The UK Labour party has formally reported members of Sir Keir Starmer’s leadership campaign team to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), accusing them of hacking into the party’s membership database, according to the BBC.
The allegations were made against two members of Sir Keir’s team – one of them is his compliance official. Details were subsequently passed to the ICO.
Sir Keir and his team refute the claims, saying they were “utter nonsense”. The allegations are serious, and the confrontation has engulfed the campaign in bitter recrimination.
The ICO has confirmed that it has received a report of a membership database breach, and would make inquiries.
‘Nonsensical’
According to a number of sources the Starmer team members were accused of what’s called “data-scraping” – seeking to obtain certain information from a wider set of data.
Sir Keir has written to the party flatly denying any wrongdoing by his team members. He insisted they were investigating a means of penetrating the database — called Dialogue — with no intention to use it.
Supporters of Sir Keir, who currently has the support of twice as many local Labour parties than any other candidate, have suggested they were now victims of a politically motivated effort to damage him and his campaign.
Jenny Chapman, the former Labour MP who is chairing Sir Keir’s campaign, said no-one on the team had the “capacity” to hack into any of the party’s databases and “they wouldn’t do it anyway”.
She told BBC Radio 5live’s Pienaar’s Politics:
It’s a very serious accusation and that is why I am here to defend it, … This isn’t even a situation where you say ‘some over-enthusiastic young volunteers may have done it’. It didn’t happen.
Ms Chapman suggested the allegations had only surfaced after her team had alerted Labour officials last week to what they believed was potentially a “very serious” data protection breach by the rival campaign of Rebecca Long-Bailey.
It emerged last week that Ms Long-Bailey’s campaign circulated links to volunteers capable of allowing them access to Labour Party phone banks. The campaign said it acted innocently but Ms Chapman said she believed “something wrong” had taken place.
Former Labour MP Jenny Chapman, who is chairing Sir Keir’s campaign, said no-one on the team had the “capacity” to hack into any of the party’s databases and “they wouldn’t do it anyway”.
Ms Chapman told BBC Radio 5live’s Pienaar’s Politics:
It’s a very serious accusation and that is why I am here to defend it, … This isn’t even a situation where you say ‘some over-enthusiastic young volunteers may have done it’. It didn’t happen.
Ms Chapman suggested the allegations had only surfaced after her team had alerted Labour officials last week to what they believed was potentially a “very serious” data protection breach by the rival campaign of Rebecca Long-Bailey.
It emerged last week that Ms Long-Bailey’s campaign circulated links to volunteers capable of allowing them access to Labour Party phone banks. The campaign said it acted innocently but Ms Chapman said she believed “something wrong” had taken place.
Source: BBC News (for the full story)
