Corbyn’s chief of staff attempted to ‘delete information’ from iCloud account on Labour laptop
Lawyers for Labour also claim in High Court that an email sent by Karie Murphy - recovered during a probe into the April 2020 leaking of a controversial report - contains 'prima facie evidence of wrongdoing'. She denies the claims.
Lee Harpin is the Jewish News's political editor
Jeremy Corbyn’s chief of staff attempted to “delete all information” from her iCloud account accessible on her Labour Party laptop related to a controversial report into Labour’s antisemitism crisis, the High Court has heard.
Karie Murphy later insisted she had forgotten information, including the controversial 800 page report itself, had been stored on her iCloud account which was linked to her work laptop when it was removed.
Lawyers acting for the Labour Party asked the High Court on Wednesday to grant permission for use of an email Murphy had sent on April 8 2020 – one day before the antisemitism report was leaked – which they say contains “prima facie evidence of wrongdoing.”
But in her written response to this claim lawyers for Murphy said:”Ms Murphy’s case is that the Email provides no support whatsoever for the allegations made against her.
“She repeats in terms in her evidence that she did not leak the Report, or arrange for it to be leaked, and does not know who did leak it”
Murphy’s counsel, Jacob Dean, said that the Labour Party’s reliance on the email amounted to a “conspiracy theory of the purest form.”
Dean said Murphy had deleted nothing, but simply delinked the personal iCloud account from her work laptop.
Labour is facing numerous claims for a breach of data protection laws and privacy, relating to the leaking of the report, which contained private details of whistleblowers and complainants about antisemitism in the party.
The report was leaked in April 9th 2020, just as Keir Starmer replaced Corbyn as leader.
It was an attempt to suggest efforts to combat antisemitism in the party had been hindered not by those close to the ex-leader but, in part, because of the “factionalism” of party officials who were opposed to his leadership.
Labour is attempting to prove that Murphy, along with four other former party staffers, including former communications director Seamus Milne were responsible for the leak.
The five ex-employees — Murphy, Milne, Georgina Robertson, Harry Hayball, and Laura Murray — deny leaking the report and say that two investigations did not find the source of the leak.
Barrister Jacob Dean, Murphy’s counsel, told the High Court that on April 20, 2020, Corbyn’s chief of staff had been informed by her bank that an email address appeared to have been compromised and unauthorised transitions made from her account using Apple Pay.
Dean added that as a result of the banking fraud, and because she expected to be leaving her job with Labour, Murphy “wanted to ensure that her personal iCloud account was disconnected from her Labour Party laptop and emails from that account removed.”
Murphy had contacted a mobile communications and support analyst working for Labour at the time on 21 April, 2020, the court was told, and asked him “to remove her Apple iCloud from her work laptop.”
The court was told the support analyst could not remember what was said during his conversation with Murphy, while she recalls asking him to remove her iCloud account “so there is no access now to my emails or photographs.”
Labour’s counsel told the court the iCloud account was regularly used by Murphy for the purpose of conducting work for the Labour Party, and she had received a total of 90 emails on the iCloud account from Labour email addresses in a three-month period.
Anya Proops KC said that while the iCloud account was used by Murphy for “genuinely private exchanges” a “significant proportion of them are work emails”
She added:”One of the emails contained in the iCloud account included a copy of the report which Ms Murphy says she forgot she received until she was reminded in these proceedings.”
Murphy had been emailed on May 12th 2020 by Labour’s director of HR and safeguarding requesting access to her laptop as part of the investigation into the leaking of the antisemitism report the previous month.
She consented to the review, and replied on May 14th on email stating:”I had previously removed all the personal documents that I required… I welcome the safeguarding assurances outlined in your email.”
Proops told the High Court on Thursday: “Ms Murphy cannot have had any legitimate purpose in seeking to irretrievably delete all of the material on her iCloud account from the Laptop on 21 April 2021.
“The Report had been published by that date. Ms Murphy knew, as a senior employee within the Labour Party, that the publication was being investigated.
“She knew or must have known that she had used her iCloud account for the purpose of conducting work for the Labour Party because it is frankly impossible that she would have forgotten receiving emails on the iCloud account in relation to such work only a matter of a few weeks previously.
