Parliamentary transparency and government document release

This is the Guardian What we've established through our sources is that there were wide ranging concerns, some of them related to Peter Mandelson's associations before he became ammbassador to Washington. This information may not have been disclosed to the public, and we essentially think the public has a right to know Gudian exclusively reveals that Peter Mandelson's ties with senior figures in China, Russia and Israel were among the concerns raised by the UK's vetting aggency when it concluded he'd be denied security clearance as U. S. ammbassador From the Guardians T todayay in Focus, this is the latest. We meet Lucy Hol Heao Lewis, the Guardian' Head of Investigations is here. You have a follow up to the major exclusive with your colleagues, Pippa Kreer and Henry Dyer last month that The UK's veting agency, the UK goovernment's vetting agency, recommended that Peter Mandelson be denied security clearance, advice that was overruled by the Foreign Office as per your revelation last month. You've since learnt more information about why the vetting agency recommended that security clearance be denied What were some of the concerns raised Yes. I mean, this is this is the question I think everyone sort of wanted an answer to, you know, that security officials thought that he shouldn't get resting clearance. so what were their concerns What we've established through our sources is that there were wide ranging concerns someome of them related to Peter Mandelson's associations before he became ammbassador to Washington. And I'll give you four examples. One was a relationship with China's finance minister Lan Foan. anotherother was his friendship with Oleg Derapaska, who is a Russian sanctioned oligarch. A third was his association with someone called Tamir Heayman, who is a or was a director of intelligence for the Israeli military. And then there was a fourth individual who is British that security officials felt could be compromising to Mandelon I suspect that the thing that is going to be the cause of most interest in Parliament will actually be his relationship with Land. Wh is You know obv he's incredibly senior. He's finance minister in China. He has met with twice Rachel Reeves and once with Kiss Armor That throws up a whole number of questions. I mean, was Mandelon involved in arranging these meetings between LAN and senior members of the British government Did he disclose that he had a prior relationship with this individual So I would imagine that as much as all of the other concerns that we've identified were were issues that were flagged by the agency will be will be of interest now. And so Paul, how much was known about those four associations and why they might be considered a risk to national security. publicly known that Mandelson had a relationship with Derea Paska. I mean that's been quite long standing. Of course it wasn't known that that was one of the associations that was an issue of concern to security officials. I mean, you know, I guess it is noteworthy that both when it comes to LAan, the Chinese Minister and Derea Pasa, those are two individuals who if you like, are embedded in in the power structures of two hostile states, China and Russia But those associations were not the only concerns that were flagged by the agency. there were more. There was also a concern that Mandelon was naive in relation to the risks posed by some of his historical relationships, completely unrelated. And also intriguingly, there was a one million pound loan that security officials noted was due to be used to purchase shares in an Israeli company. Now the fact he had shares in this company, this company iss called Moon Active, it's an Israeli gaming company, was known. But when we looked at the Declaration of interestnterest, there was no reference to this loan. So you know one of the many questions, I think for Mandels in the coming days and for the government will be why this loan wasn't declared in the House of Lords register. You know A lot of this can seem quite complicated and convoluted, but really it boils down to some essential facts Security officials did not think that Mandelson should be given clearance The foreign office gave him clearance anyway We didn't previously know what the reasons were for security officials having concerns about Mandelon getting clearance. We now do They appear to be somewhat wide ranging And that opens a whole slew of new questions For the government, for the foreign Oice, for Mandelsen himself. Yes. And it raises serious questions for a man, Ollie Robbins, who is at the center of all of this in many ways. He was the then permanent secretary to the foreign Office. He was the person that overruled the advice of the vetting agency to not give Peter Mandelsen security clearance As a result of the Guardian's exclusive reporting last month, he was sacked from his position, he was hauled before MPs at the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, and he described this case as a borderline case, which seems extraordinary given what you've just told me and what the Guardian has been able to uncover about what those concerns were What do we know about why he considered this to be a borderline case that's one of the curious questions. I mean, actually what he said was not that he but believed it to be a borderline case He said that UKSV, which just for people who don't know what that acronym stands for is the UK security etting. it's the agency within government that does veting He said that it was his understanding that that agency regarded it as a borderline case I mean, there's a lot of questions about this claim. You know, we've really looked into it. Robins says that that was a description that was relayed to him. He didn't look at the summary file himself. He relied on an oral briefing. becausecause it's highly confidential is that standard practice? Our understanding is this document was marked official sensitive, which is not a particularly sensitive form of classification for government occupancy. You have secret documents, you have top secret documents, you even have strap level documents beyond that So this was not labeled as such. That's his explanation as to why he chose not to look at it I mean, other senior civil servants have said that that was extraordinary in their view that he decided to not look at the vetting document knowing that the officials had advised Clearance denied He was going to give clearance anyway. You might imagine might want to look at the document. But in any case, he says he relied on an oral briefing of its contents from another security official in his department. Now that official has also said he did not look at the document He also relied on an oral briefing. Now those two people, Ollie Robins and Ian Collard, are the only two people who've referenced this case being regarded as borderline in any way. There hasn't yet been any independent corroboration of that being the case. So that will be one of the curious things to look at in the coming weeks is is there any other information to confirm that's the case? And also frankly Given the seemingly quite wide ranging nature of these concerns, you know that contributed to UKSV's recommendation N just a single thing, but multiple things On what basis would anyone regard that to be borderline? Yes Another curious aspect of this is that the case was considered bordline, but also that it could be handled with mitigations, which is what Ollie Robins told Foreign Affslect Committee last month. I mean, given what you've told me about the potential risks to national security in regards to links with Russia and China, but also potential conflicts of interest in terms of his business links, what were those mitigations? Have we learned any more information about