𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

Sir Keir Starmer believes Lord Mandelson should no longer sit in Parliament following further revelations about the peer’s links to paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein. But the Prime Minister does not have the power to strip him of his peerage.

In an email exchange from 2009, Lord Mandelson, then the business secretary, appeared to tell Epstein he would lobby ministers over a tax on bankers’ bonuses. The emails released by the US Department of Justice also show Epstein was sent internal discussions from the heart of the UK Government in the aftermath of the global financial crisis. Bank statements from 2003 and 2004 appeared to show he received payments totalling 75,000 US dollars (£54,735) from the financier. Epstein is also said to have paid for an osteopathy course for Lord Mandelson’s husband.

Sir Keir urged the Lords to work with the Government to modernise disciplinary procedures to make it easier to remove disgraced peers. Under the current arrangements, a new law would be required to remove a peerage, something that last happened more than 100 years ago to deal with members of the nobility who sided with the Germans in the First World War. There is no precedent for using a new law to remove a specific person.