Starmer hints Labour MPs to be told to vote against Commons sleaze probe

The Commons will vote on Tuesday on whether the Privileges Committee should consider if the Prime Minister misled the House.

Sir Keir Starmer has signalled Labour MPs will be told to reject a bid for a parliamentary sleaze inquiry into the Lord Mandelson vetting row.

The Commons will vote on Tuesday on whether the Privileges Committee should consider if the Prime Minister misled the House over the way the former Labour grandee’s appointment as British ambassador to the US was handled.

In an interview ahead of what will be another critical day for the future of his premiership, Sir Keir dismissed the motion as a “stunt” and insisted “we’ve huge amounts of transparency going on already.”

The Prime Minister will address the Parliamentary Labour Party at a meeting on Monday evening ahead of the crunch vote, which Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle allowed after requests from Tory leader Kemi Badenoch and other senior MPs.

Asked why Labour backbenchers were being whipped to vote against the call for an investigation, Sir Keir said: “Well, because it’s a stunt.”

“We’ve got a meeting of the PLP later on tonight where that’s usually determined on Monday evening,” he told the Cathy Newman Show on Sky News.

Sir Keir revealed that his wife Lady Victoria Starmer had encouraged him to carry on in No 10 despite months of political turbulence, describing her as “an absolute rock”.

Asked whether she was advising him to keep going, he said: “She is, yes. And we talk everything through, and it’s fantastic.”

Cabinet minister Emma Reynolds accused the Tories of playing “silly political games” over the issue earlier on Monday.

Meanwhile, the Government took the unusual step of publishing a letter from former Cabinet secretary Sir Chris Wormald to the Prime Minister, in which the head of the Civil Service said he had concluded the “appropriate processes were followed” in both the appointment and sacking of the peer.

In the message dated September 16, Sir Chris, who conducted a review into Lord Mandelson’s appointment, said he would “keep this under review if any further evidence emerges”.

The Speaker’s decision now gives the Labour leadership a headache in deciding whether to order Sir Keir’s MPs to publicly oppose a referral to the committee.

Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister, Darren Jones, refused to tell the Commons whether Labour would whip their MPs against it.

The committee was responsible for Boris Johnson’s exit from frontline politics after it investigated him for misleading the House over the “partygate” breaches of Covid-19 laws in Downing Street.

He quit as an MP in 2023 before the committee published a report recommending his suspension.

Tory leader Mrs Badenoch called for Labour MPs to back the referral to the Privileges Committee.

She said: “The Prime Minister misled the House of Commons repeatedly.

“He appointed a national security risk and friend of a convicted paedophile to be our ambassador in Washington, our most sensitive diplomatic post.

“He pretended that full due process was followed for this appointment. It was not.

“He has blamed the appointment on officials when the blame can only be placed at his own door.”

Elsewhere, former prime minister Gordon Brown urged MPs to back the Prime Minister ahead of the vote on Tuesday.

“Whatever the parliamentary games at Westminster, what the country expects of everyone in Labour is to focus on the priorities of the British people, which is what Keir Starmer is doing and for which he deserves all our support,” he said.

Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey said Labour MPs must be given a free vote on Tuesday.

“Even Boris Johnson didn’t block his MPs voting for scrutiny,” he said.

“If Keir Starmer has misled the House and the public, he must be held to the same standard that we should expect of any prime minister.”

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage told the Press Association: “There’s no doubt he’s misled Parliament more than once and not just on this issue, on others as well.

“I suspect what will happen is the Labour MPs will be three-line whipped to support the Government, a handful will abstain, and we’ll just move on from here.

“Starmer’s future will be decided by the elections on May 7 and if Reform do as well as I think we can in the old Labour areas, that will be the end of him.”

The Prime Minister has been accused of misleading MPs by saying that “full due process” was followed in appointing Lord Mandelson, who was given developed vetting status despite failing security checks.

The Foreign Office, under then top civil servant Sir Olly Robbins, cleared him despite red flags raised by experts at the UK Security Vetting agency responsible for the checks.

Sir Keir has also faced questions for telling MPs that “no pressure existed whatsoever in relation to this case”.

Sir Olly told MPs “my office and the Foreign Secretary’s office were under constant pressure” about the appointment in January 2025, after it had been announced but before the security checks were completed.

Sir Keir told The Sunday Times he was not talking about the “everyday pressure of government” but the suggestion of specific pressure on Sir Olly to grant Lord Mandelson’s developed vetting status.

“(Sir Olly) was really clear in his mind that wasn’t pressure that was put on him. And he also goes on to say that none of this impacted his decision,” Sir Keir said.

Downing Street suggested the timing of the move was driven by next week’s elections to English councils and the Scottish and Welsh parliaments.

A No 10 spokesman said: “The Government is engaging with the two parliamentary processes that are already running on Peter Mandelson’s appointment with full transparency.

“This is a desperate political stunt by the Conservative Party the week before the May elections because they have no answers on the cost of living or the NHS. Their claims have no substance.”

The Government has promised to comply with an order by MPs to disclose documents relating to Lord Mandelson’s appointment to the Washington post, which ended after nine months in September 2025 when he was sacked over the extent of his links to paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein.

Mr Jones said more than 300 documents would have been passed to Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee by the end of Monday, which have been judged to be prejudicial to “national security or international relations”.

These include “a number that are relevant” to Lord Mandelson’s vetting for the role of US ambassador, he told MPs in a statement.

The Commons Foreign Affairs Committee is also examining how Lord Mandelson was granted security clearance.

Sir Olly, who was sacked by Sir Keir for not disclosing the security concerns to ministers, gave evidence to the committee last week.

On Tuesday the MPs are due to hear from Sir Keir’s former chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, widely regarded as a protege of Lord Mandelson.

He resigned in February over his part in the peer getting the coveted job.

The committee will also hear from Sir Olly’s predecessor, Sir Philip Barton, and receive written evidence from Foreign Office official Ian Collard, who briefed Sir Olly on the vetting findings.

Sir Olly said he was told the security experts who carried out the vetting deemed Lord Mandelson a “borderline” case and leaned towards recommending that clearance be denied, but the former Foreign Office mandarin approved his developed vetting status with mitigations put in place.

Downing Street has said the findings from UK Security Vetting, the agency which carried out the checks, were more clear-cut, describing Lord Mandelson as of “high concern” and recommending that he be denied clearance.