Labour Together PR firm tried to destroy crucial evidence

Controversial firm reported to Serious Fraud Office after senior executive ordered deletion of evidence of Labour Together’s smear campaign against journalists

Labour Together - ‘the think tank that made Keir Starmer’

A senior executive at the PR firm previously hired by Labour Together to investigate journalists told a freelance contractor who had worked on the project at APCO to destroy evidence of its campaign against journalists.

The contractor subsequently made a whistleblowing disclosure about that instruction to the Serious Fraud Office, which investigates serious fraud and corruption.

The instruction to delete material came from Tom Harper, who ran the Labour Together project for APCO, after Democracy for Sale revealed that the Starmerite think tank had paid APCO to investigate journalists reporting on more than £700,000 in undeclared funding used to power Keir Starmer’s Labour leadership win.

Josh Simons, who had succeeded Morgan McSweeney as Labour Together boss, resigned as a minister in Starmer’s government in February, in the wake of the revelations about APCO’s work for the think tank.

After our initial story, Harper, a former Sunday Times journalist who is still listed as head of APCO’s European media relations practice, told the contractor to destroy evidence of the Labour Together work.

The material was subject to a legal hold, which is a formal instruction from company lawyers to preserve documents that might be relevant to anticipated or threatened litigation. At the time, APCO was under investigation by its trade body and its work for Labour Together was facing scrutiny in Parliament.

Now the contractor is being pursued by APCO in a secretive London arbitration court, where the global PR firm is represented by London-based law firm Withers LLP.

Early day motion

The revelations about senior APCO staff ordering the destruction of information and taking a whistleblower to court emerged in a parliamentary motion lodged by Labour MP John McDonnell.

The former shadow chancellor’s early day motion calls on justice secretary David Lammy to conduct an urgent assessment of the adequacy of legal protections for individuals making protected disclosures.

The motion cites information provided to McDonnell “that a contractor has been instructed by a senior employee of APCO Worldwide to destroy material relating to work undertaken for Labour Together, notwithstanding that the material was subject to a legal hold and subsequently made a protected disclosure to the Serious Fraud Office.”

Early day motions do not typically lead to debate, but they place matters on the formal parliamentary record and are frequently used by MPs to signal concern to government departments.

Speaking to Democracy for Sale, McDonnell said that this new information underscored the need for an independent investigation into Labour Together’s campaign, which targeted journalists from the Sunday Times, the Guardian and Declassified, as well as authors Paul Holden and Matt Taibbi.

“This is now further evidence of the urgency for the Government to establish an independent inquiry into Labour Together and to get to the truth about the role played by Labour Together and the agency APCO into the alleged smearing of journalists and collection of data on Members of Parliament,” McDonnell said.

“This issue is not going away and a growing number of MPs on all sides of the Commons are supporting this demand.”

Press freedom campaigners said that the public needed “total transparency” about APCO’s work for Labour Together.

“Following the reports of APCO investigating and monitoring journalists on behalf of Labour Together, the public is entitled to total transparency and accountability to ensure it cannot happen again,” said Nik Williams, policy and campaigns officer at Index on Censorship.

“That APCO has sought to allegedly destroy evidence subject to a legal hold and is pursuing the contractor who blew the whistle in court demonstrates the alarming steps some will take to avoid and suppress scrutiny. Democracy cannot thrive if such conduct continues.”

Josh Simons resigned in late February after the prime minister’s independent adviser on ministerial standards, Sir Laurie Magnus, concluded that he had not breached the ministerial code, but that there was a “distraction and potential reputational damage” in Simons remaining in the government.

The PR industry’s trade body also launched an investigation into APCO’s conduct. At the time, APCO told the media that it was conducting “a detailed internal review of the project” and was “deeply committed” to upholding its values and standards.

APCO’s Tom Harper was previously identified as the author of controversial reports for Labour Together that falsely linked journalists to a “pro-Kremlin network” and focused on Sunday Times investigative journalist Gabriel Pogrund’s Jewish background in terms that drew widespread criticism.

Harper’s wife, Caroline Wheeler, was the Sunday Times’ political editor for nine years.