Could the Mandelson scandal bring down Keir Starmer?

21:17Jon Sopel:The news that matters from the UK and around the world and why it matters to you.

21:23Emily Maitlis:Listen on our free Global Player app or the LBC app.

21:27Jon Sopel:LBC, leading Britain's conversation.

21:36Emily Maitlis:Well, we're going to talk to Sir Brian Leveson now. He's the chair of the Independent Review of the Criminal Courts. And perhaps some of our older listeners will remember the Leveson Inquiry. The Leveson Inquiry took us into press practices nearly 15 years ago.

21:54Jon Sopel:2011 to 2012.

21:56Emily Maitlis:Right. So a long time ago. but you've stepped back into what feels like a very public arena now, a very potentially controversial arena. Why? I practised as a barrister in the criminal law.

22:14Jon Sopel:I was a judge doing a lot of crime. I became the chair of the sentencing council and then the president of the Queen's Bench Division, responsible for crime and ultimately head of criminal justice. The way in which criminal justice operates in this country has always been an interest of mine and I've been involved in criminal justice management since 2001. Therefore, what has happened to criminal justice in the recent past has upset me enormously. And given that I did a review on efficiency in the criminal courts In 2015, I felt it necessary to come back when I was asked and do the thing again.

23:03Jon Sopel:In other words, to think again about how our justice system works in England and Wales.

23:10Emily Maitlis:You have brought out an 800 page list of failures in the justice system today, saying that the system stands on the brink of collapse. that's not just you being upset that sounds pretty existential I think you're absolutely right

23:27Jon Sopel:so this review is the second part of a two-stage process I was appointed in December 2024 and in July 2025 I issued the first part of the review on effectively policy which has caused a lot of controversy. And this part, part two, deals with efficiency. And why is it existential? Well, in 2019, the outstanding cases in our criminal courts, if you like, the waiting list, stood at around 40 ,000. It is rather less, actually, 36 ,000. It is now about 80 ,000. In that period of time, It has doubled. And what does that mean? Like, what does it mean for victims of crime, essentially? It means an enormous amount.

24:22Jon Sopel:What it means is that in some courts in London, they are fixing trials for 2029 and indeed in at least 30 cases for 2030. That is a denial of justice for victims, for witnesses, and indeed for some defendants who are anxious to determine how their lives are going to be led.

24:47Emily Maitlis:Yeah, there will be innocent people, presumably, in those processes who can't get on with anything until they've had a trial as well.

24:52Jon Sopel:Correct, correct.

24:53Emily Maitlis:So there are some measures that you are recommending. Fewer cases that involve juries, for example. Plans to introduce legal advice for people detained at police stations by video link. And I guess we are already seeing a certain amount of rebellion from within the Labour Party, the governing party ranks. The question, I guess, Sir Brian, is are we at a point where we are making efficiencies at the cost of rights?

25:25Jon Sopel:I don't think the premise is right. I have tried to ensure that our approach to criminal justice is proportionate, is fair and has regard to the rights of everybody. I'm not for a moment denying a single person a fair trial.

25:43Emily Maitlis:But if you get a fractious Labour Party who says we just don't like the direction this is going in, what happens?

25:49Jon Sopel:The government will have to decide what to do. But I ought to just address your question about juries head on. I am not blaming juries for the state of the criminal justice system. Juries do what juries are there to do. they take longer to do it because they are utterly unversed in the law everything has to be explained carefully, properly and evidence will always be deployed by the parties to the case at the speed of the slowest juror which they assess looking at the jury and seeing how they're taking in what's going on What I am saying is that we need to re-engage on the time that is taken in our Crown Courts.

26:39Jon Sopel:We need Crown Court trials, indictable only trials, that's murder, rape, robbery, serious drugs offences, drugs importations. All these things will always remain with a jury. But if we are to try to reduce the time taken in a Crown Court, we've got to decide how we're going to do it. It's trying to get the balance right to ensure that everybody can be tried within a reasonable time. The fact is that 60 % of people who come to the Crown Court ultimately plead guilty. Ten years ago, they would have pleaded guilty on the first or second occasion that they appeared in court. Now it's the fifth or sixth occasion.

