Josh Simons, the Cabinet Office minister responsible for the UK government’s digital identity program, is being probed by the department for his actions running a Labour think tank that commissioned an investigation into journalists.
The Shard and the News Building – headquarters of the Sunday times – seen in a London panorama shot. Image: maziarz/Shutterstock
UK Prime minister Sir Keir Starmer has ordered the government’s propriety and ethics team to look into his minister’s actions at the think tank, Labour Together, saying he “didn’t know anything” about the investigation.
Between 2022 and his election as a Labour MP in 2024, Simons ran Labour Together, which supported Starmer’s leadership campaign. Its founder, Morgan McSweeney, served as Starmer’s chief of staff until his resignation earlier this month for his role in appointing former US ambassador Peter Mandelson, under fire for exchanges released in the Epstein Files.
In 2023, Labour Together commissioned US public affairs outfit APCO Worldwide to investigate Sunday Times journalists who wrote about the think tank’s failure to declare £730,000 (c $990k) in donations, according to the newspaper.
The Sunday Times claimed the resulting report from the US firm suggested the journalists had used hacked emails provided by Russia. The report also discussed the fact that one of the reporters, Gabriel Pogrund, is Jewish, and the newspaper asserted that it was also “falsely suggesting its journalists might be part of a Russian conspiracy.”
The think tank passed a version of the report, without the information on Pogrund, to GCHQ’s National Cyber Security Centre, which decided against launching a full inquiry.
Simons told the paper that he was “surprised and shocked” that APCO Worldwide had included “unnecessary information” on the journalist, which he asked to be removed before he passed the report to GCHQ.
Liberal Democrat MP Lisa Smart called for Simons to stand down temporarily while the investigation takes place. “It looks like the group that credits itself with getting Labour into government has carried out an outrageous attack on our independent free press,” she said in a statement.
Simons is leading the government’s efforts to introduce digital identity, launched last September by Starmer, with digital ID initially proposed as compulsory for right-to-work checks. Following widespread opposition, he dropped it as a requirement in January, although said these right-to-work checks would be digitized.
The government is planning to launch a consultation on its revised plans for digital ID, but in the meantime Simons has been answering written parliamentary questions from MPs on the scheme.
Earlier this week, asked by Conservative MP Kevin Hollinrake how people who refuse a digital ID card will be able to complete right-to-work checks, Simons replied that checks “will be digital and they will be mandatory” with technical details to follow in the consultation. ®