KEIR Starmer has been urged to sack a Labour minister who is accused of paying a company to “spy” on journalists.
Labour MP Josh Simons, Parliamentary Secretary in the Cabinet Office, was director of the Labour Together think tank when it paid tens of thousands of pounds to a US public affairs firm to investigate journalists ahead of the 2024 General Election, as first reported in The National last year.
Labour Together, which helped propel Starmer to power, hired a lobbying group to investigate the backgrounds of Sunday Times journalists after an article was published on secret donations behind the think-tank’s work.
It’s understood that US firm Apco was paid £36,000 to examine the “backgrounds and motivations” of the journalists. The Sunday Times reports it was part of a smear campaign intending to falsely suggest the reporters might be part of a Russian conspiracy or had relied on emails hacked by the Kremlin.
The SNP said the revelations raise further questions about Starmer’s judgment and his own role in the scandal.
The Prime Minister has been under fire in recent weeks for his decision to appoint Peter Mandelson as UK ambassador to the US – despite his links to convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein being known – and his former spin doctor Matthew Doyle to the House of Lords – who had a campaigned for Scottish sex offender in a council election after he had been charged.
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Simons, who previously suggested that international smuggler gangs should be sent to a Scottish island, is reported to be the person who commissioned Apco to investigate the journalists.
The Sunday Times reports that it has a copy of the full report, codenamed “Operation Cannon”, dated January 2024 and marked private and confidential. It was prepared by Tom Harper, a former Sunday Times journalist and Apco’s senior director.
The 58-page report is understood to contain ten pages of deeply personal and fake claims about Gabriel Pogrund, the newspaper’s Whitehall editor. Pogrund and Harry York, the paper’s deputy political editor, were named as “persons of significant interest”.
The contents of the report were shared with Labour figures in 2024, including those who are now Cabinet ministers and special advisers. The Sunday Times suggests that one of the Prime Minister’s closest aides and another special adviser were among those who repeated the reports contents, but does not name them.
The article which sparked the report revealed that Labour Together had failed to declare more than £700,000 of donations between 2017 and 2020. The Electoral Commission (EC) found the think tank guilty of 20 breaches of campaign laws, issuing a fine in 2021.
The Apco report made unevidenced claims that the Sunday Times journalists used emails which emerged from a suspected Russian hack of the EC to underpin the story.
“The likeliest culprit is the Russian state, or proxies of the Russian state,” Harper wrote.
Days after the article appeared, Simons, who replaced Morgan McSweeney as head of Labour Together, commissioned the report.
McSweeney resigned as Starmer’s chief of staff amid the Mandelson scandal, after it emerged he had lobbied for the peer to be given the key diplomatic role.
SNP Westminster leader Stephen Flynn said that Starmer had “serious questions” to answer over his own role in the scandal.
“Keir Starmer must sack the Labour Party minister at the centre of this creepy spy scandal,” he said.
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“Yet again, Starmer has serious questions to answer about his judgement and his own role in this scandal.
“Why did he appoint Josh Simons and why has he failed to take any action despite these allegations being in the public domain?
“What Labour Together support did he benefit from during the Labour Party leadership election – and during the general election?
“The Labour Government is consumed by chaos and failing to deliver on the issues that matter - like helping families with the cost of living, which has soared under Keir Starmer.
“It’s not good enough. The UK can’t go on with a lame-duck prime minister limping on from one crisis to the next.
“It shows why Scotland needs a strong SNP government to stand up for families in the face of Labour Party cuts and chaos.”
Number 10 has been contacted for comment.
