SHADOW foreign secretary Emily Thornberry has said Labour was wrong to be “going for” former officials who blew the whistle on how it handled anti-Semitism in the party.

She said she understood the party had concerns about a BBC Panorama programme that highlighted the issue last week.

However, she added it was important that the party addressed the problems which the documentary had raised about the way such cases were dealt with.

“I think that we shouldn’t be going for the messengers, we should be looking at the message. I think that is what is important,” she told BBC One’s The Andrew Marr Show yesterday.

“Nobody can pretend that there isn’t an ongoing problem within the Labour Party about anti-Semitism, about our processes for dealing with it.”

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Several former Labour employees broke non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) to take part in the BBC programme, which also revealed some of those working in Labour’s complaints team had suffered mental health problems. One former employee said he had considered taking his own life as a result of the pressure he faced at the time. Meanwhile, Labour’s Dame Margaret Hodge said she had been “devastated” by the personal testimonies from former party staff.

The MP for Barking told Sky News’s Sophy Ridge On Sunday hosted by Niall Paterson: “I don’t know how often, how many people, how many incidents of anti-Semitism we have to have on our televisions screens or in our newspapers for the party leadership to stand up and really listen. There seems to be a dogged determination not to listen.”

She added: “It was utterly deplorable and a complete abuse of power for the leadership’s reaction simply to try and pursue these people with lawyers and trying to shut them up.”

Shadow chancellor John McDonnell insisted Labour “is getting on top of this”, in relation to anti-Semitism claims made against his party.

He told BBC Radio 4’s The World This Weekend: “I think we are sorting it out actually. I think we’ve got a new general secretary, we’ve put in place a system now. Someone said the other day (we are dealing with reports) eight times faster than it ever was before.

“We’ve now got lawyers involved, that really do – making sure that we don’t lose any cases legally, so we have proper decision-making processes.

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“There’s always lessons to be learnt, but I think the way Jennie Formby our general secretary has operated, implemented the measures, is getting on top of this.

“But the issue for us is that we’ve now got the EHRC (European Human Rights Commission) inquiry, we want to learn lessons from that as well. We want to be the party that demonstrates we are an anti-racist party.”

McDonnell added: “I’m hoping other political parties and other organisations will learn from us because you’ve seen what’s happened with regard to the allegations of Islamophobia in the Conservative Party. Let’s all work on this together.”