Scottish Secretary Douglas Alexander met with Peter Mandelson's lobbying firm Global Counsel to discuss trade policy within weeks of becoming a minister, but apparently forgot to mention it to the public for a year and a half. The government, in a move that screams 'transparency,' published over 1,000 pages of documents on Monday regarding Lord Mandelson's appointment as UK ambassador to the US, inadvertently revealing this little oversight.
The papers include messages between Mandelson and ministers exchanging advice, news, and criticism of Labour MPs, the Prime Minister, and the operation of 10 Downing Street. Among them are files confirming Alexander's summer 2024 meeting with Global Counsel was only added to transparency logs earlier this year. UK law requires ministers to report meetings with lobbyists every three months, but apparently the rules are more of a suggestion.
Records show that within weeks of Alexander's appointment as trade minister on 6 July 2024, Mandelson was arranging an introduction to one of his colleagues. On 22 July, Alexander wrote to Mandelson: 'Thanks for the time yesterday. Send me [redacted] contact details when you can and I'll reach out to him.' That same day, Mandelson emailed an introduction. A week later, on 31 July, Alexander told Mandelson he had a meeting with the unnamed person 'for a proper teach-in session.' Mandelson followed up on 2 August, and Alexander gushed: 'It was the single most enlightening conversation I've had in the last month on trade so I see why you hold him in such high regard.'
The meeting, an online call, was Alexander's first on record with any external organisation as trade minister. Global Counsel, co-founded by Mandelson in 2010, collapsed earlier this year after losing contracts following revelations about Mandelson's friendship with the paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein, owing millions to employees and in tax. Its former clients included GSK, Shell, JPMorgan, OpenAI, and the English Premier League - quite the portfolio before it all went pear-shaped.
The anti-corruption campaign group Transparency International UK has evidence suggesting the public record was only updated on 25 March this year, after MPs ordered the publication of Mandelson's contacts with ministers on 4 February. A note on the UK government website states the log 'has been updated to reflect a meeting which was previously omitted in error.' The meeting was attended by civil servants and formally minuted, so it's not like it was a secret - just an inconvenient one.
Juliet Swann of Transparency International UK noted: 'Declarations of government meetings are the only light shone on the lobbying of ministers at Westminster so to fail to record meetings with influential lobbyists undermines the principle of transparency. The lesson from this saga should be that open government in the first place serves the public better than belated dumps of data long after the event.' Alexander and the Department for Business and Trade have been approached for comment, presumably to explain how a meeting with a former colleague's firm slipped their mind for 18 months.