Labour spends over £500,000 in lawsuit over controversial leaked antisemitism report
The Labour Party has spent over £500,000 in legal costs as part of its case against former staffers who are accused of leaking an internal antisemitism report.
The costs, reported to be at least £503,260, are understood to relate to a recent hearing in which the Party tried to gain access to Laura Murray’s e-mails. Ms Murray is a disgraced former aide to Jeremy Corbyn who was appointed to lead the Labour Party’s disciplinary process during his tenure as leader of the Party.
The hearing is part of a wider counterclaim against the Party’s former staffers who were criticised in a controversial internal report into the handling of antisemitism cases by the Party. The report, which was a last ditch attempt to discredit allegations of antisemitism in the Party, was intended to be sent to the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) as part of its landmark investigation into Labour antisemitism in which Campaign Against Antisemitism was the originating complainant.
In the counterclaim, four other former staffers are named: Karie Murphy, a trade unionist and Mr Corbyn’s chief of staff, whose nomination for a peerage was blocked; Harry Hayball, a staffer in Labour’s Governance and Legal Unit and former Head of Digital Communications at the pro-Corbyn Momentum pressure group, who was reportedly labelled as the author in the report’s metadata; Seamus Milne, the far-left journalist who served as Mr Corbyn’s Executive Director of Strategy and Communications; and George Robertson, who worked in Labour’s communications team.
Last year, it was reported that Labour could face up to £5 million in claims and counterclaims relating to the leaked report.
The Labour Party was found by the EHRC to have engaged in unlawful discrimination and harassment of Jews. The report followed the EHRC’s investigation of the Labour Party in which Campaign Against Antisemitism was the complainant, submitting hundreds of pages of evidence and legal argument. Sir Keir Starmer called the publication of the report a “day of shame” for the Labour Party.
A spokesperson for the Labour Party said: “The party has conducted a wide-ranging and appropriately thorough investigation following the leak and is confident of the case it has presented to the court. That remains the case.”
Campaign Against Antisemitism’s Antisemitism Barometer 2019 showed that antisemitism on the far-left of British politics has surpassed that of the far-right.
Campaign Against Antisemitism advocates for zero tolerance of antisemitism in public life. To that end we monitor all political parties and strive to ensure that any cases of concern are properly addressed.
