PM orders ethics investigation into minister over Labour Together claims

The prime minister has asked his ethics adviser to investigate minister Josh Simons, following claims the think tank he used to run commissioned a report which looked into the background of journalists.

Labour Together, which helped Sir Keir Starmer get elected as Labour leader, paid APCO Worldwide at least £30,000 to "investigate the sourcing, funding and origins" of a Sunday Times story about undeclared donations at the think tank ahead of the 2024 election.

Simons has previously said the company had "gone beyond" what it had been asked to do by including "unnecessary information".

Sir Keir had already asked the Cabinet Office to investigate Simons last week.

However, more than 20 Labour MPs had called for a "fully independent investigation", pointing out that Simons is a minister in the Cabinet Office.

The PM's independent adviser on ministerial standards, Sir Laurie Magnus, investigates alleged breaches of the Ministerial Code so can only look at Simons' actions as a minister and not his time at Labour Together, before he was an MP.

The BBC has not seen APCO Worldwide's report in full but sources familiar with its contents have confirmed the details, which were reported by the Sunday Times.

Sources told the BBC the US public affairs firm's report included information about journalist Gabriel Pogrund's Jewish beliefs and claims about his ideological position.

It also claimed, the sources said, that Pogrund's previous reporting, including on the royal family, "could be seen as destabilising to the UK and also in the interests of Russia's strategic foreign policy objectives".

In a contract addressed to Simons, seen by BBC News, APCO Worldwide agreed to investigate "the sourcing, funding and origins" of the Sunday Times reporting, as well as the journalist, Paul Holden and Matt Taibbi, an American reporter.

Responding to an urgent question over the issue in Parliament, Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister Darren Jones said the Cabinet Office investigation had "established the facts" around the allegations and reported them to Sir Keir, who had now referred the issue to his independent adviser on ministerial standards.

"The government is committed to protecting freedom of the press and no journalist should ever be intimidated for trying to hold those in power to account," he told MPs.

Simons has previously said he had asked APCO Worldwide to look into "a suspected illegal hack" and claims he wanted to investigate journalists were "nonsense".

Conservative shadow chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Alex Burghart said the company's report included a "spurious" allegation that journalists reporting on Labour Together donations "had relied on Russian hacking".

He added that the report was circulated to key members of the Labour Party and GCHQ, which said there was no case to answer.

"This looks to all intents and purposes like a deliberate attempt to smear and intimidate journalists whose only crime had been to report that Labour Together had broken electoral law," Burghart said.

"As of today, it is very difficult to see how the minister's position is tenable."

He said the issue should have been referred to the ethics adviser immediately, rather than being dealt with internally by the Cabinet Office, and called for Simons to be suspended while the investigation was ongoing.

However, Jones said the adviser could only investigate ministers while they were in office.

Labour MPs welcomed the ethics investigation but some, including Jon Trickett, called for it to go further and look at Labour Together more broadly, rather than just the actions of Simons.