his style. I mean you did ask me to
[14:57]put a positive case. I mean that's about the only one I can come up with. You know what's because he feels like I mean >> Yeah. Sorry. Thank you. I'm doing my best here. But um also think if you mean
[15:08]that from Karma's position now, his best defense put by Darren Jones as his closest ally and in effect now speaking for the prime minister today. Well, I could not have known how bad it was
[15:19]because Peter Manderson hid the full truth from me. The question is why did he not personally go out of the way to if you could trust this person in the way that I described to carry out your
[15:29]business with our most important ally why not spend more time with him saying look there's been the odd thing in the past you're clearly very good at some things but there are some things that don't work out so well have you
[15:40]reflected on your conduct and he didn't seem to want to do that I think he would have just said he was busy he was distracted but it's odd karma should not have been floating that far above the
[15:50]appointment and having others Morgan Mweeny his chief of staff making that for him as it happens making the mistake for him but it's still his
[15:59]responsibility he is the prime minister >> I suppose the point is as well an Saki stoma was not particularly close to Lord Mandlesen there are there were others
[16:10]who were Morgan Mcweeny we've talked about who was his personal protege in the words of the conservatives Jonathan Powell had worked with him before Saki Star's national security adviser
[16:21]He obviously according to the document had his concerns. He thought the appointment was weirdly rushed and unusual and he said he'd raised concerns at the time. Philip Barton, permanent secretary to the the foreign office,
[16:32]also had reservations about the appointment. These were people who had come up against Peter Mandlesson before. Now Darren Jones is saying that the national security vetting process needs
[16:42]to be reviewed following this case. But the question that is the obvious one is whether a personal friend like Morgan Mweeny should have been anywhere near this election process.
[16:53]>> Yes. Well, I mean a personal and political friend. I mean, they've been in the trenches together in the new Labor years when Morgan Mweeny started his career when Peter Mandelen was in the great heights of that and very close
[17:05]to to the Blair project. So, it was a sort of political friendship. It wasn't just that they were mates from the golf club. So, I think there is that to consider. But yes, he should not have
[17:14]been making it without more attention to the balance of the argument. The fact that Jonathan Pal, we didn't really know that until we saw it black and white today, who you could see is also part of
[17:25]the Blair project, a chief of staff, no less, had Morgan Mcweeni's old job under Blair and much more besides now national security adviser involved in the heart of everything that is going on now in
[17:37]security and defense that he clearly had some doubts about it. My guess and knowing these characters in different ways is that Kharma wanted to make an
[17:46]appointment of his own that he listened to this and said no on balance I think I know what I need and I don't want to continue with a career diplomat however
[17:56]skilled Karen Pierce Jim Karen Pierce the the existing ambassador she was coming to the end of time but you it could have been extended you can always fangle these things most people don't like to leave Washington in a hurry so
[18:08]you know he could have obviously continued but he chose not to. My guess is then that you had Morgan Mweeny pushing him because he thought Peter Manderson would be this political and
[18:17]you know support for Karmama they could have different conversation to a career diplomat and on the other end of it you had Jonathan Pal saying well I've got my doubts about this but frankly Kia
[18:28]Starama has come to the view he doesn't know he's not you know he doesn't have Peter Manson's a protege or vice versa but he thinks he's what he needs well who am I to stand in the way so I think
[18:37]unfortunately everybody made the wrong decision But the person who matters most because they carry the can is the prime minister. And it is very odd that he, you know, he is still saying I was lied
[18:49]to. He says he can't go into that in detail because the Metropolitan Police are looking at that. The fact that they refer to that so often makes me think that they think it's going to come out so damaging in in the long run for Peter
[19:00]Mandlesson that it's going to let Karma off the hook. I don't know whether that works or does it just make prime minister who's after all a very skilled lawyer and former prosecutor look like
[19:11]in this case he lost his judgment and he went a bit naive and Mavoy always a pleasure. Thank you very much indeed for that. It is worth pointing out that the prime minister uh could have answered
[19:21]questions on this document at prime minister's questions this afternoon. He was at the dispatch box, but the 135page document was published uh 20 minutes before the debate this afternoon and
[19:32]after Prime Minister's questions. So, it was Darren Jones, his uh chief secretary, who was sent to answer questions on his behalf. We'll take a short break around the world and across
[19:43]the UK. You're watching BBC News. Welcome back. We're continuing to uh
[20:56]look at the documents that have been released by the government in the last hour relating to the appointment of the former Washington uh former UK ambassador to Washington, Lord Peter Mandlesson. I should just read you uh
[21:07]Lord Mandlesson's response to what has been uh published in the last hour. He says uh that in his view uh he answered questions about his relationship with
[21:17]Jeffrey Epstein in the vetting process and that uh is borne out by what is revealed in these documents. Of course, it's his word against the prime
[21:25]minister's as to what uh came out uh subsequently uh when he was sacked from the job and it is the prime minister's case and the case from the government uh
[21:35]that they were not in possession of the full extent of the relationship uh between Jeffrey Epstein which continued after his jailing in 2009.
