THE MADELSON SAGA CONTINUES – The Metropolitan Police has apologised to the Lord Speaker for a blunder
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean was wrongly accused of tipping off police about the former ambassador’s alleged plan to flee the country after the claim was made on a podcast.
The Lord Speaker held a meeting with the Met on Thursday morning after the claims were aired in public, at which he is thought to have demanded an apology.
It later transpired that it was actually Sir Lindsay Hoyle, the Commons Speaker, who had passed on the information to detectives in “good faith”. He also received an apology from the Met after officers told Lord Mandelson’s lawyers that Sir Lindsay had tipped them off.
Lord Mandelson was arrested on Monday on suspicion of misconduct in public office. Emails in the Epstein files appeared to show that the peer leaked No 10 documents to Jeffrey Epstein while he was business secretary in Gordon Brown’s administration.
Lord Mandelson was heckled as he was seen leaving his house on Thursday afternoon. It was the first time the peer, who had been released on bail until May, had been seen publicly since returning home after his arrest.
