An ex-Cabinet Office economist has hit out at Peter Mandelson’s “disgraceful” breach of “code and ethics”, as the controversy surrounding the ex-Lord grows.

Speaking to GB News, Jonathan Portes, who worked closely with Mr Mandelson, argued his actions would have been “completely wrong” even if Jeffrey Epstein was an “innocent man”.

Following Mr Mandelson’s departure from the Upper Chamber, Sir Keir Starmer admitted the vetting process before he was appointed as the UK’s Ambassador to the US “dealt with” the ex-Cabinet Minister’s stay at the late convicted paedophile’s house.

The Prime Minister said: “As the House would expect, we went through a process. There was a due diligence exercise and then there was security vetting by the security services. What was not known was the depth, the sheer depth and extent of the relationship. He lied about that to everyone for years.

“New information was published in September, showing the relationship was materially different to what we’d been led to believe. When the new evidence came to light, I sacked him, but we did go through a due diligence exercise. The points that are being put to me were dealt with within that exercise.”

However, the PM also confirmed No10 will release documents relating to Mr Mandelson’s appointment.

Asked whether the Labour leader will be “ruing the day” he decided to send Mandelson to Washington, Mr Portes agreed: “Well, I think that’s probably the easiest question you’ve ever asked me or anyone else.

“Obviously, yes, in hindsight, it was clearly an absolutely dreadful error.”

Questioning whether the Government at the time should have “anticipated” Mandelson’s behaviour, he added: “I think the question now is the extent in which the Government should reasonably have anticipated not exactly this, but at least that it was very likely.

“And these sorts of revelations, just how shocking it is, clearly, for Gordon Brown and for those of us who were also in Government at the time, the idea that a cabinet minister would have been passing what was clearly, in some cases, what was confidential information and in some cases quite market sensitive information to somebody who clearly had a very strong connections with senior bankers and other financial market participants, who obviously value that information very highly.”

Arguing that Mandelson’s actions would have been “completely wrong” whether the alleged leaks were to Epstein or not, Mr Portes said: “Even if Epstein had been an entirely innocent person, it would still have been completely wrong and very utterly against any possible ministerial or civil service code.

“To pass this sort of information to somebody outside Government, particularly somebody who was involved in financial markets.”

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Having worked closely with Mandelson, the ex-Cabinet Office economist admitted he was a “very effective minister” in his role.

Mr Portes told GB News: “Peter Mandelson was a very effective minister in many ways, and certainly what I and others saw of him suggested that, slightly independent of his political views or the policies, he was very good at getting stuff done.

“But that clearly does not even come close to excusing this sort of disgraceful breach of any possible ministerial code of conduct or ethics, and I’m not a lawyer, but quite possibly legal prohibitions on passing confidential and market sensitive information from within Government to people who could clearly wanted that information because they wanted to take advantage of it.”

Asked by host Andrew Pierce on whether the scandal will “change the way people approach cabinet and Government”, Mr Portes said: “I hope not, because ministers and senior civil servants should be able to have confidential discussions. They have to have confidential discussions, and obviously, those discussions sometimes include market-sensitive information.

“And to be fair, obviously there was huge amounts of market sensitive material flying around within the Treasury, in between the Treasury and the Bank of England at this time. And there’s no evidence, as far as I know, that any of that was leaked.”

He concluded: “But the vast majority of ministers and indeed all civil servants that I know, know perfectly well that you cannot and should not send this stuff outside.

“I think it does, unfortunately, of course, the sort of proliferation of personal emails of WhatsApp and other messaging systems that are not part of the sort of formal internal Government email system, does, of course, make it much easier to do this and perhaps much more tempting to do this.

“You don’t have to take something to the photocopier and hand it to your source. You can just WhatsApp it to them, and so Government clearly hasn’t caught up with that, and it’s very difficult to to keep up with that. But I would hope that it will lead to, to greater controls on that sort of thing.”

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