Minister says Peter Mandelson’s £75,000 payout was ‘worth for cash’ | Politics | News | EUROtoday

A Minister has claimed that Peter Mandelson’s £75,000 taxpayer-funded payout for being sacked as US ambassador was “value for money”. Nick Thomas-Symonds expressed “moral outrage” over the fee to the disgraced Labour grandee, who was awarded the sum when he was dismissed over his ties to paedophile Jeffrey Epstein. But he additionally tried to defend the quantity given to the previous diplomat, by stating that Lord Mandelson requested for his contract to be paid out in full, totalling greater than £500,000.

The settlement was revealed within the first tranche of Government paperwork printed on Wednesday. Mr Thomas-Symonds, the Cabinet Office Minister within the Labour authorities, mentioned: “You can look at the documents, you can see on a value for money basis why that decision was made. There was an original request for £547,000 that was negotiated down to £75,000.”

There was a threat of an employment tribunal, he mentioned, though Lord Mandelson has reportedly denied meaning to go down that route after his September 2025 sacking.

Mr Thomas-Symonds continued: “But from a moral point of view, it is incredibly difficult to even think that that money is still being retained.

“So what I would say is, do the decent thing, do the honourable thing, donate that money to charity. And I would suggest perhaps a charity supporting victims might be appropriate.”

Tory chief Kemi Badenoch, in the meantime, argued the peer mustn’t have been awarded a payout in any respect as a result of he lied, as she accused Downing Street of leaving key particulars out of the papers.

Mrs Badenoch informed broadcasters throughout a go to to Wembley: “The Prime Minister told the country that Peter Mandelson had lied to him.

“If someone has been dishonest and lied, you don’t give them a severance payment. So something very dodgy has happened.”