[21:46]Our verified team have been going through the documents over the past hour. So, let's cross to Merlin Thomas who's at the verify hub. What have you found? >> Hi Christian. Yeah, here at Verify,
[21:56]we've been we have a team of data scientists and fact checkers who've been waiting for this drop of documents since the government announced them. And we've been working out how exactly we would do that. And the best person to talk to
[22:07]about this is Robert Kuff, our head of stats, who's here with me now. He can talk us through some of that detail. >> Right. Yeah. Well, any day like today is incredibly nervous for us and the data science team because we know that as
[22:18]soon as the documents drop, the BBC is going to be reporting on it in minutes and getting all the main lines out. And we are in I've been traumatized by downloading millions of files from the
[22:29]Epstein estate over the last month and a half. And so we've written all this code that you can see here on the left hand side which goes through all of the files on the government website because remember we didn't know what kind of
[22:40]files, what kind of format we were going to be getting today. So run through the government website, pull all the files down, convert them to the right format, pull out all the text, then share that with all the journalists so they can
[22:50]look in there for the important lines. Now the trouble is from a technical point of view and technical only, today's release has been a bit of a damp squid. If you look at what the government put up on their website, it's
[23:00]not hundreds of PDFs, it's not millions of images, it's just one. And you can go into it and take a look and you can see it lists out all of the important documents in there. So you've got the advice that the prime minister got on
[23:11]the due diligence on Peter Mandlesson, all of the onboarding stuff for him. Uh all the all the communication about his severance payment. So you can just read the document. And even worse for me, the
[23:21]old trick of control F if you're looking for a particular person in the files will get you there. So today, no need for this code, but of course there'll be more data drops, there'll be more documents in the future, and we'll be
[23:31]using that code again. >> Thanks, Robert. It's really interesting to see exactly how that works. But there are also key details that we can pull out from that and we can find a bit more about that from our policy and facteing
[23:42]correspondent Ben Chu >> Merlin. Yeah, we've been going through the document and we've highlighted a few things initially which we think are important to bring to public attention. And the first one you can see here is
[23:53]from the due diligence report and it confirms that the issue of Peter Mandlesson's relationship with Jeffrey Epstein was discussed between Peter Mandlesson and Saki Star's chief of
[24:04]staff who was Morgan Mcweeny at the time and also that Saki Star's director of communications man called Matthew Doyle was satisfied with Peter Manslson's responses and this was all talked about
[24:15]subsequently with Saki Star. So that's important because it confirms who exactly was involved in the due diligence and the vetting process. And in terms of what that vetting process
[24:26]revealed, we're also going to talk about well, we're going to highlight this from the document which shows that the report did uncover that or we uncovered reports that Mandlesson had stayed in Jeffrey
[24:36]Epstein's house while uh Jeffrey Epstein was in jail for soliciting prostitution from a minor in June 2009. And we think that's important because it shows that that piece of information was known as
[24:47]they were vetting Peter Mandelson to be Washington ambassador and they subsequently went ahead with that appointment. So we're going to be highlighting those and other things that have come out of this report later on
[24:58]verify in more detail. >> Great. Thanks so much, Ben. Those are just some of the key details and obviously we'll have some of the key takeaways for you later as we get more. But this kind of documents are the kinds
[25:10]of things that we sift through and we'll have more for you as and when we get it. >> Merlin, thank you very much. Uh Damian Grammaticus is still with me in Westminster. I suppose
[25:20]when it comes to what happens next, Damian, the prime minister's critics are going to say, well, if Morgan Mcweeny was involved ultimately in advising the prime minister it was a good appointment
[25:31]and he's gone and Matthew Doyle, his communication secretary, has gone and Chris Warmald, the cabinet secretary, has gone, then why is the man who ultimately took the decision still
[25:43]imposed? Well, that is certainly exactly the question that that his political opponents are going to be asking and have been asking already in the comments. I mean, you had the Liberal Democrat leader Sed Davyy calling this a
[25:54]catastrophic failure of judgment. That was his summation earlier. Stain on our nation. Uh, and Sed Davyy, I mean, interestingly, he he did say in his
[26:06]comments, it's important to keep Jeffrey Epstein's victims and the survivors of abuse by Jeffrey Epste Epstein forefront in our minds. And that's, I think, something really important here to
[26:17]remember is, you know, all of this talk about, you know, the the appointment, whatever. The the reason all this matters so much is because of the the that controversial relationship at the
[26:27]heart of all this. Jeffrey Epstein convicted uh of soliciting sex from a minor and his continued relationship with Lord Mandlesson. That's why Lord
[26:37]Manson ultimately uh left or was sacked as ambassador. But as these documents show, as you've been discussing, that was known at the time that he was
[26:47]appointed by Saki Starama and was flagged in the vetting documents as a reputational risk uh to the government and to Saki Starama because the the pros
[26:59]and cons of appointing someone of a political nature to that job. It lays out his advice from his civil servants was this is a figure who is directly who's more directly closely tied to you
[27:10]and therefore the risks are more tied to you as well. So warnings from the civil servants detailed about what was in the uh in Jeffrey in Lord Mandlesson's past and warnings from his top civil service
[27:22]advisers in the foreign office and his security adviser. >> Damian, thank you very much uh for that. Just a reminder that of course this is only the first tranch of documents. Uh there is much more to come, but there is
[27:32]one document that we know of that has been withheld entirely at the request of the Metropolitan Police uh due to the ongoing criminal investigation. So
[27:40]there's an awful lot we still don't