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Hello, I'm Alicia McCarthy.

Thanks for downloading the Yesterday in Parliament podcast.

On Monday the 9th of February, as another dramatic day unfolded in Westminster,

a cabinet minister came to the comments to tell MPs

how the government would tighten up standards and vetting procedures

in the wake of the Mandelson affair. Westminster had only just drawn breath from the weekend's

news that the Prime Minister's Chief of Staff Morgan McSweeney had resigned over the appointment

of Peter Mandelson as the UK's ambassador to the US when it was announced that the PM's

head of communications, Tim Allen,

was also quitting. And then Scottish Labour leader, Anna Sawa, called for Sekeir Stama himself to go.

As journalists, pundits and politicians struggled to keep up, the Cabinet Office Minister Darren

Jones came to the Commons with a plan.

I'm here today, Mr Speaker, to update the House on further action the government

will take to rebuild trust in public life in the wake of these damaging revelations

since my statement last week.

I'll finish the statement first, if I may.

Of course, it wasn't Darren Jones, Conservative MPs wanted out the door,

but they carried on heckling the minister as he explained

there'd be a review of the rules around declarations of financial interests and into the use of

what he called non-official communications channels following accusations that Peter Mandelson

had leaked sensitive government information to convicted paedophile, a multi-millionaire financier Jeffrey Epstein.

...