Scottish Secretary Douglas Alexander met with Peter Mandelson’s lobbying firm Global Counsel within weeks of being appointed trade minister on July 6, 2024 — a meeting he did not publicly declare for roughly 20 months, according to documents the UK government released on Monday. The government published more than 1,000 pages of correspondence related to Mandelson’s appointment as the UK’s ambassador to the United States, revealing a pattern of regular contact between Mandelson and senior Labour ministers. Alexander’s meeting with Global Counsel, which took the form of an online call, was his first on record with any external organisation in his capacity as trade minister.
UK law requires ministers to report meetings with lobbyists every three months. The government’s transparency log for Alexander was only updated to include the meeting on March 25 of this year, according to evidence shared with the BBC by the anti-corruption campaign group Transparency International UK. That update came after MPs on the Foreign Affairs Committee ordered the publication of Mandelson’s contacts with ministers on February 4. A note on the government website states the log “has been updated to reflect a meeting which was previously omitted in error.” It is understood the meeting was attended by civil servants and formally minuted.
The email exchange between Alexander and Mandelson began on July 22, 2024, when Alexander wrote to Mandelson: “Thanks for the time yesterday. Send me [redacted] contact details when you can and I’ll reach out to him.” That same day, Mandelson sent an email introduction putting Alexander in touch with an unnamed person at Global Counsel. A week later, on July 31, Alexander contacted Mandelson to say he had a meeting that afternoon with the contact “for a proper teach-in session.” Mandelson followed up on August 2 to ask how it went. Alexander replied: “It was the single most enlightening conversation I’ve had in the last month on trade so I see why you hold him in such high regard.”
Global Counsel was co-founded by Mandelson in 2010. He resigned from its board in 2024 but continued to own shares. The company collapsed earlier this year after losing contracts following revelations about Mandelson’s friendship with the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, owing millions of pounds to employees and in tax. Its clients previously included GSK, Shell, JPMorgan, OpenAI and the English Premier League.
Juliet Swann, nations and regions programme manager at Transparency International UK, said the delayed disclosure was part of a broader transparency failure. “Declarations of government meetings are the only light shone on the lobbying of ministers at Westminster so to fail to record meetings with influential lobbyists undermines the principle of transparency,” Swann said. “The lesson from this saga should be that open government in the first place serves the public better than belated dumps of data long after the event.”
The messages published on Monday also reveal that, shortly after the 2024 general election, Alexander credited Mandelson with his return to parliament as MP for Lothian East, referencing support over several years. Alexander and the Department for Business and Trade have been approached for comment.