The Metropolitan police has apologised to the Commons speaker, Lindsay Hoyle, for accidentally revealing he was the source of a tipoff that Peter Mandelson supposedly planned to flee the UK, prompting officers to arrest the former ambassador.
In yet another twist to the saga of Mandelson’s departure from his post and the Met’s investigation into allegations he fed secret government information to Jeffrey Epstein, Hoyle told MPs on Wednesday that he passed the information to police.
Senior Scotland Yard officers were meeting Hoyle in person on Wednesday afternoon to explain their error, which is regarded internally as a serious breach of protocol.
Mandelson, who is being investigated for alleged misconduct in public office, was arrested and questioned on Monday. He denies any wrongdoing.
The former business secretary was furious at the move, saying detectives had agreed to interview him under caution next month but that someone had falsely said he was preparing to flee to the British Virgin Islands.
An official custody document shared with Mandelson’s lawyers is understood to have referred to the Lords speaker as the source of the information – a mistaken reference to Hoyle, the Commons speaker.
After the Lords speaker, Michael Forsyth, said it was “entirely false and without foundation” to say he had tipped off police, Hoyle went public with the fact it was him.
In a brief statement to the Commons on Wednesday morning, Hoyle said: “To prevent any inaccurate speculation, I’d like to confirm that upon receipt of information, I felt it was relevant I pass this on to the Metropolitan police in good faith, as is my duty and responsibility.”
The information that Mandelson was supposedly planning to travel to the British Virgin Islands was passed to Hoyle from an individual in a position of authority in the overseas territory, the Guardian understands.
Hoyle visited the the Caribbean territory last week on a three-day trip after being invited to mark the 75th anniversary of its assembly. He met the governor and premier and addressed its parliament.
After Hoyle provided the information, Scotland Yard is understood to have conducted its own assessment before deciding to arrest Mandelson.
Mandelson’s lawyers, Mishcon de Reya, have written to the Met asking upon what evidence they based the arrest. Mandelson was released on bail in the early hours of Tuesday morning and is understood to have surrendered his passport under his bail conditions.
Mandelson is understood to have told friends at about 4am on Tuesday, hours after his release, that the claims he was preparing to flee the UK were completely false. His lawyers said his “overriding priority” was cooperating with the police.
His message said: “Despite previous agreement between police and legal team over voluntary interview in early March, police arrested me because they claimed … that I was about to flee to the British Virgin Islands and take up permanent residence abroad, leaving Reinaldo [Avila da Silva, his husband], my family, home and Jock [his dog] behind me,” he wrote.
“I need hardly say complete fiction. The police were told only today that they had to improvise an arrest. The question is, who or what is behind this?”
Keir Starmer has faced significant political pressure over his decision to appoint Mandelson as the ambassador to Washington in late 2024. By this point newspapers had reported how Mandelson, a friend of Epstein, had stayed in touch with the disgraced financier even after his jail term for sexually procuring a minor.
Mandelson was sacked in September last year after details emerged about the extent and duration of his links to Epstein in files released by US authorities.
At prime minister’s questions in the Commons on Wednesday, Kemi Badenoch did not ask Starmer about Mandelson, beyond saying that Labour was being called a “paedo defenders party”.
The term prompted condemnation from some Labour MPs, who said it could put party activists at risk. A spokesperson for the Conservative leader said she was quoting something said by a Labour MP.
Starmer also faces the headache of a promise to release a mass of documents connected to Mandelson’s appointment after a Conservative-led Commons motion this month calling for them to be released.
A first batch is being prioritised and prepared for imminent release. They have no relevance to the police inquiry and do not have any potential consequences for national security or international relations, so they do not need to be checked by parliament’s intelligence and security committee.
The timeline for other documents, however, was described by officials as requiring “a number of weeks”, even with the Cabinet Office recruiting internal volunteers to help with the process.
Separately, a Commons motion this week committed ministers to also releasing documents about the decision to appoint Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor as a trade envoy, a role he held – as Prince Andrew – from 2001 to 2011.
This process, led by the Department for Business and Trade, is complicated by a separate police investigation into allegations of misconduct in public office by Andrew.
A Metropolitan police spokesperson said: “The Met has apologised to the speaker of the House of Commons this afternoon for inadvertently revealing information during an investigation into allegations of misconduct in public office.”
