𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

A Minister has claimed that Peter Mandelson’s £75,000 taxpayer-funded payout for being sacked as US ambassador was “value for money”. Nick Thomas-Symonds expressed “moral outrage” over the payment to the disgraced Labour grandee, who was awarded the sum when he was dismissed over his ties to paedophile Jeffrey Epstein. But he also tried to defend the amount given to the former diplomat, by pointing out that Lord Mandelson asked for his contract to be paid out in full, totalling more than £500,000.

The settlement was revealed in the first tranche of Government documents published on Wednesday. Mr Thomas-Symonds, the Cabinet Office Minister in the Labour government, said: “You can look at the documents, you can see on a value for money basis why that decision was made. There was an original request for £547,000 that was negotiated down to £75,000.”

There was a risk of an employment tribunal, he said, although Lord Mandelson has reportedly denied intending to go down that route after his September 2025 sacking.

Mr Thomas-Symonds continued: “But from a moral point of view, it is incredibly difficult to even think that that money is still being retained.

“So what I would say is, do the decent thing, do the honourable thing, donate that money to charity. And I would suggest perhaps a charity supporting victims might be appropriate.”

Tory leader Kemi Badenoch, meanwhile, argued the peer should not have been awarded a payout at all because he lied, as she accused Downing Street of leaving key details out of the papers.

Mrs Badenoch told broadcasters during a visit to Wembley: “The Prime Minister told the country that Peter Mandelson had lied to him.

“If someone has been dishonest and lied, you don’t give them a severance payment. So something very dodgy has happened.”