The government on Monday afternoon published more than 1,500 pages of documents about Peter Mandelson’s appointment as ambassador in Washington, but some of the most important papers were still missing. Ministers cast the release as an unprecedented piece of government transparency even as key vetting and disclosure records remained out of sight.
That matters because the papers were meant to show how Mandelson was cleared for one of Britain’s most sensitive diplomatic jobs, and what concerns were raised before he got there. The missing files leave a gap at the very point readers are trying to understand: what security officials knew, what was challenged, and what was decided before he took up the post.
Among the documents not included in the second tranche was a nine-page summary from United Kingdom Security Vetting, the unit that helped assess whether Mandelson should receive developed vetting security clearance. Sources said the summary set out concerns about his links to China’s finance minister, Lan Fo’an, the sanctioned Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska and a former Israeli military intelligence general, Tamir Hayman. They also said UKSV flagged a very close relationship with a fourth individual, who is British, and recorded concern about a £1m loan Mandelson received to invest in an Israeli startup.
Sources said the same summary suggested Mandelson appeared naive about the risk that older relationships could be exploited. Ian Collard said he took a note of the UKSV summary document and submitted that note to the public disclosure process, but there is no trace of it in the second tranche. His note said UKSV concluded Mandelson was a “very borderline case.”
The government said the UKSV summary was withheld on the advice of the Metropolitan police, which said the papers could potentially prejudice an ongoing investigation. Darren Jones said the omitted material would be published later, in a third tranche at the conclusion of that investigation or when it was no longer prejudicial. But the second release still contained no documentary evidence of security mitigation, even though an email from Collard recorded the decision to grant developed vetting status and said matters relating to Mandelson’s overseas contacts would be reviewed again for STRAP clearance.
Other gaps were just as striking. The first tranche included a blank declaration of interests template sent to Mandelson, but the completed form is still missing. That document should have set out the steps taken to deal with any conflicts and whether his line manager had agreed them, yet it too was withheld by the Metropolitan police. Three questions sent by Keir Starmer’s chief of staff about Mandelson’s relationship with Epstein, along with Mandelson’s answers, were also absent from the second tranche.
The release was billed as openness, but it still leaves the central question unresolved: how a man described in the internal material as a borderline case was allowed through a process that now stands only partially in public view. Until the withheld summary, the completed disclosure form and the missing questions and answers are published, the record on Mandelson’s appointment remains incomplete.
