Catherine Haddon

So it's much more about the sharing of information.

And I agree, there are points where it baffles you to think, why wasn't the Prime Minister informed that such a high-profile appointment...

particularly after it had all gone wrong, had some problems around that vetting.

But on the other hand, when you go back to the question of should the Prime Minister get involved in scrutinising individuals' personal lives to understand security risks, there's risks there, not only to damaging the vetting process, but also for the Prime Minister, if they're getting involved in the sort of real detail of that.

So,

You do have to have a system whereby you have very senior, experienced people who do certain jobs for you because it is not in your interests for you to be doing those jobs yourself.

You just don't have the time as much as anything else.

But it's getting the balance right between that.

And yeah, obviously, it didn't work out for the prime minister in this case.

That's not what he wants.

But we really should avoid sort of messing up the vetting process as a whole because of one thing.

very, very extraordinary case.

Peter Mandelson himself being quite extraordinary, but also what has happened with it being quite extraordinary, and the appointment itself being quite extraordinary.

For the vast majority of vetting, the system works and they should be careful about ditching it all because of this one particular case.

I've got to say, like, it is extraordinary.

I do a lot of interviewing of former ministers.

I've, you know, looked into a lot of former prime ministers and no minister leaves or no prime minister leaves the job thinking, yeah, I did everything I wanted to do.

Everyone leaves thinking, God, I wish I'd used my time better.

God, I could have done so many more things.

I wish I'd done that or, you know, the other.