written statement<\/a> to parliament.<\/p>\nBryant said this was \u201cunderstandable since this new appointment was a continuation of the royal family\u2019s involvement in trade and investment promotion work\u201d, and because Mountbatten-Windsor was replacing the Duke of Kent, who was stepping down from his role as vice-chair of the Overseas Trade Board.<\/p>\n
The question of \u201cvetting\u201d Mountbatten-Windsor would not have \u201centered anyone\u2019s head\u201d, and would have been an anachronism and \u201ccompletely alien\u201d in 2001, according to Andrew Turnbull, a former civil servant who was permanent secretary to the Treasury at the time.<\/p>\n
As a prince and duke, he was \u201cshowered with honours\u201d and vetting him would have meant asking whether he was \u201cfit and proper\u201d, Lord Turnbull told Radio 4\u2019s World at One. Nobody was going to suggest this, Turnbull said, especially if the late queen\u2019s wish was for him to have the role.<\/p>\n
The publication of 11 documents that show how the role was created and Mountbatten-Windsor appointed, comes after the Liberal Democrats tabled a humble address in parliament calling for the publication of papers on his role, including any vetting and any correspondence from Peter Mandelson, the disgraced former ambassador to the US.<\/p>\n
In the February 2000 memo to Cook, Wright suggested Mountbatten-Windsor\u2019s role would include some regional trips and two or three overseas visits each year, as well as a \u201cleading trade mission from time to time\u201d.<\/p>\n
The senior official said he \u201cdid not envisage that the Duke of York would want to be burdened with the regularity of meetings of the board of British Trade International or the burden of paper which goes along with the board membership\u201d.<\/p>\n
While the late queen was \u201cvery keen\u201d for Mountbatten-Windsor to take on the role, his team suggested that he emphasise it was \u201ca mutual agreement\u201d with the palace, in a briefing note to the former prince before an interview with the Times in 2001.<\/p>\n
Mountbatten-Windsor served as the UK\u2019s special representative for international trade and investment from 2001 to 2011, an unpaid role in which he travelled the world meeting senior business and government figures.<\/p>\n
An internal telegram to staff of the BTI advised the need for \u201ccareful and sometimes strict media management\u201d of his engagements as trade envoy.<\/p>\n
The second son of the late queen became the first royal family member to be arrested in modern times when he was held over claims of misconduct in public office. Emails appeared to show him sharing confidential information with the convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein while working as the trade representative. He has previously denied any wrongdoing in relation to Epstein.<\/p>\n
Bryant told MPs the government was not expecting to publish any more files about the appointment. \u201cOf course we will keep on looking, notwithstanding the complexity that there is about searching in paper-based systems in multiple different departments.<\/p>\n
\u201cI guarantee the house that if there is more to publish, I will come back to the house with more, but I suspect that this may be our last tranche.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.theguardian.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Formal security vetting and due diligence appear not to have been carried out before the appointment of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor as a trade envoy, the government has said, as it emerged that the late queen was \u201cvery keen\u201d for her son to take a prominent role in promoting Britain\u2019s interests. The first batch of documents relating […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2427114,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2427113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-royalty"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/No-evidence-of-formal-security-vetting-when-Andrew-became-UK.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2427113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2427113"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2427113\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2427115,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2427113\/revisions\/2427115"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2427114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2427113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2427113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2427113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}