27:26Jon Sopel:And each time they appear, it takes more time. If they're told, well, there's a judge alone ready to try this case, or a judge and magistrate ready to try this case, and we'll do it in 10 days' time, actually, they've then got to make a decision. When I was a young barrister, in November you'd advise a client, well, I've seen this evidence, it's very strong to me, and I don't think your explanation will convince the jury. and if you did it, not if you didn't do it, if you did it, you're much better admitting it now. You can mitigate it by explaining, you can express remorse, apologise and you get a pragmatic deduction for having saved the state the cost of the trial, the discount for pleading guilty.

28:08And more than once a defendant said to me, Mr Leveson I am guilty but I want to spend Christmas

28:16Jon Sopel:with my kids, I'll plead guilty in January. Now they can say, actually, I want to spend Christmas 2028 with my kids. In other words, I put it off for such a long time that the victim might withdraw, the witnesses might go away, the case may just get lost. And what's not to like?

28:38Emily Maitlis:We just make it easier for criminals.

28:40Jon Sopel:After a debate 10 days ago on this subject, A criminal defense lawyer came up to me and said, I am having that conversation every day of the week. Now, of course, there are some defendants anxious to know what the score is anyway, who will want their trials heard and will do nothing to stand in the way of getting it heard. But to say that there won't be a cultural change if some of the less serious offences are taken away from a jury, I think, is simply a failure to appreciate what happens in criminal trials. I don't agree with the objections. I think they are, to some extent, traditional. I understand that.

29:27Jon Sopel:I've talked to juries for 50 years, but it's changed many times. But please don't go back to 1215, which some people have. Until 1898, defendants couldn't even give evidence in their own defence. They simply couldn't give evidence at all. There are three components to the reason for the position we're in. The first is funding. And the Ministry of Justice was never a protected department. And funding for the Ministry of Justice has effectively gone down. Funding for the court service is now still less than it was in 2011. So we've under-invested for 15 years, essentially. Correct. Secondly, complexity.

30:16Jon Sopel:Complexity has its good bits. We've introduced sensible, protective measures for defendants. The Police and Criminal Evidence Act, disclosure of unused material, protections for victims, admissibility of evidence, hearsay and bad character, intermediaries for defendants, interpreters for those whose English is not their first language, All these protective measures have cost time, quite apart from money. The third element of that complexity is our evidence is very different. Mobile phones 20 years ago were a novel invention. Now everybody has a smartphone. And that makes life harder, you're saying?

31:04Jon Sopel:Oh, much, much more complex. I have listened to a police officer say that police investigations start and may not go further without CD, communications data. That's the metadata of your calls. Who called what, when and where through which cell site? That identifies where people have moved from. I'm not talking about content at all. I'm talking about connecting people. Correct. data has exploded so researching your mobile phone would produce paper that's stacked up to

31:41Emily Maitlis:the top of mont blanc except it doesn't need to be paper that stacks up now i mean the responses

31:47Jon Sopel:can be digital as well of course which requires a digital investigation which itself is complex other evidence has also been much more complex to obtain dna has changed the landscape but isn't available for other than the most serious cases. So all these have added to the complexity of trials so that the average trial now takes twice as long as it did in 2011. And then finally, efficiency. We are much less efficient. We're sitting fewer hours, not because the judges are idle, but for all sorts of complex reasons, including the Prisoner Escort Contract Service, not necessarily failing to do their job, but because the prisons are running so hot, remand prisoners are not in custodial establishments close to court.

32:40Jon Sopel:Therefore, to get them to court takes that much longer. So all these things have caused complexity and time waste. So that's led to the backlog. Finally, I ought to mention, COVID added to the backlog dramatically. That's slowed everything down.

32:57Emily Maitlis:OK, so let me ask you whether a pricey that you won't like, but I'm going to put it to you anyway, are we in a place that is desperate times calls for desperate measures, that we would be taking steps now that we wouldn't have preferred to do?