what they were No. and that's another really interesting question now. Now that we have established what the concerns were that were flagged by security officials. The obvious question is, okay, so what were the mitigations that were put in place to deal with such a wide ranging number of mitigations? I mean, actually there was an intervention in Parliament last week by one of the P who sits on a committee that has had advanance sight of the most sensitive documents And they seem to be suggesting that there were No documents that they'd seen with any reference to these mitigations. Now that really would be extraordinary. If Ollie Robins and this other official Ian Collard have said that mitigations were put in place, you would imagine those to be written down somewhere. Y. I mean, if they haven't been written down anywhere, I think there'll be even more questions for those two officials. Yes. if this is another case of oral briefings, in which case while are records not. I mean honestly I do think Most extraordinary things about this whole process is, you know we're getting a window now into an area of national security that rarely gets any scrutiny And it is extraordinary that seemingly so many decisions have been taken that you would imagine are quite consequential decisions without an audit process or without record keeping that would provide, in a situation like this an explanation as to what happened on what basis and what the reasoning is We still have more documents to come. and they're due to be released at someime in June. That's going to be an enormous avalanche of documents. So when those documents will be released, I'm sure that journalists and parliamentarians and others will be sifting through them for what these mitigations were If indeed, they were written down anywhere. Yeah, And Paul, this really started at the end of January when we had the release of the Epstein files in the United States that appeared to reveal for the first time the full extent of Peter Mandelsen's relationship with the known child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, a relationship that was far more extensive and close than perhaps had previously been realized. And it was at that point Ti partarty called for the full release of documents related to his appointment as U.S. ammbassador. Yeah, so this is a bit complicated. So just to take a couple of steps back. You know, Mandelon was sacked in the late twenty twenty five over his relationship with Epstein By february twenty twenty six this year, There were growing questions around all of this and Parliament passed this thing called a humble address. and essentially, it's like a motion that compels the government to do something. And it required the public release of quote, all papers related to Mandelson's appointment. The problem seems to be that not all papers have been or are being released Now there is a parliamentary committee called the intntelligence and Security Committee. And as part of this humble address process these MPs and peers, it's their job to to scrutinize the most sensitive of the documents to decide whether there should be any redactions for national security or international relations reasons That's their role. Now that committee in recent weeks has and this is quite extraordinary been saying publicly that the government has been redacting far too broadly and even withholding some documents in their entirety from the committee And then last week, all of this sort of came out in Parliament. There was an urgent question and a big debate T MPs accused the government of a cover up. O suggested they might bring effectively a motion to hold ministers in contempt. I think there's a great deal of concern in Parliament that the government is not being sufficiently transparent. Yeah, Transparency around a decision that has arguably been the gravest mistake in Kistela's preremiership so far in his decision to appoint Peter Mandelson as U. S. ambassador, despite his links to Epstein and despite known links to Russia and China that were already in the public domain But in terms of these allegations of a cover up or a lack of transparency when it comes to the second tranche of documents due to be released next month, how has the government responded to those allegations? So the minister, cabinet offffice minister who's in charge of this process of releasing these files has denied that the government has inappropriately redacted information. He has justified its decision to withhold certain veting documents, and he has rejected the notion that there's a cover up. I think he said if there would be a cover up he would resign. So he's flatly said that that is not happening One of the reasons If you read as I do because I'm a Sadow, transcripts of debate in Parliament. One of the things that is sort of agitating parliamentarians so much is that for them this is a sort of quite existential question, which is who has supremacy? Is it Parliament, democratically elected parliament that tells the goovernment to do something Or does the government have the authority to apply its own discretion and decide, you know in some circumstances against doing what it has been mandated to do. So in terms of why the Guardian has decided to publish this, I mean, this is a vetting process that goes into personal and private information, but it has thrown up issues that could be risks to national security in terms of those links to Russia, China and Israel. And it's for that reason I presume that the Guardian feels that this is worth knowing about. Yeah, I mean, you know whenever we publish information that might be regarded as private, we always carefully weigh that against the public interest. and we did it on this occasion. I mean, I think what you have here is what one senior parliamentarian has called a wholly exceptional circumstance We've never had a scenario like this before where you have had an ambassador to Washington being sacked. lots of questions around the vetting process Unprecedented levels of scrutiny around the vetting process And then in tandem with that you have growing concerns in Parliament goovernment is not complying with its wishes compomlaints about potential cover up information being withheld And I think essentially, you the position we've taken on this is that know, we've established this information We believe that the public and Parliament has a right to know it. And in recent days, it's become apparent to us that Despite Parliament's motion This information may not have been disclosed to the public, and we essentially think the public has a right to know. Yeah, it feels certainly like information that is worth being in the public domain. Paul, thank you so much for your reporting for your time Thank you Tamir Heayman is now the director of the Institute for National Security Studies, the INSS, a seecurity Th tank in Tel Aviv. A spokesperson for the INSS said in response to the Guardian's reporting, Heyman has no personal connection or familiarity whatsoever with Mandelsen. They said prior to Mandelesten's appointment as Ambassador, he briefly took part in an external advisory framework at the think tank participated in several broad multip participant discussions This limited interaction constitutes the entirety of any contacts between them That's it for today. My huge thanks again to Paul Lewis, the Guardian's Head of Investigations. Do find his exclusive reporting with Pipa Crea and Henry Dyer over at theguardian d. com That's it for today. Thanks for listening to this episode of the latest.oday I'm focused will be back in your feeds as usual tomorrow morning, The latest we'll be back tomorrow night This episode was presented by me, Lucy Hoffit, was produced by Nardas Milinich. The senior producer was Ryan Ram Goben and the lead producer was Zoe Hitch This is the Guardian