THE Cabinet Office minister at the centre of the Labour Together spy scandal has resigned after being referred to the Prime Minister’s ethics watchdog.

Josh Simons stepped down on Saturday following criticism of his leadership of the right-wing think tank, which, in emails sent to the intelligence services, falsely linked journalists to a “pro-Kremlin” network.

He said his position had become “a distraction from the government’s important work” after previously claiming to be “surprised” and “furious” over Labour Together’s spying on reporters.

Mr Simons resigned despite the Prime Minister’s independent adviser Sir Laurie Magnus having cleared him of breaching the ministerial code in his work at the think tank.

Pressure had been mounting on the Labour MP for Makerfield since it was revealed that in his time as head of at Labour Together it had allegedly paid for a probe into journalists who covered the group’s failure to declare more than £700,000 in donations linked to Sir Keir Starmer’s rise to power.

Mr Simons reportedly had a personal hand in commissioning Apco Worldwide for £36,000 to look into the “background and motivations” of journalists in 2023, before instructing the Cabinet Office to “establish the facts.”

It had produced a 58-page report wrongly claiming that the journalists could be part of a Kremlin-backed conspiracy.

After these machinations were exposed, further questions were raised about Sir Keir’s then chief of staff Morgan McSweeney, who led Labour Together at the time of the scandal.

Mr McSweeney recently quit that job, taking the blame for advising the PM to appoint the Jeffrey Epstein-connected Lord Peter Mandelson as ambassador to the United States.

Labour Together sent an abridged version of the report to the government’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) that included false information about the Sunday Times’ Gabriel Pogrund and Harry York, US reporter Matt Taibbi, freelance journalist Paul Holden and the Morning Star’s Andrew Murray.

Despite the NCSC never opening an investigation into claims raised by Mr Simons, a law firm representing Labour Together said in February 2023 that there were “ongoing investigations by the UK Intelligence services.”

Mr Simons claimed in his resignation letter that he had never sought to “smear [the] newspaper reporters” targeted by Apco.

He added: “The work of reporters like Gabriel Pogrund, Harry Yorke and Henry Dyer sustains our democracy. With rigour and objectivity, they hold those in positions of power to account.”