Helen MacNamara

Because what you've got here is that my guess, and it is a guess rather than from knowledge...

is that it's totally normal to have a conversation, as in that the security director in the Foreign Office will talk to whoever the senior civil servant is who's going to have the responsibility.

You wouldn't write things down because what would you be writing it on?

You'd be writing it in the open system or you'd have to go and find a specially secure system to write the notes in.

And on national security issues, you're really, really circumspect about what do you actually write down.

So I don't think it's weird that things weren't written down.

And I don't think it's weird that...

you would, the task at hand was clearing Peter Mandelson for the job.

The task at hand, so it's kind of find a way to make it work, not find a way to not make it work.

And he did a very big, he started that statement on Monday with a very kind of big apology.

Effectively, he did take it on his shoulders.

He did an appropriately graceful reminder that actually the people who are really harmed here are the victims of the paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

And, you know, it's very easy to just skip over this and not worry.

So he started off, I think,

pretty open and generously.

But what was really clear as the questioning went on is how cross he is, actually.

He's quite, again, don't want to keep on saying this.

At other people rather than himself, exactly.

And you could feel that.

And he kind of lost his rag a bit towards the end, I thought.