33:14Jon Sopel:So I'm perfectly happy with the question. We are in desperate times, but I have been very careful to be focused on what is proportionate and fair. I've not allowed money to be the driver I've not sought to save money by this review I've sought to try to rebalance how we approach criminal justice and we've done it many times in the future when it was first introduced somebody caught drink driving was able to elect trial by jury what's the point? that stopped so now it's summary only equally taking a vehicle without consent summary only Now, in relation, for example, to drunk driving, that might lead to a driver losing his livelihood because he's been convicted, but he's not entitled to a jury trial.

34:05Jon Sopel:So all these decisions about where to balance what should be a jury trial, what need not be a jury trial, is a question of threshold. What I have sought to do is to move the threshold without removing inalienable rights and ensuring that fairness remains absolutely key. but it has to be proportionate and one also has to have regard to the legitimate interests of victims and society because at the moment some victims, particularly of rape and other serious sexual offences, are simply withdrawing from the process. They need to be able to move on with their lives and they're not prepared to wait three years for a trial to take place.

34:54Jon Sopel:That's what I've tried to do.

34:56Emily Maitlis:You have been victim-focused in a lot of the work that you're doing. And I want to explore with you the scandal that we're right in the middle of at the moment. You are one of the most senior criminal judges and we are looking now at the scale of the Peter Mandelson scandal. Has that surprised you?

35:18Jon Sopel:Forgive me if I'm not commenting on his case, not least because I understand there's a police investigation. I've not seen the emails, so I'll retreat into saying I'm not going to comment on Peter Mandelson. What I will comment upon is that it's not just victims. Everybody and society as a whole is dramatically affected adversely by a failure properly to deal with criminal justice. We rely on criminal justice to ensure that our society is safe and is protected. So we need the police to investigate whether it's a burglary or a mugging or a shop theft. We need the police to be there and we need there to be a reaction.

36:09Jon Sopel:Because if there isn't, then crime will explode, as indeed in relation to shop theft, it has.

36:17Emily Maitlis:It feels like we've spent quite a long time waiting for police investigations on this. I mean, I'm looking at, you know, the Prince Andrew case where the police in the last 24 hours have been sort of asked to investigate. I mean, a lot of these cases, we don't see the police come along more quickly.

36:34Jon Sopel:One of the problems the police have is that they have their own financial problems and their own priorities. And they've got to decide how best to use their resources to protect the public. So I'm not going to be critical of the police preferring one set of charges or investigations to another. They've got to make difficult choices. but that's wrapped up in a whole series of other issues which we may come on to. Let me give you one example. The police spend a great deal of time dealing with the mentally unwell and the commissioner has recently said in the last few months or a year or so that actually unless there's a risk to life it's not appropriate for police officers to be called out.

37:25Jon Sopel:There ought to be mental health services available. But that's what they've been doing. And one of the issues that I've addressed in this part is to try to engage the Secretary of State for Health in the National Criminal Justice Board so that health is seen as a distinct and separate problem. Half the people in prison have diagnosable mental health illnesses. It's just an example.

37:50Emily Maitlis:Yeah, you've said you haven't seen the mandelson emails none of us have seen the documents but the prime minister this lunchtime said he'd betrayed the country there are open questions now about the official secrets act being broken so i'm just trying to ask you as one of the most senior criminal judges and we have no charges here of course but does it sound to you like the official secrets act could have been broken if highly confidential government information was being passed to convicted paedophile?

38:24Jon Sopel:I'm not at all surprised that a substantial police investigation has been opened. One of the offences talked about is misconduct in public office and that's what will have to take its place.

38:39Emily Maitlis:I mean misconduct sounds very subtle when we're actually talking about...

38:44Jon Sopel:There's nothing subtle about this offence I promise you. It is a common law offence which could actually result in a term of imprisonment, up to life imprisonment. There is nothing trivial about misconduct in public office.

38:59Emily Maitlis:Do you think there should be a public inquiry? I mean, you're a man who has chaired a public inquiry. Does this feel grave enough or big enough to you?

