The latest tranche of information released in the so-called ‘Mandelson files’ reveals the extent of Global Counsel’s influence since the early months of the Labour administration. The files, which consumed thousands of hours of work by officials and more than £1 million worth of the taxpayers’ money, expose the deep-rooted influence of the disgraced peer in Westminster.

Global Counsel, which went into administration in February this year, was a strategic advisory and lobbying firm co-founded by Peter Mandelson in 2010. The company provided advice to high-profile clients including Chinese-owned TikTok, UK pharmaceutical firm GSK, and the controversial US tech firm Palantir. Other firms included JP Morgan and Shell.

The company went bust after it lost a series of important accounts over the peer’s relationship with convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Mandelson, who denies any wrongdoing, resigned from the board in 2024 but kept shares until February 2026. That month, Companies House administrators reported that the firm had liabilities totalling £4,596,149 – even after £2.7m of assets had been accounted for.

Now, claims of a breach in government sleaze rules are growing louder as material from the Mandelson files has revealed the lobbying firm’s undeclared involvement with the Labour Party.

It has been uncovered that Chancellor Rachel Reeves solicited advice from Mandelson while he was chair of the company in November 2024. Emails show the chancellor’s chief of staff contacting the peer and asking him to “pop” into the Treasury to brief her about trade ahead of a meeting the following day. Compromisingly, no record of the meeting was publicly disclosed despite the ministerial code demanding government departments to publish details of ministers’ meetings with external organisations and individuals. The code states: “Where a minister meets an external organisation or individual in an official capacity, details of these meetings must be declared. This applies to meetings with lobbyists.”

Conservatives have accused the Treasury of “breaking its own transparency rules to allow ministers to receive advice from Mandelson while he was actively seeking to advance the interests of clients through Global Counsel”. The Treasury responded stating: “These claims are nonsense. Treasury ministers comply with all relevant guidance.”

In addition, WhatsApp messages from the files reveal a meeting between the peer and Lord Livermore, the financial secretary to the Treasury. This meeting was also undeclared. At the time, Lord Livermore’s role included leading the Treasury’s work on growth, the digital economy and net zero. Mandelson arranged for himself and Lord Livermore to meet “away from HMT [the Treasury]” and added “I will try and get X [redacted Global Counsel staff member] to join because he has ideas.” The lobbying firm’s clients at the time included OpenAI and Sizewell C, both of which had a strong interest in Lord Livermore’s work.

Alex Burghart, a shadow Cabinet Office minister, said: “The public deserves to know who was meeting whom, what was discussed and why those meetings were not declared.”

He added: “Labour ministers need to come clean about the extent of their dealings with Mandelson. The Conservatives are the only reason we have any sort of transparency, and we will continue to fight until the government holds themselves to account.”

Correspondence from the files does little to flatter the Labour government, exposing several senior officials’ view on the administration. For instance, Pat McFadden, the work and pensions secretary, said in a WhatsApp message to Mandelson that: “Every meeting I have is ‘who can we tax in order to pay benefits to others’. They’re asking the wrong questions.” This has armed Kemi Badenoch to attack Labour as the “welfare party”. To add fuel to the fire, Wes Streeting, the then health secretary, said to Mandelson that there was “no growth strategy at all”, and pensions minister Torsten Bell said that “everyone seems to think it’s someone else’s job to get the policy right”.

The Mandelson files contain a staggering series of revelations. However, they do not unveil the whole picture. Mandelson has refused to hand over his personal mobile phone for investigation, and there is evidence that information was actively wiped from the record through disappearing messages and deliberately deleted correspondence.