“And she knew because she issued the instruction that much of the material relating to the Report’s production and circulation between employees of the Labour Party through the ‘WhatsApp Group’ had been deleted as Ms Murphy concedes in her pleadings.
“Ms Murphy should have known that she should not delete any other material relating to the Report then existing on her Laptop.
“That she sought to do so, without ever raising that deletion activity with the individuals within the Labour Party responsible for conducting investigation into the publication of the Report, is troubling.
“That her efforts to delete all of the material relevant to the Defendant’s investigations (including documents that amount to the Party’s confidential materials) failed cannot possibly ground any duty of confidence on the part of the Defendant.”
The email at the centre of Labour’s Privilege Application was discovered during the review of Murphy’s laptop, and was sent to Martin Howe, a solicitor used repeatedly under Corbyn’s leadership.
Murphy’s counsel claim the email – sent one days before the antisemitism report was leaked – is legally privileged and therefore not admissible in any court case.
“Even a non-lawyer would readily appreciate the exchange was private correspondence between a lawyer and his client,” Jacob Dean, the ex-employees’ counsel told the court.
Howe’s evidence also said that he“does not believe “that the Email can reasonably be said to be ‘incriminating’ Karie in the leak or that it provides evidence … that Karie intended to leak the Report or combined with others to do so”.
But Labour’s counsel told the court:”Murphy’s attempts to explain the content of the email are implausible and deeply question-begging. ”
The contents of the email were not discussed in open court on Wednesday, but were the subject of further legal deliberations in private.
Unlike Howe, Murphy did not mark her emails sent to the solicitor as being legally privileged.
A challenge was also made over whether Murphy’s iCloud account could be used by Labour.
The party’s lawyers argued “although the email was sent from an iCloud account, and not from the Labour Party’s email system, Ms Murphy had decided to synchronise her iCloud account with her Outlook account on the Laptop.”
In her witness statement Murphy, who was also employed as executive director under Corbyn, said she had sought advice from Howe for several years, including over the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s investigations into the party’s response to antisemitism allegations.
But in their submission to the court Labour said: “What is of relevance … is the fact that Mr Howe also had an ongoing professional relationship with the Labour Party at around the same time as the email was sent, and when the Party conducted its investigations into the Laptop. ”
It was added:”This matters because, at the time that the Laptop was reviewed, the Labour Party would not have assumed that emails sent by Ms Murphy to Mr Howe and stored on the Laptop (which, after all, was a work machine) would have related to private matters concerning Ms Murphy, as opposed to matters on which Ms Murphy was communicating with Mr Howe on the Party’s behalf.”
In his evidence, the court was told that solicitor Howe had a “long standing solicitor client relationship” with Murphy, but “at no stage was I or my firm retained by the party to advise it in relation to the EHRC’s investigation or any issues concerning the party’s dealings with the EHRC.”
Dean, the ex-employees’ counsel added:”Mr Howe’s evidence is unimpeachable that Ms Murphy was his client, and that he was advising her personally as her solicitor and the Labour Party had ‘nothing to do with’ his advice to and representation to her in relation to the personal response she was required to submit to the EHRC.”
The leaked 800 page internal report had initially been prepared as a document to be sent to the party ahead of the EHRC findings into the handling of antisemitism complaints within Labour.
Following legal advice, the Labour Party decided against publication.
Just a few days after Starmer was elected to replace Corbyn it was leaked in full.
Mr Justice Chamberlain will rule on whether the email can be used as evidence. Murphy’s legal team indicated that should the Court rule against them they would attempt to force an injunction to stop the email being used.
If Labour can successfully show Murphy was responsible for the leaking, then they will potentially be able to shift millions of pounds of liability away from them to Murphy.
“The [Labour Party] accepts that there is no document or group of documents which demonstrates [their] guilt,” Dean had said earlier in court. “The case against [them] is purely inferentia.”
• This article was updated and the word ‘iCloud’ added to the headline at 11.49am on 27/2/2023. A further update at 3.44pm on 3/3/2023 saw the headline altered to its current status and an incorrectly attributed quote changed from “he said” to “she said”.
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