Keir Starmer is facing mounting pressure to come clean about his decision to appoint his former communications chief to the House of Lords.
The Prime Minister is under fire over the decision to hand a peerage to Matthew Doyle despite knowing he had campaigned for a former Labour councillor after he was charged with child sex offences.
Sir Keir removed the Labour whip from Lord Doyle on Tuesday following complaints from female Labour MPs.
But No 10 has been unable to explain why he went ahead with the peerage 12 days after media reports highlighted his relationship with former Labour councillor Sean Morton.
The appointment of Lord Doyle echoes the PM’s decision to bring back Peter Mandelson as US ambassador in spite of warnings about his friendship with notorious paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
In the Commons this week, Kemi Badenoch said there was a ‘pattern of behaviour’ in Sir Keir’s decisions and accused him of packing the Lords with ‘paedophile apologists’.
The Conservatives are now demanding the release of all documents surrounding the appointment, including details of a Labour investigation into the relationship between the two men and confidential advice offered to Sir Keir by the House of Lords Appointments Commission.
Shadow Cabinet Office minister Alex Burghart told MPs on Thursday that in the wake of the Mandelson scandal, the circumstances surrounding the appointment of Lord Doyle were now ‘a matter of acute public interest’.
Matthew Doyle served as Keir Starmer’s communications chief before being handed a peerage in controversial circumstances
South Shields MP Emma Lewell warned Sir Keir that a succession of scandals has left some voters seeing Labour as the ‘paedo protectors party’
Downing Street rejected the call, saying an internal Labour Party review into Lord Doyle’s appointment was now underway.
The Conservatives are now looking at forcing a Commons vote on the release of the Doyle papers. This would need support from Labour MPs to get through.
But there are signs of growing anger on Labour’s benches about the appointment.
Labour MP Emma Lewell told Sir Keir at a private meeting this week that people were ‘screaming at me in the street that I am a member of the paedo protectors party’.
Asked whether Lord Doyle should lose his peerage, culture secretary Lisa Nandy said: ‘I don’t think it should have been awarded in the first place.’
Ms Nandy also raised wider concerns about the so-called ‘boys club’ in No 10, saying that some of the briefings against female ministers had been ‘dripping with misogyny’.
Ms Nandy told the Guardian that the government’s recent performance was ‘unforgivable’, adding: ‘It does look to people outside that we’re more interested in ourselves and less interested in preventing chaos.’
Ms Nandy also appeared to question Sir Keir’s ability to change his approach, saying: ‘You know he is an actual person? You can’t revamp a person.’
Unite union boss Sharon Graham criticised the ‘shame and shambles’ surrounding the Government in recent weeks – and suggested the giant union could break its historic link with the party.
She said the ideals put forward when the Labour Party was first established have been ‘corrupted, most likely irretrievably’.
Writing in the Financial Times, she said: ‘The questions being asked are: what is Labour for and who is it for? The disgrace of the Mandelson affair will only increase the despair.
‘It symbolises how Labour now stands with the elites in the UK and beyond. It’s another sign of how the party has changed.’
Meanwhile, three Conservative MPs have challenged safeguarding minister Jess Phillips to speak out over the controversy surrounding the appointments of Lord Mandelson and Lord Doyle.
In a letter to Ms Phillips, Mims Davies, Alicia Kearns and Katie Lam raised concerns over a ‘pattern of behaviour at the top of Government’
Ms Lam told the Mail that her ‘silence is an insult to those she is meant to represent’ and challenged her to ‘come out of hiding and start standing up for victims’.
Reform UK’s deputy leader Richard Tice said Lord Doyle should be ‘on the first list to be removed’ when new legislation is brought forward to allow Lords to be stripped of their peerages.
Sir Keir told MPs this week that Lord Doyle had failed to give a ‘full account’ of his relationship with Morton, who admitted possessing extreme pornography and images of naked girls as young as 10 in 2017.
Former No 10 communications chief Tim Allan told the Times that Lord Doyle had acknowledged he initially stood by Morton because he believed his protestations of innocence until his conviction. But he said his predecessor did not inform No 10 he had campaigned for Morton when he stood as an independent after being suspended by Labour.
Lord Doyle has apologised for an error of judgment but said he had only very limited contact with Morton after he admitted the offences.