A quitting Labour MP has denied a data breach after her old party reported her to the information watchdog.

Joan Ryan has been reported to the Information Commissioner just days after quitting the party on Tuesday night and joining The Independent Group.

But the Enfield North MP strongly denied accessing any party data after she quit.

She told the Press Association: "Neither I, nor my office, have accessed or used any Labour Party data since I resigned the Labour whip and my membership of the Labour Party."

It comes after staff were locked out from accessing membership data this week and MPs were sent a warning by general secretary Jennie Formby.

It is understood Labour will be submitting a full report to the Information Commissioner.

A Labour spokesperson said: "The Labour Party became aware of attempts to access personal data held on the party’s systems for unauthorised use.

"Personal data the party holds about individuals is protected by law, under the GDPR and Data Protection Act 2018.

"We are aware that the Information Commissioner is taking an increasingly serious view of misuse of personal data and requires a data controller to take reasonable and proportionate steps to ensure the security of data held on its systems.

"The Labour Party takes our data protection obligations extremely seriously."

A spokesman for the Information Commissioner’s Office said: "We have received an initial report of a data breach from the Labour Party and will be making enquiries."

Questioned by the Mirror earlier this week, former Labour MP Chris Leslie said: "We did think through in our checklist of things that had to be done, obviously if you’d resigned your Labour membership, you don’t have access to Labour facilities and data and all those other things.

"And things have got to be destroyed up to that point.

"Obviously while you’re still a Labour MP and you’re still a member of the Labour Party you have access and use of all of that data as it was.

"This is a process of separation and if the focus of the party is going to be to kind of pick holes in the process of that separation, so be it.

"But we’re trying our best to do this in as decent a way as possible."

He urged Labour HQ not to descend into "character assassination".

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