00:00This is deeply concerning because it means that people at the highest levels were actually aware of these problems
00:06before they appointed Peter Mandelson and sent him to be our ambassador in Washington.
00:11And, you know, I worked in number 10.
00:13What will have happened is that the vetting services, security services, will have produced a report,
00:18often in conjunction with the person in question,
00:21and then that information has to go to the person who makes the decision on the appointment,
00:26which in this case is the Prime Minister.
00:28So it is very, very likely that the Prime Minister, his Chief of Staff, Morgan McSweeney,
00:33and the then Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, all knew that there were problems.
00:38And yet they went ahead with the appointment anyway.
00:41And then when these problems came to light, they hesitated for 24 hours before sacking him.
00:46We're calling on the government to publish all of this information.
00:49There's no problem with security now because the fact of the matter is a lot of this information is in the public domain anyway.
00:56We need to see what the Prime Minister saw when so that we can all understand just how bad his judgment was in this case.
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