The human rights campaigner Shami Chakrabarti today rejected any suggestion that she had been offered a peerage by the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn before the completion of her report on antisemitism and racism in the party.
Her acceptance of the honour had been widely condemned by Jewish organisations as compromising the independence of her inquiry.
But on the Andrew Marr Show on BBC1 this morning, when asked whether there had been any discussion about the Lords before the report was out, she replied “Jeremy Corbyn is not a corrupt man and I am not a corrupt woman. I stand by the report. There was nothing remotely transactional about this.”
She said the peerage had come “after Brexit, after the report” in the resignation honours.
Ms Chakrabarti was the sole Labour nomination to the Lords in the resignation honours following David Cameron’s departure as Prime Minister.
Rejecting claims that her report had been a whitewash, she said that she had written it to “try and civilise discourse in the Labour party. I have yet to completely succeed in that enterprise but I stand by it.”
Asked if she would take a role in Mr Corbyn’s shadow cabinet, she replied “I think he’s got a leadership election to win before anything like that”.
Last month Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis said that the credibility of her report, which was published in July, lay “in tatters” after her acceptance of the peerage.
The CST described it as “a shameless kick in the teeth for all those who put hope in her now wholly compromised inquiry”.