39:08Jon Sopel:We've got too many public inquiries. We're spending far too much time, money and resource on public inquiries. That's my view. on the basis that they go on for a very, very long time. They're very expensive. They're very time-consuming for everybody concerned.

39:29Emily Maitlis:And are you saying that, Sir Brian, as somebody who's been at the centre of one, authored one, and found it wanting? It didn't resolve anything. I mean, yours was about the relationship of the press, the behaviour of the press. Do you think nothing's changed? Do you think it didn't take us anywhere?

39:49Jon Sopel:Not enough has changed, my view. I was very disappointed that the government of the day rejected, within an hour of my publishing the report, one of the central theses suggesting that I'd crossed a Rubicon, which I simply reject. I simply do not accept that as a proposition.

40:10Emily Maitlis:Sorry, remind us, this was David Cameron.

40:12Jon Sopel:This was David Cameron.

40:13Emily Maitlis:And what did he reject?

40:14Jon Sopel:He was suggesting that I was encouraging state regulation of the press, and I never was. I was encouraging self-regulation, but I wanted the regulator themselves to comply with minimum criteria standards, to be judged by an entirely independent body. And they set up the Press Recognition Council, which is independent, set up by Royal Charter. And it's not run by the state at all. It's run independently. And I encouraged the press to join up with benefits, but also with the stick that they had to provide appropriate remedies and arbitration mechanisms for those whose privacy had been wrongly intruded.

41:03Emily Maitlis:But you feel that not enough has changed. And when the Labour government came to power and they'd promised Leveson 2, which would look at the relationship between the press and police contacts particularly, they just cancelled Leveson 2.

41:18Jon Sopel:That's true. And what have we missed? Do I believe that the second part of the inquiry should have been undertaken? Yes, I do. Do I still believe the second part of the inquiry should have been undertaken? Yes, I do. not least because I was much criticised for not dealing with social media in Part 1. Much criticised. Actually, if you read the terms of reference, Part 1 only concerned the press. It didn't concern social media. Part 2 could have concerned social media, and that's what I said to the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sports at the time, Matt Hancock. And I said, this needs to be done, because although this may not have been a problem in the period I was looking at up to 2010, by 2017, when I was discussing this with him, it really was a problem.

42:12Jon Sopel:And it continues to be a problem. That's why I believe the second part of the inquiry. So what did we lose?

42:18Emily Maitlis:What did we miss by not getting to the end of that?

42:21Jon Sopel:We missed an analysis of what could be done to deal with the challenges of social media. And I think we're still not addressing that.

42:33Emily Maitlis:I was just remembering that we heard from James Murdoch at the time. He used this phrase over and over again. I do not recall. I do not recall. I cannot recall. I do not recall. We're now hearing it from Peter Mandelson, who says it's I don't recall. Just explain to our listeners, if you will, why you would have these presumably super smart, politically minded, powerful men saying, I do not recall. What does that do in legal terms that presumably, what, saves their skin?

43:09Jon Sopel:It doesn't necessarily save their skin at all. I do not recall means I am not able to contribute to your decision making on this topic. so I do not recall leaves the evidence as it stood before the witness said anything in other words they're not agreeing that's true, they're not refuting either the fact finder whether it be a jury or the chair of an inquiry will make their own mind up as to the memorability

43:44Emily Maitlis:of that which they don't recall What I'm really trying to say is, for Peter Mandelson in this case, is that a get-out-of-jail-free card? I mean, maybe literally, if he can't recall stuff.

43:54Jon Sopel:No. If the paper evidence is there, and I don't know, and I'm not making any judgment at all, but if email traffic is available, the fact that he does not now recall it will not necessarily protect him in a criminal investigation. Indeed, if he says he doesn't recall, he can't explain. He's simply, the evidence lies where it is, and the fact finder will have to make their mind up about what impact it has on whatever allegation is being made.

44:34Emily Maitlis:Sir Brian Leveson, thank you very much. Thank you.

