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Josh Simons has resigned as a Cabinet Office minister amid a controversy over a thinktank he used to run, which was accused to paying a PR firm to investigate journalists.
Sir Keir Starmer recently confirmed he had asked his ethics adviser, Sir Laurie Magnus, to look into whether Mr Simons had broken the ministerial code.
Mr Simons said he had been cleared of breaking the code but said that by staying in office he had become a “distraction”.
Mr Simons had been a minister in the Cabinet Office, working on areas such as the government’s digital ID scheme.
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It comes after claims the thinktank Labour Together, which Mr Simons ran before entering government, was accused of paying PR firm Apco £36,000 to investigate the background of journalists who ran a negative story on the organisation.
The Sunday Times said Apco produced “deeply personal and false claims” about Gabriel Pogrund, its Whitehall editor, while Harry Yorke, the deputy political editor, was named alongside him.
It was suggested the journalists might be part of a Russian conspiracy or had relied on emails hacked by the Kremlin, according to The Sunday Times.
Mr Simons said in his resignation letter that he “never sought to smear” the reporters and that Apco had been hired to investigate a potentially illegal hack.
The journalists had covered the campaign group’s failure to declare more than £700,000 in donations.
In a letter to the prime minister, Sir Laurie said the ex-minister now accepted the terms he agreed with Apco were “wider than he had understood” and he had acted “too hastily in confirming their appointment”.
While Sir Laurie said Mr Simons had acted “in good faith”, he said the MP acknowledged the “perceived gap between his public…
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