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John McDonnell says he's pleased the police are investigating alleged anti-Semitism in the Labour Party.

The Shadow Chancellor admitted the Party was too slow to address the issue.

On Friday the Metropolitan Police announced it had launched a criminal investigation into allegations of anti-Semitic hate crimes within Labour after being passed an internal party dossier obtained by radio station LBC.

The file was handed to Met Commissioner Cressida Dick during a regular phone-in on the radio stations.

Mr McDonnell said today: "We should have been on to this much quicker.

"I wanted to be much more ruthless and Jeremy was the same.

(Image: LBC)

"I'm pleased the police are investigating, I really am pleased. I don't say this in a party political way. Every political party if they identify anti-Semitism or other forms of racism we've got to absolutely be ruthless about addressing it."

In a statement, the Metropolitan Police said: "On Tuesday 4 September, the Met Commissioner was handed a folder of paperwork following a radio interview with LBC Radio in Leicester Square. The complainant alleged that the documentation included evidence of anti-Semitic hate crimes.

"The contents have been examined by specialist officers.

"A criminal investigation has commenced into some of the allegations within the documentation.

"Early investigative advice is being sought from the Crown Prosecution Service.

"The MPS will not comment further on the details of our investigation."

LBC, who obtained the leaked document, had it reviewed by Mak Chishty, who was in charge of dealing with hate crime for the Metropolitan police until last year.

Out of the 45 anti-Semitism cases within the files he said 17 should have been reported to the police as a race-hate incident for investigation.

Among the messages were "We shall rid the Jews who are cancer on us all…." and "Zionist extremist MP who hates civilised people about to get a good kicking", according to LBC, which saw the file drawn up by Mak Chishty, who was in charge of dealing with hate crime for the Met until last year.

Speaking on Five Live's Pienaar's Politics, Mr McDonnell said that all political parties had work to do.

He said: "Baroness Warsi has raised this issue of Islamophobia in the Conservative Party and I just want to say words of advice to them - do what we're doing now, have a full investigation, deal with those things which are reported to you and, of course, if there's a crime get the police involved. "

Earlier today vice chair of the Conservatives Kemi Badenoch downplayed Islamophobia within the party which has been raised by Baroness Warsi.

When asked about the fears of the Muslim Council of Britain, the Essex MP said they had a "political motive".

(Image: PA Wire)

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She said: "I completely disagree with Baroness Warsi’s view on that. We take every single allegation of Islamophobia seriously and where we do find party members or people who hold positions in local government doing things, we suspend them, we investigate them …"

When challenged, she added: "I don't think that the Muslim Council of Britain is an organisation that would look very favourably on the Conservative party anyway so I think there is probably a political motive there."

The Labour Party says it has not been contacted by the police about the dossier of allegations but is ready to co-operate with the investigation.

A spokesman said: "The Labour Party has a robust system for investigating complaints of alleged breaches of Labour Party rules by its members.

"Where someone feels they have been a victim of crime, they should report it to the police in the usual way."