Labour has discontinued its legal claims against five Jeremy Corbyn-era staff members who denied leaking an internal report to the press, according to the law firm, Carter-Ruck, on Thursday.
All five of the accused maintained they would “vigorously defend themselves” in any High Court action.
Carter-Ruck, the lawyers representing the former staff members, said in a statement: “The [Labour] Party is discontinuing its legal claims against Karie Murphy, Seumas Milne, Georgie Robertson, Harry Hayball and Laura Murray on a ‘no order as to costs’ basis.”
“The five welcome the resolution of the claims,” the London-based firm said.
Labour’s governance and legal unit found “no evidence” of anti-Semitism being handled differently from other complaints.
Owing to Mr. Corbyn’s well-known pro-Palestinian stance, his time as leader was tarnished by complaints of anti-Semitism and accusations that senior officials were slow to respond, or impeded in accusations of in-house anti-Semitic rhetoric.
There were also suggestions that anti-Corbyn staffers diverted funds away from specific constituencies during the highly-contested 2017 general election.
‘Factional Obsession’
The Forde Report, published in 2022, set out to investigate the contents of the leaked report and the circumstances in which it was prepared and put into the public domain.The report concluded it “could not identify the source of the leak,” although acknowledged its inquiries were “incomplete” as they wished to seek out more interviews and examine further documents.
The author of the report, Martin Forde, KC, said, “It is a great shame that money has been spent on legal fees that could have been spent on the general election.”
A spokesperson for the Momentum campaign group, which was set up to support Mr. Corbyn’s Labour leadership, said, “What a gigantic waste of members’ money from Starmer’s Labour.”
“Millions of pounds that could have been spent on campaigning in key seats have instead been poured down the drain, all driven by factional obsession,” the spokesperson said.
The party had trouble getting the case into the High Court from the outset, after its 2021 application to the court was rejected.
In those proceedings, the party acknowledged to the court that there was no “smoking gun” evidence to prove who leaked the report. The party’s solicitor also told the court that the party “does not claim to know definitively and with absolute certainty the identity of the person(s) responsible.”
Rejecting the application, the judge noted that the party’s position that the individuals were responsible for the leak was “highly contentious,” and that the application gives room to cause injustice by naming “innocent persons.”
A spokesperson for the former Labour Party employees said at the time of the High Court case rejection in October 2021: “The individuals entirely reject these baseless claims. They did not leak the report. They fully cooperated with the Party’s investigation by an independent external investigator, and with the inquiry led by Martin Forde QC. They understand that neither of those investigations concluded that they were responsible.”
“The Party has already acknowledged in court that it cannot be certain who leaked the report and that its ‘case’ against them is circumstantial. But it is now trying to make them foot the bill for legal action brought against it.
“The Party should be focusing on the deeply troubling evidence contained with the leaked report, rather than trying to wrongly scapegoat and victimise former staff who documented it, and who have not been accused by either of the independent investigations.”
