A Labour minister has claimed he would ‘chase down’ anyone who stole his phone and ‘get it back’.
Al Carns, an ex-Royal Marine who is now Armed Forces minister, made the remarks amid a row over the theft of a device belonging to Keir Starmer’s former chief of staff.
Fears have been raised that exchanges relating to the appointment of Peter Mandelson could be lost after Morgan McSweeney’s phone was stolen last year.
Mr McSweeney quit as the Prime Minister’s top aide last month, with many blaming him for pushing Lord Mandelson’s appointment as Britain’s ambassador to the US.
It has since emerged that Mr McSweeney’s Government phone was stolen in October 2025 and not backed up, leading to concerns about the loss of correspondence and sparking claims of a ‘cover-up’.
But Mr Carns suggested he would not have been left in the same situation as Mr McSweeney if his own phone had been snatched on the street.
‘Well, first of all, I’d like to see the person who’s going to steal it, because I’m going to chase them down the street and get it back,’ he told BBC Newsnight.
‘If I have lost my phone, the first thing I’m going to do is make sure that I get rid of all the systems and make sure no one can steal bank account details and everything else off it. And I’d recommend anyone should follow that process.’
The Prime Minister has called it ‘far-fetched’ to suggest the loss of Mr McSweeney’s phone was linked to MPs demanding the release of files on Lord Mandelson, which followed new revelations about the peer’s friendship with paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
Downing Street has sought to emphasise the theft happened ‘months before’ a House of Commons motion was passed compelling the Government to release the files.
Police have taken the unusual step of releasing a transcript of Mr McSweeney’s 999 call reporting the phone theft.
In the call, he gives his name, a personal email address and a home address outside London, and says the device is a Government phone and that he has called his office to get it tracked.
But it’s not clear that Mr McSweeney told officers he was the PM’s chief of staff at the time, despite the likely sensitive nature of material on his phone.
Mr Carns, who resigned from the military in order to become an MP at the 2024 general election, dismissed the row over Mr McSweeney’s lost phone as the ‘worst of politics’.
‘We’ve got two wars on, one in the Middle East, one in Ukraine, and we’re talking about someone’s phone,’ he added.
‘I’m not interested in talking about someone’s phones, I’m interested in dealing with defence matters and making sure our British interests are secure.
‘I’m interesting in dealing with a crisis in the Middle East that involving hundreds of thousands of either British citizens or expats, and a war in Ukraine that’s caused a million casualties, more casualties than America took in the entire Second World War.
‘Am I interested in one person’s phone? I haven’t even paid attention to it.’
He continued: ‘I’m not going to discuss the details of someone’s phone when I have two wars ongoing. I think this is gutter politics, not interesting.’
It has also emerged that Lord Mandelson will be asked to supply messages from his personal phone as part of the disclosure of files related to his appointment as Sir Keir’s ambassador to the US.
MPs moved in February to force the publication of tens of thousands of documents amid questions over how much was known about Lord Mandelson’s links to Epstein before the peer was handed the Washington job.
The Cabinet Office is working on an information-gathering plan and will ask the peer to provide everything he holds in scope of the humble address used to compel the release of correspondence, according to Whitehall sources.
They say this will include requesting data from his personal phone and stressed this had already been part of the plan.
The Times reported that the Cabinet Office had not asked Lord Mandelson for any messages on his personal device and instead were attempting to piece together correspondence by asking ministers and officials to provide it from their side.
Lord Mandelson, a political appointment rather than a career diplomat, was sacked from his Washington role in September last year over his links with Epstein, who died in 2019.
The first tranche of documents related to the decision was published earlier this month after a demand for transparency by MPs, with more to follow.
The Metropolitan Police wrongly recorded the theft of Mr McSweeney’s phone as having taken place in east London rather than Westminster after he wrongly gave his location as Belgrave Street rather than Belgrave Road during the 20 October call.
This meant officers checked the wrong CCTV and concluded there were no realistic lines of inquiry to follow. This is now being reviewed.
Tory leader Kemi Badenoch said: ‘Keir Starmer can’t – or won’t – tell us if he spoke to Peter Mandelson before appointing him as ambassador.
‘The strange absence of Starmer’s opinion in the Mandelson files. Now the curious case of McSweeney’s ‘stolen’ phone. There’s something fishy going on.’
