FORMER shadow work and pensions secretary Owen Smith has confirmed that he will stand for the Labour leadership.

The MP for Pontypridd, Owen Smith, is expected to announce his leadership bid on Wednesday.

He tweeted on Sunday: "I am not prepared to stand by and see our party split."

James Schneider, a spokesman for the Corbyn-backing Momentum organisation, said the January 12 cut-off for securing a vote in the leadership poll was "not fair".

Mr Schneider told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: "We've seen since the Brexit vote probably the largest surge in political party membership in this country's history, with almost 130,000 people joining the Labour Party and a great number of those joined on the basis that they would be able to vote in a future leadership election."

Amid reports that the NEC has suspended all Constituency Labour Party meetings across the country because of concerns over bullying, Mr Schneider said: "Let's be clear, all harassment and intimidation is absolutely wrong and doesn't have a place in politics - as Jeremy Corbyn has repeatedly said and Momentum repeatedly says."

Mr Schneider said the organisation had not heard of a single complaint of its members taking part in intimidation.

But Labour MP Dame Margaret Hodge said "people around Jeremy" were indulging in "dirty politics".

She complained of people being called "scum" and having bricks thrown through their windows and said she had received offensive anti-Semitic emails.

"This is not the new politics, it's the old politics I fought in the 1980s, when people like John McDonnell and Ken Livingstone were in leadership roles," she told Today. "It was a politics of intolerance, bullying and intimidation.

"These are people working in Jeremy's name, they are people around Jeremy. Far too many individuals, Members of Parliament and others are being intimidated, bullied, harassed, physically assaulted."

Dame Margaret called for hustings in the PLP to choose a single "unity candidate" to challenge Mr Corbyn.

Stephen Kinnock, MP for Aberavon, said the next Labour leader needs to be a woman and added: "Angela Eagle is the right woman for the job."

He told ITV's Good Morning Britain he would not support Mr Corbyn if he wins the leadership challenge and has "no confidence in Jeremy as a leader".