Lord Mandelson has offered a personal apology to the victims of Jeffrey Epstein over his decision to maintain a friendship with the late paedophile after his conviction.

The former cabinet minister had faced criticism after he offered a limited apology for system failures that had let women down, in a BBC interview on Sunday.

But in a statement to BBC Newsnight on Monday, Lord Mandelson went further: "Yesterday, I did not want to be held responsible for his [Jeffrey Epstein's] crimes of which I was ignorant, not indifferent, because of the lies he told me and so many others.

"I was wrong to believe him following his conviction and to continue my association with him afterwards. I apologise unequivocally for doing so to the women and girls who suffered."

The government dismissed Lord Mandelson as its ambassador to the US last September. Downing Street said "new information" had emerged relating to the former ambassador's friendship with Epstein.

Emails revealed Lord Mandelson had been in contact with Epstein after the American financier's first conviction in 2008, where he advised Epstein to clear his name in a string of supportive messages.

Epstein's first conviction was part of a plea bargain he reached in Florida. He was sentenced to 18 months in prison after pleading guilty to two charges, including soliciting girls as young as 14 for prostitution.

In 2019, Epstein died in a New York prison cell while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.

In his first interview since his dismissal as ambassador on the BBC's Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, Lord Mandelson did not apologise for maintaining his friendship with Epstein, insisting that he would have done so if he were "in any way complicit or culpable".

During the interview, Mandelson also said he believed he was "kept separate" from Epstein's sex life because he is gay and denied seeing young girls at Epstein's properties.

But in his statement to BBC Newsnight, Lord Mandelson said: "I was never culpable or complicit in his crimes. Like everyone else I learned the actual truth about him after his death.

"But his victims did know what he was doing, their voices were not heard and I am sorry I was amongst those who believed him over them."

Shortly before he was sacked as US ambassador, Lord Mandelson told the BBC he had "relied on assurances of [Epstein's] innocence that turned out later to be horrendously false".

In a letter to embassy staff following his dismissal, he said: "I continue to feel utterly awful about my association with Epstein 20 years ago and the plight of his victims."

Lord Mandelson's interview on Sunday drew criticism from government benches.

One cabinet minister told BBC Newsnight that Mandelson was now "persona non grata". Another minister described his interview as "horrendous and toe curling".

Labour peer Baroness Kennedy said it was "shocking" Lord Mandelson had not initially apologised.

"I'm glad he's come out tonight and at least now is saying that his preoccupation was that people should understand that he did not himself know and had been persuaded," she told Newsnight.

"Somebody like Peter Mandelson should have known better than to go on television and not to be apologising to those women who have suffered so terribly," she added.