Labour call for investigation into Kemi Badenoch's tweets about a journalist

Labour has called for an investigation into whether the equalities minister breached the ministerial code by publishing a journalist's emails on Twitter.

In the emails, HuffPost writer Nadine White asked why Kemi Badenoch hadn't participated in a pro-vaccine video.

Ms Badenoch described the query as "creepy and bizarre" and accused the news site of "looking to sow distrust".

Labour said this exposed the journalist to "a torrent of abuse online".

In the letter to head of the civil service Simon Case, Labour's shadow women and equalities secretary Marsha de Cordova said: "Ms Badenoch's actions last week fell well below the standards and behaviours expected of a government minister.

"The appropriate course of action, at the very least, would have been to professionally acknowledge the enquiry."

Instead, she said, "Ms Badenoch has exposed Ms White to a torrent of abuse online which has necessitated the lockdown of her Twitter account".

Vaccine trial

The journalist was requesting a statement on why Ms Badenoch hadn't participated in a social media video of black MPs encouraging vaccine take-up across the black community.

Ms Badenoch said on Twitter that she supported the video but had not taken part because she was participating in a vaccine trial and wanted to avoid mixing messages.

She added that she had been working "on improving government communications across all communities, especially those disproportionately impacted by Covid-19".

The Cabinet Office confirmed Labour's letter had been received and they would "respond in due course".

'Worrying precedent'

On Wednesday, Ms White called on Ms Badenoch to delete her tweets, adding she had received a number of abusive messages from other Twitter users as a result.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour, she said she found Ms Badenoch's decision to publish her emails "very shocking" and it set a "worrying precedent".

"Please do the right thing and apologise, delete the tweets. And we can we can move on," she added.

On Tuesday, the prime minister's press secretary told journalists that the government believed in HuffPost's right to ask questions of government and that Ms Badenoch's decision to put the correspondence in the public domain was a matter for her.

"Kemi Badenoch felt that the correspondence with Nadine White was something she should put in the public domain," she said.