A senior cabinet minister has admitted that “political views” Lord Mandalson“Excellent unique talents” meant that security concerns about the labor colleague to be an ambassador to the US were ignored.
Business secretary Peter Kyle But repeated the claim sky News And BBC On Sunday morning, “new information” is coming to light on your relationship with the guilty Podophile Jeffrey Epstein He was dismissed on Friday.
finals week Independent It was revealed that Sir Kir pushed through his appointment earlier this year Despite Mi6 fails security,
He refused to say whether the Prime Minister had talked directly to Mandelson to tell him that he was dismissed or was the appointment first a mistake.
Mr. Kyle told Sunday morning with Trever Philips But sky News It was not correct that Lord Mandaleson was appointed as ambassador to the US before the security check was completed.
He said: “The cabinet office conducted an independent investigation into the appointment, as they do in every public appointment of this nature, and the information, which was presented to the Prime Minister.”
But he admitted that political views trumped security concerns about Mandelson, including China’s links, not only his relationship with Epstein. In January Independent It turned out that the same Donald Trump denied Mandelson’s credibility due to concerns.
Mr. Kyle said: “The second process was clearly a political process, where all other aspects of the appointment of this nature are political talks in 10 10.
“Now both these things changed information that was already public and a decision was taken based on Peter’s unique talent in the region, that the risk of knowing is what was already public worth of risk.”
But he added to the Sunday Morningsho of Laura Kunsberg on the BBC that Mandelson’s appointment had achieved a lot for the UK.
He said: “[At the time of the appointment] The global criteria were reversed. The relationship between Britain and the US was in a dangerous position due to the threat of tariff. What was happening financially, was trying to re -introduce and reconsider special relations. Britain required someone with outstanding, unique talent, experience that was very difficult. ,
Explaining the “new information”, he claimed that waiting did not raise emails, which came to light this week, in which Mandelson called Epstein to deal with his sentence and called the financer his “best sail”.
The trade secretary said: “Of course we have seen the emails that were not published at that time were not public and were not known about it, and this has changed the situation.”
“They had public – which was an extract of email and … and immediately, when alerted for email extracts, the Foreign Office approached Peter Mandelson and asked for his account of email and asked them to put them in context and for his response.
“This response did not come before PMQ and then after the completion of PMQ, full emails were released by Bloomberg in the evening.
“The next morning the first thing, when the Prime Minister had time to fully read the email, he had perfectly, and to read almost immediately, Peter was withdrawn as an ambassador.”
He insisted that the media had “the same information that we had.”
“We only knew what the media knew at that time,” he said. Opponents stated that it was “surprising”, prioritizing security concerns and mandelson’s talent on Epstein victims.
Tory Chairman Kevin Hallinrek said: “It is surprising that the new business and business secretary has openly admitted that Downing Street has chosen to prioritize Mandelson’s ‘unique and excellent talents’ on the rights of Epstein’s victims. Even more harmful, this cover-up has been released for 48 hours for this week.