Second Batch Of Mandelson Files Won’t Be Published Until June 2026.

London; May 2026: The second batch of documents relating to the appointment, vetting and firing of Peter Mandelson as the UK’s ambassador to the US won’t be made public until June 2026 at the earliest, a Cabinet Office minister has confirmed. Speaking in the Commons in the past few moments, the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister – Darren Jones said the government considered releasing them this week, but as MPs go on recess, this would be considered ‘inappropriate’.

Darren Jones explained: “Given the House is due to rise on Thursday, and given the length of the publication, the second tranche will now be published after the Whitsun recess to give the House sufficient time to review the material and to be able to ask me and the government questions. It could have been published this Thursday (21st May), but I felt that the House would deem that to be inappropriate, given it will be such a significant publication”.

He added that there will be more documents released in this second drop than the ones published earlier in March 2026. “This will be the largest publication, other than the Chilcot Inquiry report, ever published to the House”, Jones added.

It is mention worthy that the Chilcot Inquiry was the official inquiry into the UK’s involvement in the Iraq war, and have spanned almost a decade of decision-making by the government of the time.

The government is publishing documents relating to Mandelson’s deployment as the US ambassador in 2025, after being forced to by the Conservatives, who used an arcane parliamentary procedure to do so, called a Humble Address.

Meanwhile, Darren Jones is currently answering questions on how the government is responding to this as part of an ‘urgent question’, a debate, called in the Commons by members of Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee. They have suggested ministers are unduly redacting documents, and are not complying fully with the Humble Address, which the government denies.

The parliamentary body responsible for checking the documents, those which encompasses the to be published Mandelson files has accused the government of undue redactions. The Intelligence and Security Committee has been considering which documents relating to Peter Mandelson’s appointment should be withheld, and which the government wants to redact details on. The government is being forced to publish these due to the Tories, who used an arcane parliamentary procedure, called a Humble Address, to do this.

Speaking about this process in the Commons, the committee deputy chairman Sir Jeremy Wright said it ‘has become apparent’ the government is seeking to redact documents for ‘other reasons’ not specifically mentioned in the Humble Address. This is sometimes due to documents containing civil servant’s contact details and personal data, but he added there is “no mechanism for the House to confirm that those redactions are limited to only what is necessary”.

Wright continued that the government also wants redactions on the grounds of commercial confidentiality, to protect the monarch, and to redact some documents ‘in their entirety’. He added that the committee has ‘considerably sympathy’ with a lot of these and that there are ‘valid concerns. But then he said: “We cannot accept that the government is entitled to ignore or to unilaterally alter the terms of the humble address. So does the minister accept that if the government wants to argue that the humble address is too broad as drafted and needs to be refined, it must come to this House and make that argument and get the House’s consent for any alteration”. The Senior Minister has further insisted – ‘No cover-up’.

But Cabinet Office minister Darren Jones has rejected that this is the case, although he did not answer whether he thinks the brief of the motion is too broad. The Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister replied: “I think he’s asking me specifically about personal data that was collected as part of the security vetting process. That raw data would never be published, because if we did so, people would feel unable to answer those questions honestly and frankly in any UK security vetting investigation in the future, which would undermine the very basis of our national security system”.

While counterfeiting the levelling of an accusation of a ‘cover-up by the Conservatives, Jones replied: “I will not, for one instance, countenance the idea that there is, as loud as you may want to shout it, a cover-up. If there was any suggestion of a cover-up, I would not be standing at this dispatch box to defend the process; I would resign”.                                                

Team Maverick.