Speeches by Brandreth.

“Absolutely; my hon. Friend makes an important point. Supporting pubs is vital, because they really are at the heart of many of our high streets. Since last year’s Budget, tens of thousands of jobs have disappeared across hospitality and retail. That is Labour’s record, and it shows exactly why we need a Government who …”

“I just want to go back to the question that Sir John asked about the Chinese embassy. A spokesman for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs seemed to threaten the UK last month, if their super-embassy planning application were not approved. They said, “We once again call on the UK to fulfil its obligation and honour …”

“We have discussed the fact that he was the person who made the decision to appoint Lord Mandelson.”

“But presumably he was also the Prime Minister’s employee.”

“Is that the same as your understanding, Sir Chris?”

“Perhaps you can say if you shared that information with anybody beyond yourself and the people that it was sent to.”

“But did somebody from the FCDO?”

“May I clarify? Did you share that information that you had received as an email with No. 10 in its entirety? Not in a conversation and not just, “There’s an issue”; did you forward or share that email?”

“I want to clarify exactly what information had been shared with No. 10. You have expressed that it was shared that there was an issue. As I understand it, a letter or email communication was received from Bloomberg that included excerpts of the emails between Mandelson and Epstein. Was that letter or email shared in it…”

“Did the FCDO have a different view about who should be recommended for the posting?”

“I just want to try to understand this a bit more, because to many people it feels like common sense was perhaps thrown out the window. Publicly available information about vetting says that the vetting interviewer will ask about friends and associations, so one might assume that, as part of that process—I appreciate yo…”

“So I think the answer is yes, really, then.”

“I have quite a lot of paperwork in front of me, so would you mind reading out bullet 2?”

“So all the information that I read out was shared with the Prime Minister prior to his appointment and was considered not sufficient to cause concern about the appointment.”

“I just want to touch on the due diligence and add a couple of quick questions regarding the earlier conversation. Since we are talking about what came up during the due diligence, publicly available information at the time was that Mandelson and Epstein had kept a notoriously close relationship and that in June 2009 Ma…”

“Those are not things you would usually put on your CV, I would imagine.”

“During the conversation that you had with him, were you aware that he had been sacked as Trade and Industry Secretary in 1998 for failing to declare an interest-free loan that he had received from someone whose businesses were being investigated by the Department at the time; that he had been sacked in 2001 after attem…”

“In the two recent examples that you gave, was the vetting clearance process completed before or after the appointments were announced?”

“The huge potential of both the north-west of England and north Wales is being held back by poor rail infra-structure. The last Conservative Government committed themselves to spending at least £1 billion to upgrade and electrify the railway lines from Crewe and Warrington through Chester and into north Wales, but this …”

“When would you need to have an agreement on this by?”