Former US ambassador Lord Peter Mandelson

Lord Peter Mandelson has refused to apologise for his friendship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, insisting he is “not culpable”.

The former ambassador to the US was sacked in September after unearthed emails found Mandelson had told Epstein “your friends stay with you and love you” even as he was facing child underage sex charges in 2008.

Their friendship was already public knowledge prior to Mandelson’s appointment as ambassador last year, but these emails offered up new information, according to the government, which meant the ambassador lost his job.

In his first interview since being fired, Mandelson told the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg that he wanted to apologise for the “system” which did not listen to Epstein’s victims sooner.

He said: “I want to apologise to those women for a system that refused to hear their voices and did not give them the protection they were entitled to expect.”

But when presenter Kuenssberg........

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