When asked about missing a conversation with Mandelson on his personal phone, Thomas-Symonds said the two exchanged congratulatory messages on their appointment, and were in discussion about the former Labor peer’s campaign to be elected chancellor of Oxford University.
British MPs in February demanded government to publish communications between Mandelson, ministers, and officials in an attempt to understand what the government knew about the ambassador’s relationship with Epstein. Ministers and officials were asked to hand over any message to Mandelson to meet MPs’ demands.
Thomas-Symonds is not the only senior government figure whose phone was hacked last year, in the weeks after Mandelson was sacked as US ambassador to Washington.
Morgan McSweeney, then a senior adviser to Prime Minister Keir Starmer, reported that his own phone had been stolen by a man on a bicycle five days after Thomas-Symonds on October 20.
