Health minister Andrew Gwynne sacked over messages

Health minister Andrew Gwynne has been sacked after a newspaper revealed he sent a string of offensive and abusive WhatsApp messages.

The MP for Gorton and Denton was also suspended from the Labour Party after the Mail on Sunday reported the messages, which insulted constituents, fellow MPs and councillors.

A government spokesperson said Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer was “determined to uphold high standards of those in public office” and “will not hesitate to take action against any minister who fails to meet these standards”.

Gwynne said on X that he was sorry for any offence caused by the “badly misjudged” comments.

He added that he understood the prime minister and Labour’s decision, and “while very sad to have been suspended, will support them in any way I can”.

Housing minister Matthew Pennycook told Sky News that the WhatsApp messages were “completely unacceptable” and that the “whole incident” was being investigated.

A Labour spokesperson said Gwynne, 50, has been “administratively suspended” as a party member as it investigated “comments made in this WhatsApp group in line with the Labour Party’s rules and procedures”.

“Swift action will be taken if individuals are found to have breached the high standards expected of them as Labour Party members,” the spokesperson added.

In messages seen by the Mail on Sunday, Gwynne said he hoped a 72-year-old woman would soon be dead after she wrote to her local councillor about bin collections.

The councillor shared the woman’s letter with Gwynne and other Labour figures in a WhatsApp group called Trigger Me Timbers, the newspaper reported.

The newspaper said he also joked about a constituent being “mown down” by a truck.

Gwynne also reportedly posted sexist comments about Angela Rayner, and racist remarks about Labour MP Diane Abbott.

And he reportedly responded to a message containing the name of an American psychologist, Marshall Rosenberg, saying he sounded “too militaristic and too Jewish”, adding “Is he in Mossad?”.

The newspaper reported further comments it said appeared to make light of antisemitism.

Conservative shadow cabinet office minister Alex Burghart told Sky News that he questioned whether any other members of the WhatsApp group called out Gwynne’s remarks at the time.

“That was a big WhatsApp group with a lot of other Labour members – did any of them step in at the time? Did any of them call that out?” he said.

He said the message about the elderly constituent was “sort of quite a nasty attempt to do down an old person”.

And he said the message about someone’s name sounding “too Jewish” was “sinister”.

“And that really does suggest that just beneath the surface, between all the sort of the window dressing that Keir Starmer has done that with senior Labour politicians, there may still be a very serious problem with antisemitism, and I hope that the prime minister will get to grips with that immediately,” Burghart said.

Pennycook added: “An investigation is taking place, and any action that needs to follow from that investigation will be seen through.

“I don’t think anyone can be in any doubt about this prime minister or this government’s commitment to upholding the highest standards in public office and to rooting out antisemitism from the Labour Party, root and branch.”

Gwynne was first elected as a Labour MP in 2005, representing the Denton and Reddish constituency. He was elected as MP for Gorton and Denton last year following a constituency boundary change.

Health Secretary Wes Streeting appointed him to the junior ministerial role in the Department of Health and Social Care after Labour won government in July 2024.

He is the third MP to leave the government since last summer’s election, coming after the departures of Tulip Siddiq as Treasury minister in January and Louise Haigh as transport secretary last November.

Siddiq stepped down over allegations linked to her aunt’s political movement in Bangladesh, while Haigh resigned after it emerged that she had pleaded guilty to a criminal offence related to the reported theft of a work mobile phone.