Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor “owes it to the victims” of Jeffrey Epstein to come forward and speak about what he knows, says Rachel Reeves.
Speaking in London on Wednesday, the Chancellor said the disgraced former prince “has got a lot of questions to answer on a whole range of issues”.
She added: “And I think he owes it to the victims of Epstein and his associates to come forward and give much more information about what he knew around the treatment of young women and girls.”
Her comments follow a call from a lawyer who represented Virginia Giuffre for Andrew to be given “safe passage” to the US to give evidence over Epstein.
Speaking on Piers Morgan Uncensored on Tuesday, David Boies said the ex-Duke of York has an “obligation” to reveal what he knows about the paedophile financier and should be free to do so without fear of arrest.
Mr Boies said: “He’s got an obligation to tell what he knows. Now, I also think that if he’s afraid of being arrested in the United States, we ought to give him safe passage to come to the United States to testify, because we don’t want there to be any excuse for him not coming and telling what he knows.
“But he knows a lot. How much I don’t know myself because they gave up in the litigation we had against them just before his deposition was supposed to be taken.
“I don’t think anybody knows how much he knows, but we know he knows a lot from his contact, and whatever he knows, even if was a little bit, he has an obligation to share that.”
Mr Boies believes the information released in the so-called Epstein files earlier this month is enough to warrant an investigation into 20 men and women, including Andrew, for possible wrongdoing.
He said: “I think that it certainly is something that justifies an investigation, what he knew and when he knew it, what he knew about her age, what he knew about the extent to which she was coerced.
“He clearly knew that Jeffrey Epstein and (Ghislaine) Maxwell were trafficking these girls. Now, whether he knew that they were under age, whether he knew that there was force and coercion involved, that is something that is state of mind that I think, before I made a judgment on that I’d want to see more evidence. But it’s certainly something that’s worth investigating.”
His calls add to mounting pressure on Andrew. Earlier on Tuesday, the chairman of the cross-party Business and Trade Committee said there is potential for MPs to investigate his work as a trade envoy.
Emails released in the Epstein files appear to show the former duke - who served as trade envoy between 2001 and 2011 - sharing reports of official visits to Hong Kong, Vietnam and Singapore with the paedophile financier.
Thames Valley Police previously said it has held discussions with specialists from the Crown Prosecution Service about the allegations that Andrew shared confidential reports.
Asked about Lord Peter Mandelson, Britain’s former US ambassador facing similar calls to testify, Mr Boies said the peer, like Andrew, has an obligation to do so and neither should fear the US will “seize them at the border”.
Offering a pardon to disgraced British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell in exchange for information, however, would be a “travesty”, Mr Boies said.
After the convicted Epstein associate remained silent when questioned by the House Oversight Committee last week, her lawyer wrote on X that she would be willing to answer questions “if granted clemency by President Trump”.
In response, Mr Boies said: “There is no basis, none, for clemency. To give clemency or pardon to a person who played the role that she did in the victimisation of dozens, hundreds of young girls and young women would be a travesty.
“I think that the chances that President Trump’s going to do that are small, but I think if that were to happen, it would be an outrage.”
Andrew has previously strongly denied any wrongdoing.
Meanwhile police are assessing information about private flights to and from Stansted Airport after former prime minister Gordon Brown claimed the newly published files showed in “graphic detail” how Epstein was able to use the Essex-based hub to “fly in girls from Latvia, Lithuania and Russia”.
In an article for the New Statesman, Mr Brown wrote that files showed Epstein’s jet - the so-called Lolita Express - making 90 flights to or from UK airports, including 15 after his 2008 conviction for soliciting prostitution from a child.
The politician said Epstein “boasted” about how cheap the airport charges were in Stansted compared to Paris.
Mr Brown said that Stansted Airport was where “women were transferred from one Epstein plane to another”, adding that “women arriving on private planes into Britain would not need British visas”.
He said it seemed as though authorities “never knew what was happening”, referring to evidence uncovered by the BBC which showed “incomplete flight logs, with unnamed passengers simply labelled as ‘female”’.
He wrote: “In short, British authorities had little or no idea who was being trafficked through our country, and for whom other than Epstein.”
On Tuesday, an Essex Police spokesperson said: “We are assessing the information that has emerged in relation to private flights into and out of Stansted Airport following the publication of the US DoJ (Department of Justice) Epstein files.”
