Cabinet minister accused of hiring PR company to analyze journalists’ sources | EUROtoday

A authorities minister has been accused of paying a PR and lobbying agency to analyze the sources of journalists earlier than he entered Parliament.

Josh Simons, cupboard workplace minister and chief government of the pro-Starmer think-tank Labour Together, employed the worldwide advisory and advocacy agency, APCO Worldwide, to try to establish how reporters had found particulars concerning the group’s funding.

APCO Worldwide confirmed it could “investigate the sourcing, funding and origins of a Sunday Times article about Labour Together” as well as future work by two political journalists, in a contract seen by the BBC.

The investigative website, Democracy for Sale, was the first publication to report the allegations. The site analysed Labour Together’s response to the media outlets covering the fact the think tank did not declare more than £700,000 in donations between 2017 and 2020.

In September 2021, Labour Together was fined £14,250 by the Electoral Commission over late reporting of donations.

According to Democracy For Sale, APCO was paid at least £30,000 to carry out the investigation in 2023, when the think tank was run by Mr Simons.

In a briefing provided to Labour Together, the firm identified two potential sources of the story – either a leak from the Electoral Commission or the think tank, or “illegally-gathered information collected from the 2023 hack of the Electoral Commission that has been passed on to the author”, the website said.

Briefings from APCO are reported to have identified other journalists as “significant persons of interest”, while discussing points of “leverage” over some reporters.

According to the website, APCO also produced a memo that seemed intended to discredit South African journalist Paul Holden, who collaborated on The Sunday Times story.

In the leaked contract, APCO Worldwide said it intended to “set up who and what are behind the coordinated assaults on Labour Together”, according to the BBC.

The firm said it would “present a physique of proof that could possibly be packaged up to be used within the media so as to create narratives that may proactively undermine any future assaults on Labour Together” using open source and digital forensics work, the broadcaster reported.

Mr Simons said on social media platform X, that the claims that he wanted to investigate journalists are “nonsense”. He said he asked APCO Worldwide to “look right into a suspected unlawful hack, which had nothing to do with UK journalists at Sunday Times, Guardian or some other sensible UK newspaper”.

“APCO’s investigation by no means absolutely received to the underside of this,” he wrote on X.

“Those who know me know I believe the work of journalists is significant to our democracy.”

Labour Together and APCO Worldwide haven’t responded toThe Independent’s requests for remark.