Josh Simons, whose role was split between Cabinet Office and DSIT, was cleared of breaching ministerial code over allegations about investigations into journalists reporting on a key Labour think tank
The dedicated minister for the delivery of digital identity has resigned in light of having “become a distraction from this government’s important work”.
Josh Simons is leaving his post – which is split between the Cabinet Office and the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology – following the completion of an ethics probe. He departs despite being exonerated of any breach of the ministerial code.
Having been elected to parliament at the 2024 general election as the MP for Makerfield in the north-west of England, Simons become a junior Cabinet Office minister in September 2025. Two months ago, he was promoted into the split-department post, with a brief squarely focused on the delivery of government’s new digital identity.
The ethics investigation – launched at the behest of the prime minister and undertaken by his adviser on ministers’ interests: Sir Laurie Magnus – took place after Simons was accused of retaining public affairs firm APCO Worldwide to look into the background of journalists writing about the Labour Together think tank, which the outgoing minister formerly led before becoming and MP.
APCO was reportedly contracted by Labour Together to “investigate the sourcing, funding and origins” of reporting published by the Sunday Times, whose journalists had probed the think tank’s failure to declare political donations.
The work undertaken by the PR firm is understood to have included probes of the personal, religious and political lives of the reporters in question – which Simons has claimed went way beyond what was commissioned, and described in his resignation as “reprehensible material [which]… I took immediate action and removed” from the report provided to the think tank.
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However, a recent story from the Guardian claims that Simons emailed a full copy of this report to the UK’s cyber intelligence service, the National Cyber Security Centre, with a warning that the reporting of the Sunday Times could be linked to “people known to be operating in a pro-Kremlin propaganda network with links to Russian intelligence”.
A representative of Simons disputed the Guardian’s reporting and, in his resignation letter, the minister said that his correspondence with the NCSC related to concerns about the obtainment of confidential material by journalist Paul Holden, author of an excoriating new book about Starmer’s rise to power.
“I believe those concerns were justified,” Simons writes. “The book diminishes the antisemitism that infected Labour under its previous leadership.”
Having been cleared by Magnus of breaching the ministerial code, the minister’s missive says that “it was important to me to complete this process to prove that I behaved with integrity and that my public statements have been truthful and honest”.
“Nonetheless, it is clear that my remaining in office has now become a distraction from this government’s important work,” Simons writes. “For that reason, and with sadness and regret, I offer my resignation. It has been an honour to serve this great country.”
In the role he has now vacated, Simons was “responsible for supporting and providing assurance to the chief secretary to the prime minister and chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster in the Cabinet Office and the secretary of state for DSIT on the design and cross-government delivery of the digital ID programme”
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