Prime Minister Keir Starmer explicitly asked Peter Mandelson about his links to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein before appointing him as the United Kingdom’s ambassador to the United States, the BBC has been told.
Downing Street sources said Starmer posed three direct questions to Mandelson as part of the vetting process, and that answers to those queries were judged at the time to be sufficient for the appointment. The revelations add to scrutiny of what ministers knew about Mandelson’s relationship with Epstein before the peer’s removal this week.
According to sources in Downing Street and the Cabinet Office, the prime minister’s chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, sent Mandelson three questions by email after material prepared by the Cabinet Office’s Propriety and Ethics Team was reviewed by No 10. The questions asked why Mandelson had continued contact with Epstein after the financier’s 2008 conviction, whether he had stayed in one of Epstein’s Manhattan homes while Epstein was in prison, and whether he had any association with a charity founded by Ghislaine Maxwell, an associate of Epstein.
People briefed on the exchanges said Mandelson told officials he had not stayed at Epstein’s Manhattan apartment in 2009 while Epstein was serving a jail term, and that he had been frank about his association with Epstein. Court documents filed in 2023 showed Epstein telling his private banker that Mandelson was planning to stay at the apartment, but Mandelson has not explicitly confirmed or denied that account.
No 10 sources told the BBC they considered Mandelson to have been "economical with the truth" in his answers. Still, those responses were deemed sufficient at the time to proceed with the appointment and to start a second, more detailed security check known as developed vetting under Foreign Office oversight.
The peer was asked to leave his post on Thursday after a cache of old emails was published by Bloomberg on Wednesday evening. The messages, which reportedly came from a now-defunct email account, included what Bloomberg described as supportive notes Mandelson sent after Epstein pleaded guilty in June 2008 to soliciting prostitution from a minor. One message was said to urge Epstein to "fight for early release," while another, sent a day before Epstein began a jail sentence, read: "I think the world of you." Those emails did not appear in the vetting files seen by some officials, according to people briefed on the process.
Downing Street and Mandelson have declined to comment publicly. The Cabinet Office also declined to comment.
Sources said that Mandelson was asked to resign on Wednesday, but refused. After Starmer read the emails on Wednesday night, a final decision to remove the peer was taken on Thursday morning. The episode has prompted questions inside Labour about the prime minister’s judgement and what senior aides knew and did during the vetting and appointment process.
Some Labour MPs, according to people familiar with private discussions, have publicly and privately called for scrutiny of the decision-making around the appointment and have suggested senior officials in Number 10 share responsibility. The controversy follows previous acknowledgements by Mandelson that he regrets his association with Epstein. Epstein died in US custody in 2019.
Officials said the particular emails highlighted by Bloomberg were not available to those conducting initial vetting because they were located in a defunct account and were not captured by standard background searches. A senior Whitehall figure told the BBC it would have been possible to find those messages had further forensic background checks been carried out at the time.
The case has intensified debate over ministerial vetting standards and the information-sharing mechanisms between government departments and vetting teams. It also raises questions about the thoroughness of checks on high-profile diplomatic appointments and the extent to which historic digital records are captured and searched.
The Foreign Office began a developed vetting process after Mandelson’s initial clearance; officials said at the time that process was standard for roles involving access to sensitive material. The timeline of the internal checks, the content available to officials at each stage, and the sequence of decisions leading to the appointment and subsequent sacking are now under scrutiny.
Mandelson, a veteran Labour politician and former cabinet minister, had been due to take up the ambassadorial role this year. His removal leaves the government searching for a replacement and presents an early reputational test for Starmer’s premiership as questions persist over how much ministers and senior aides understood about Mandelson’s past links to Epstein prior to the appointment.