The Metropolitan Police has, meanwhile, taken the unusual step publishing a transcript of McSweeney’s 999 call to report the theft after claims they did not investigate it properly.
The full transcript of the call, which was received shortly before 22:30 BST on 20 October, includes McSweeney saying someone on a push bike “just robbed my phone”, adding: “He’s come onto the pavement to grab my phone and cycled off on a bike.”
McSweeney told the handler the device is “a government phone”, that “I rang my office to get the phone tracked and then I rang you”, and that he was “definitely” willing to make a statement to police.
It was later discovered that officers had recorded the wrong location of the crime.
The Met said this was because McSweeney told the call handler the alleged crime had happened in Belgrave Street in Westminster, but the correct street name is actually Belgrave Road.
The Met has advised the error came about because the call handler pulled up a matching Belgrave Street in Tower Hamlets.
Describing the thief, McSweeney said he was a slim, black man of average height in his late teens, and later added that he had chased him down the street and then lost him in a park.
The police have also said that, as McSweeney did not share details of his chief of staff role, nor the security risks associated with the phone, that information could not reasonably have shaped its officers’ decision making.
The Met said it was reassessing available evidence, following the discovery that officers had recorded the wrong address.
At the time, the Met advised its officers allocated to the case made two attempts to phone McSweeney during working hours but there was no answer and, having reviewed CCTV in the area, they didn’t identify any realistic lines of enquiry and closed the case.
Speaking on Wednesday morning, Health Secretary Wes Streeting said he was “not surprised by the cynicism” around reports that McSweeney’s phone holding potentially embarrassing information had been stolen.
But he insisted it was most likely due to “cock-up rather than conspiracy”, telling told ITV’s Good Morning Britain: “I do trust the account that Morgan McSweeney’s phone was stolen, for a couple of reasons.
“It was reported to police at the time – I think there’s a separate set of questions as to why this wasn’t dealt with given that it was a phone of a senior government official that would have contained sensitive information.
“I suspect many people watching who’ve had their phone nicked will not be remotely surprised that police haven’t done anything because that’s been their experience too, but it is serious that something that will have contained sensitive information wasn’t properly investigated.”
Streeting went on to say McSweeney “couldn’t have known” in October, when he reported his phone stolen, that the contents of his phone would be wanted by MPs in February as the order to release the documents was “unprecedented”.
Streeting added the theft should “absolutely” have been reported to the permanent secretary of the Cabinet Office, Cat Little, and it is understood the Cabinet Office does have some of the messages between McSweeney and Lord Mandelson.
