National security exceptions
The ISC has specified that papers which are national security related should be sent to them unredacted, and the government should provide an explanation as to exactly why pieces of information are prejudicial.
“We believe the motion is clear that those papers which the government is required to provide to the ISC must be disclosed, unredacted, to the ISC,” the committee said in a letter to the PM and cabinet secretary. “The government may not decline to disclose any in scope material altogether”
Kevan Jones, chair of the committee, told the BBC that the panel would put “as much as possible in the public domain.”
One of Mandelson’s predecessors as ambassador, Kim Darroch, was forced to resign in 2019 over his criticism of Trump’s “dysfunctional” administration, made in confidential diplomatic cables that were made public.
But both senior officials cited above made it clear that Mandelson may not have always used cables for his musings on Trump, instead often using email and texts.
Mandelson, one of the architects of New Labour who helped bring Tony Blair to power in 1997, returned to high office last year when he was named as the British ambassador to Washington despite his known links to the pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.