UK politics: Tories claim McSweeney has ‘serious questions’ to answer about phone theft – as it happened

Tories claim McSweeney has 'serious questions' to answer about phone theft, after minister rejects 'conspiracy' thinking
The Conservatives are now claiming that Morgan McSweeney has “serious questions” to answer about the account he has given about the loss of his mobile phone last year.

Earlier today the Metropolitan police released the entire transcript of the conversation McSweeney had with a 999 call handler at least partly in response to suggestions that, if the PM’s chief of staff had really had his phone stolen, the Met would have taken it more seriously.

The transcript shows that McSweeney revealed it was a government phone that had been taken, but did not disclose his job title, or the fact he worked in Downing Street.

(See 11.54am .)
This has not stopped people suggesting that McSweeney wanted to get rid of the phone to avoid having the disclose his messages to Peter Mandelson (as he is now required to do – under a Commons humble address passed more than three months after the phone theft was reported).

Wes Streeting , the health secretary, has dismissed talk of a cover-up.

(See 11.36am .)
But Kemi Badenoch has let it be known that she thinks the conspiracy theorists might be onto something.

(See 11.36am .)
But now her party has actually issued a press release headlined: Conservatives raise serious questions about Morgan McSweeney’s ‘stolen phone’.

It quotes Alex Burghart , the shadow Cabinet Office minister (and not a politician normally associated with tinfoil hat-type thinking), saying:
double quotation mark This whole thing stinks to high heaven.

We know the government were worried about a humble address in October, shortly before McSweeney’s phone got ‘stolen’.

McSweeney didn’t back up the messages and the government didn’t chase the Met for CCTV.

From the outset of the Mandelson affair Keir Starmer has tried to cover things up.

The prime minister did it in September with ‘I didn’t know the depth of the relationship’.

He didn’t want to release the Mandelson files in February until we forced the humble address.

Now the chief of staff’s phone goes missing and there doesn’t seem to be any intent to get it back or retrieve the messages.

Starmer needs to end this cover up now.

See 4.39pm for more on what the Tory press release says.