Labour minister faces calls to be sacked over false claims against journalists

Politicians from across the spectrum have said a minister should be sacked after a Guardian report that he had accused journalists of having links to Russian intelligence.

Their comments came after an investigation showed that Josh Simons, who was running Labour Together at the time, had falsely concluded the journalists had obtained information about the thinktank from a Russian hack.

The revelation has added to the pressure on Simons, a Cabinet Office minister, who is already the subject of a departmental ethics inquiry, and prompted calls from several politicians that he should be sacked or resign.

Kevin Hollinrake, the chair of the Conservative party, said Simons should be suspended from office and an independent inquiry should be carried out, adding: “The Cabinet Office cannot be left to mark its own homework.”

Hollinrake said the need to act was acutebecause Simons, in his role as a junior minister, had a “ministerial responsibility for inquiries and whistleblowing across government” at a time when questions were being raised about his conduct.

The Labour backbencher Jon Trickett said Simons should be dismissed by Keir Starmer. “This reprehensible behaviour is reminiscent of the dirty tricks that were used by Richard Nixon’s White House during the Watergate scandal. It represents serious misconduct.”

Lisa Smart, the Liberal Democrats’ Cabinet Office spokesperson, said Simons should consider his position. “We were told this government would be cleaner than clean,” she said. “Instead, we’re stuck with cabinet ministers whose previous spin tactics literally involved reporting journalists to the intelligence agencies.”

Emails written in January and February 2024 by Simons and a subordinate to the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), a unit of GCHQ, show that he pressed officials to investigate journalists. He told officials that one journalist was “living with” the daughter of a former adviser to Jeremy Corbyn. He claimed that the former adviser was “suspected of links to Russian intelligence”.

Simons was hoping the security agency would investigate the sourcing behind a story in the Sunday Times about Labour Together’s failure to disclose political donations. But despite the accusations, the information was not obtained via a hack and the evidence of Russian involvement nonexistent.

One person named in Labour Together’s emails to the NCSC accused the minister of orchestrating a “McCarthyite smear” campaign, while a second said the false accusation was “disturbing, creepy and deplorable”.

Earlier this month, it emerged that Simons had commissioned Apco, an American public affairs agency, to investigate two Sunday Times journalists and the sources of a story critical of Labour Together that was published in 2023.

The story had revealed fresh details about £730,000 of undeclared donations to Labour Together, run at that time by Morgan McSweeney, Starmer’s erstwhile chief adviser. The Electoral Commission had fined the thinktank more than £14,000 for failing to declare the donations.

After Apco completed its report, Simons concluded the information came from a hack of the Electoral Commission, and told the NCSC early in 2024 that “our evidence” showed it had been “disseminated to people known to be operating in a pro-Kremlin propaganda network with links to Russian intelligence”.

At Simons’ direction, his chief of staff at Labour Together told the security officials that because the information “was disseminated to pro-Russian journalists linked to other ‘hack and leak’ operations, we believe that the likeliest culprit is the Russian state, or proxies of the Russian state”.

However, Paul Holden, a freelance journalist who provided the Sunday Times with documents for their original report, recently showed the Guardian his source materials. They indicate the story was based on files leaked from the Labour party by whistleblowers.

Meanwhile, at the time of Simons’ correspondence with the NCSC, the cybersecurity agency had already concluded there had been a hack of the Electoral Commission, but that it had been conducted by China. Also, the information stolen consisted of electoral records, not of the watchdog’s correspondence on regulatory matters.

A spokesperson for Josh Simons said: “Labour Together commissioned Apco to investigate the information Paul Holden obtained for his book, as has repeatedly been made clear.”