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Diane Abbott is providing a House of Commons pass to the head of a union-backed campaign supporting the government of Venezuela, the Evening Standard can reveal.

The shadow home secretary and Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn have been under pressure to condemn a violent crackdown on political critics of Venezuela’s socialist president Nicolas Maduro, including the arrest of two opposition leaders.

Ms Abbott welcomed Maduro’s election in 2013 with a tweet declaring “a better way is possible”. Now it emerges that she employs Left-wing activist Matt Willgress, the national co-ordinator of the Venezuela Solidarity Campaign, in her House of Commons office.

Mr Willgress works part-time for Ms Abbott on digital communications and social media, said her spokeswoman, who added that he did not lobby MPs for VSC while working for her.

The campaign is based at the London offices of the Unite trade union, which is Labour’s biggest funder and is run by hard-Left general secretary Len McCluskey. Mr Willgress writes a regular column for the communist Morning Star newspaper in which he has urged support for Maduro.

When he appeared on TV channel Russia Today — interviewed by former MP George Galloway — in 2014 Mr Willgress attacked attempts to “destabilise and undermine the revolution” in Venezuela.

Conservative MP Greg Hands, the minister for London, said: “The Venezuela Solidarity campaign is a propaganda mouthpiece of the Maduro socialist regime in Caracas and counts Ken Livingstone as its president.

“At a time when Venezuelan democracy is being dismantled by socialist strongman Maduro, the shadow home secretary needs to consider carefully whether such people are appropriate as parliamentary pass holders.”

Labour MP Graham Jones, who chairs an all-party group on Venezuela, said: “I don’t see a problem with Diane giving Venezuela Solidarity Campaign a pass, but it is not an organisation I would associate myself with.”

Ms Abbott’s spokeswoman said Mr Willgress’s employment was not linked to VSC or the Unite union.

“He is a passholder because he comes into our office, when required, to do our digital work, mainly on social media, and not for any other reason,” she added. “Matt does nothing from our office that relates to VSC.” Ms Abbott raised eyebrows in 2012 when the late Hugo Chavez was running Venezuela by saying that the country’s democracy was “less liable to fraud and impersonation than the British election process”.

The Evening Standard invited a comment from Mr Willgress but had not received one at the time of going to press.