Lord John Cryer, a former chair of the Parliamentary Labour Party, has said that it appears that someone in Number 10 may have known that Peter Mandelson had failed to pass security vetting.
He told GB News: “I’m not underestimating the seriousness of this. This is really serious…I don’t see him going out and misleading Parliament. If he knew about the vetting, I don’t think he would have said what he said in front of the House of Commons.
“I don’t know if there’s going to be some sort of inquiry. I suppose it’s a bit too recent for us to know that, but an inquiry has got to look at who did know what and when.
“Clearly, the FCO knew about it. They seem to have overruled it. Can I believe that they did that? Yeah, I can, and I can talk more about the way the Foreign Office operates, in my experience.
“There’s also the question of, did somebody Number 10 know what was going on, they knew about the vetting?
“Well, it looks like possibly somebody did, because if you go back to, as Chris said, the statement that came on the 10th of September, he gave Mandelson his full backing, as well as saying that full due process was being followed.
“We found out afterwards that morning, if you remember, the cache of emails that came from Bloomberg had landed in Number 10.
“That morning, somebody in Number 10, in my view, sent the Prime Minister out into the House of Commons, said what he said, gave Mandelson his full backing because they hadn’t told him. In my view, I don’t think they told him.”
He added: “This is a very, very serious crisis. You said possibly the most serious crisis since Profumo, and it could be.
“All I can go on is what I know of Keir, and what I know of Keir – I just cannot see him going in front of Parliament saying what he said if he knew what had happened before.
“What’s going to happen on Monday is the Prime Minister goes to the House of Commons. You’ve got to make a statement, and he’s got some serious questions to answer.
“I mean, I’m not exactly sure what’s going to happen when the next tranche of emails is going to come out next week. All these emails are being trawled by the parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee. They’re going through all the emails, whether they’re in a position to conduct a proper inquiry into this latest story, I’m not sure.
“I’m wondering if that’s going to have to be done by a separate body, perhaps somebody from outside Parliament, some sort of inquiry into this.”
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