Sir Keir Starmer was warned about Lord Peter Mandelson's 'particularly close' relationship with Jeffrey Epstein after Epstein's conviction for child sex offences. Photo / Getty Images
British PM Sir Keir Starmer ignored warnings from top aides about Lord Mandelson’s close relationship with Jeffrey Epstein before appointing him as Britain’s ambassador to the US, new documents reveal.
On Wednesday, the first tranche of “Mandelson files” – documents relating to his appointment to Washington – was released, including the official due diligence report on the Labour peer produced by the Cabinet Office and sent to the Prime Minister.
It described the potential appointment of Mandelson as a “reputational risk” because of his “particularly close relationship” with the convicted paedophile.
It also noted that Mandelson stayed at Epstein’s house while he was in prison and included a link to a Telegraph article that detailed the peer’s close friendship with the financier.
Elsewhere in the 147 pages of documents released on Wednesday, it emerged that senior No 10 officials warned Starmer that he would be personally exposed “if anything goes wrong” with a political appointee to the role.
Jonathan Powell and Sir Philip Barton, two of Britain’s most senior foreign policy officials, raised concerns about Mandelson’s appointment.
Powell, Starmer’s national security adviser, who worked with Mandelson in the New Labour era, is said to have found the process “unusual” and “weirdly rushed”, and said he had “raised concerns” with Morgan McSweeney, the Prime Minister’s top aide in Downing Street at the time.
Despite these warnings, Starmer appointed Mandelson in December 2024. An email from the Foreign Office to Mandelson, also contained in the files, showed he was offered a security briefing at “higher tiers” before the conclusion of his vetting, in an apparent breach of the rules.
He lasted less than nine months before he was sacked last September over his links to Epstein.
Other files show that following his sacking, Mandelson asked for a severance payment of almost £550,000 ($1.2m). In the end, he was handed a £75,000 package from the Foreign Office because officials were concerned he would “go public” with criticism of the Government.
The disclosures, which come during a police investigation into Mandelson, will raise further questions about the Prime Minister’s judgment.
They are the first of tens of thousands of documents about the disgraced peer, his business links and his relationship with Epstein that ministers are set to publish.
MPs forced the Government to release the files and to hand over control of their publication to Parliament’s intelligence and security committee.
Following the release of the documents, Darren Jones, the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister, claimed the due diligence document had failed to highlight “the depth and extent” of Mandelson’s ties to Epstein.
Starmer has previously claimed he did not know about the “depth” of Mandelson’s connections to Epstein, that “full due process was followed”, and that information had “come to light” that he did not know at the time.
However, the report, compiled by the Cabinet Office’s propriety and ethics team and published on Wednesday, refers to various risks that Mandelson’s appointment posed to the Government.
It includes a section on Epstein, which notes that Mandelson maintained a close friendship with him that continued after he was sent to prison for soliciting child prostitution in 2008.
It also notes that Mandelson stayed at Epstein’s home while he was in prison in 2009, and that he worked with a conservation group run by Ghislaine Maxwell, the paedophile financier’s right-hand woman.
The report credits The Telegraph for an “extensive” description of Mandelson’s links to Epstein, which was published in January 2024 and given to Starmer 11 months later. In bold, the official report says their friendship poses a “reputational risk”.
The same words are used three more times to refer to Mandelson’s previous resignations from the Government and lobbying by his company, Global Counsel.
The files also include official advice given to Starmer in his prime ministerial red box, including from Lord Case, the former Cabinet Secretary, and officials in his private office.
Case stressed the need to “acquire the necessary security clearances and do due diligence on any potential conflicts of interest” before appointing a US ambassador.
In one “box note”, civil servants Nin Pandit and Ailsa Terry warned him that making a political appointment could have personal consequences if it went “wrong”.
In a second note, sent the following month by Pandit, Starmer’s principal private secretary, she noted that McSweeney had “discussed Peter’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein” and that Matthew Doyle, the No 10 director of communications, was “satisfied with his responses”.
The files also contain a description of a meeting with Powell and Barton, the most senior official in the Foreign Office.
In the notes, Powell said that the appointment had been “weirdly rushed” as officials raced to find a new ambassador, warning that the process was “unusual” and he had complained about it to McSweeney.
The files also include details about Mandelson’s sacking. The peer was fired over the phone after a meeting between Starmer and Sir Olly Robbins, who had replaced Barton as the permanent undersecretary in the Foreign Office.
Robbins reported that Starmer was concerned about “discomfort” with Mandelson among Labour MPs.
The decision to sack him led to a battle over the peer’s taxpayer-funded payout, which he initially demanded should be more than £500,000.
The Government eventually settled on a £75,000 payout, which equated to five months of work. Mandelson had asked to be paid for the remainder of his posting, even though he had been sacked after less than a year.
In a letter to the Foreign Office six days after his sacking, he wrote that he wished to arrive back in the UK with “maximum dignity and minimum media intrusion [...] not least because I remain a crown/civil servant and expect to be treated as such”.
Jones told MPs on Wednesday that Starmer “regrets” his choice of US ambassador and that Mandelson should not have been paid off.
He said the Government “would not have wanted to give one pound” to the disgraced peer, adding: “The honourable thing to do would be to donate that money to an appropriate charity.”
He said Downing Street would reform the vetting process for new officials, including a new rule that their appointment cannot be announced until they are approved. A government ethics body will also investigate the role of lobbying in public life.
MPs voted last month to approve a “humble address” tabled by Kemi Badenoch, the Tory leader, that will force the release of documents, including vetting papers, relating to Mandelson’s appointment.
The wide-ranging nature of the humble address means thousands of messages will be published that are not related to Mandelson’s appointment itself, many of which could be embarrassing for Starmer and his top team.
Mandelson was arrested last month on suspicion of misconduct in a public office, after emails between him and Epstein were published by the US government showing the two men communicating about the work of the Brown administration.
He has denied any wrongdoing.
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