FORMER cabinet minister Peter Mandelson is making a return to the political limelight.

The Hartlepool MP will be named this week as chairman of one of the country's most high-powered policy think tanks.

However, the former Northern Ireland Secretary claims his appointment as London-based chairman of the influential Policy Network is not preparing him for a return to Government.

He told The Northern Echo: "My primary focus is on my constituency. I don't regard it as a route back to Government."

'Trustees of the pan-European think tank includes Lord Levy, Tony Blair's Middle East envoy and chief fundraiser for the Labour Party; Philip Gould, the Prime Minister's personal pollster and Anthony Giddens, a political theorist, who Mr Blair has said has most influenced his thinking.

Explaining his new role in pooling ideas for Government and thinking through policy, Mr Mandelson said: "It provides a number of means for people on the centre left of British and continental European politics to meet, to exchange ideas, to debate policy to discuss policy practise in Government, and to promote and exchange ideas.''

"The point is to draw on centre left experience in government and policy making, so you don't keep developing policy in isolation, you don't keep re-inventing the wheel, but in drawing on what others have done, learn from each other."

A seminar held by the policy group on pensions last week was attended by a former financial adviser to the French Government, an ex-prime minister of Italy and a close aide to the German President Gerhard Schroder, while Andrew Rotherham, US President Clinton's adviser on education, was present at a network conference on education.

Mr Mandelson resigned from the Cabinet earlier this year over the Hinduja brothers passports affair, although he was later cleared of any impropriety.

He quit the Cabinet once before, over a home loan from ex-paymaster general Geoffrey Robinson.

Earlier this year Mr Mandelson was appointed to head the influential 21st Century Group which brings together senior politicians, business leaders and diplomats from the UK and Japan.

Tony Blair's spin doctor, met his former colleague and boss when the Prime Minister visited Hartlepool last week.