44:46Sir Brian Leveson:The News Agents. So before we go, we talked on the show yesterday about Trump's unusual position in the Epstein story and why he perhaps wasn't getting more attention. Obviously, he's in the Epstein files a lot, as we said, although there isn't for all the reasons we were discussing yesterday. There's no evidence within it necessarily that he has done, of course, anything wrong. But nonetheless, he is in it a lot. I think it is telling. If you want to look at the different standards in American and UK public life right now to compare and contrast the questions that Keir Starmer was put under and put to in the House of Commons today and how he responded to it, to a question from CNN's Caitlin Collins that she put to Donald Trump in the Oval Office yesterday about what he might have to say, if anything, to Jeffrey Epstein's victims.

45:39Sir Brian Leveson:Listen to this.

45:39Emily Maitlis:Something that people care about. Yeah. What did you say? What would you say to the survivors?

45:45Jon Sopel:You are the worst reporter. No wonder CNN has no ratings because of people like you. You know, she's a young woman. I don't think I've ever seen you smile. I've known you for 10 years. I don't think I've ever seen a smile on your face. You know why you're not smiling? Because you know you're not telling the truth.

46:02Sir Brian Leveson:And you're a very dishonest organization. And they should be ashamed of you.

46:08Emily Maitlis:These are survivors of a sexual adventure. Well, that does seem like a calm, rational response to CNN's Caitlin Collins, who was asking what he would say to the survivors of Epstein's victims. Now the files have been released for anyone wondering if Trump was thin skinned about this question, if he was slightly prickly or touchy about being asked about Epstein. I mean, fascinating that he wasn't even being asked the direct question that any of the UK media would ask, which is, have you seen your own name in the Epstein files? And what do you make of the allegations that you are seeing there? He wasn't even being asked something direct as that.

46:51Emily Maitlis:He was being asked about the victims. any politician would welcome that chance to praise the victims to focus on the victims to you know as i said earlier to use the mantra of putting the victims first he doesn't he's so thin-skinned he can't even bring himself to do anything other than insult a female journalist

47:11Sir Brian Leveson:again although he's undoubtedly thin-skinned emily you're right i think it's more than that as well which is i think it just also shows the extent to which you know standards in american public life and particularly with regards to Trump are so utterly lost. I mean, it is absolutely true. We've basically been talking about the hypocrisy in British politics this morning, and that is obviously profound. But at least it is true that when these facts become indisputable and become impossible to deny, it is the case that the prime minister who made the decision around Mandelstine is being put under that intense scrutiny.

47:42Sir Brian Leveson:And, you know, just imagine for a moment if Keir Starmer responded in that way. If an MP had got up and asked him what he had to say to Jeffrey Epstein's victims and Keir Starmer had then launched into a personal tirade against that MP or a journalist started talking about their ratings. How dare you. How embarrassed your organisation must be of you. And then making personal comments about them as a woman or whatever it happens to be. He'd be gone. I mean, he would be finished.

48:06Emily Maitlis:Doesn't it make you feel great to be alive in Britain, actually? I mean, don't get me wrong.

48:10Sir Brian Leveson:It's a low bar. It's a low bar and it's not something we should be celebrating. I'm not giving ourselves a pat on the back here. I'm just saying that it just shows how just, frankly, morally disgusting Trump has become. And also in terms of the standards, as I say, in American public life, how low they have sunk. Because let's be honest, he'll do that and there will be no political ramification for him whatsoever.

48:31Emily Maitlis:I mean, that's the interesting thing. Look, we have focused in this episode on how precarious Keir Starmer's position might be. Not because he personally has done anything wrong in any way connected to Epstein or the files. Trump has been friends with Epstein. He is in those files. He is mentioned many, many times. This does not indicate, as we always say, wrongdoing or criminality. But how ironic, you know, how ironic if Britain ends up losing a prince and a peer of the realm and a prime minister and America doesn't even touch those powerful men that surrounded Epstein for decades of his life.

49:15Sir Brian Leveson:we'll be back tomorrow we'll see you then bye bye

49:18Emily Maitlis:bye for now

49:19Sir Brian Leveson:this has been a Global Player

49:21Emily Maitlis:original production