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Minister sacked for WhatsApp posts will not face police action
Andrew Gwynne still faces Labour Party and parliamentary investigations over his ‘racist and sexist’ comments
A former minister sacked over racist and sexist comments in a leaked WhatsApp group will face no further action.
Andrew Gwynne is under investigation by the parliamentary authorities after he wrote in the group that he hoped a 72-year-old pensioner would soon be dead.
He also joked about a local cycling campaigner being “mown down”, suggested that a local vicar be “burned on a bonfire” and made derogatory comments about Angela Rayner and Diane Abbott.
A Greater Manchester Police (GMP) spokesman has now told The Telegraph the messages have been reviewed by a senior investigating officer, and that the force has decided to take no further action.
Previously, GMP said it had begun “initial inquiries” into the incident, and recorded a non-crime hate incident in its official figures.
The messages provoked fury from constituents when they were first reported in February, while the leak to The Mail on Sunday was blamed on Mr Gwynne’s political opponents.
In one message, Mr Gwynne called a voter a “hag” and said she lived in a “s--t” house, according to the full transcript of the chat, seen by The Telegraph.
He apologised for the messages, describing them as “badly misjudged”, while another Labour MP in the group, Oliver Ryan, also apologised.
Mr Gwynne, the MP for Denton and Reddish, was sacked from his position as a junior health minister on the day his messages were first reported. Both he and Mr Ryan have been suspended by the Labour Party pending an investigation.
Meanwhile, Parliament’s standards commissioner has launched a separate investigation into Mr Gwynne for allegedly “causing significant damage to the reputation of the House as a whole, or of its Members generally”.
Several people made complaints to the police after the messages were reported, prompting GMP to release a statement that “a small number of complaints relating to publicised messages allegedly from a WhatsApp group” were being examined.
They also confirmed officers had recorded a non-crime hate incident, but said “initial inquiries” were ongoing.
A GMP spokesman told The Telegraph: “Following the complaints received relating to the recently published WhatsApp conversation, work was undertaken to review the contents by a senior investigating officer.
“As a result of this assessment, Greater Manchester Police has concluded that no further action will be taken. The complainants have been written to and advised of this outcome.”