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Rachel Reeves says she has 'full confidence' in Rayner, and thinks deputy PM can keep her job
In her interviews this morning Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, would not say whether she expected Angela Rayner to remain in post. Asked on LBC whether she thought that Rayner would still be deputy PM at the end of the year, Phillipson said she did not want to “speculate on or pre-judge” the outcome of the inquiry from the No 10 ethics adviser. She went on:
We’ve got a process that’s under way with the independent adviser. I’m not going to get into hypotheticals or speculate. I’m sorry to disappoint you. I’m just not going to do it. That process will run its course.
But Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, has given an interview to Sky News this morning, and she was willing to back Rayner unequivocally.
Asked if Rayner could stay in post despite the stamp duty mistake, Reeves replied:
Yes, I have full confidence in Angela Rayner. She’s a good friend and a colleague. She has accepted the right stamp duty wasn’t paid. That was an error, that was a mistake. She is working hard now to rectify that, in contact with HMRC, to make sure that the correct tax is paid.
Anyone that saw Angela’s statement yesterday, saw her interview yesterday, I think will have a lot of sympathy with some of the challenging family circumstances around this, around Angela’s disabled son.
But of course, it is right that people pay their right amount of tax, and it’s important that people in public life lead by example. And that’s why Angela has referred herself to the independent adviser on ethics.
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Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, was also asked in her Sky News interview if the Rayner controversy showed that the stamp duty regime was “way too complicated”. Reeves sidestepped the question, saying:
Well, look, Angela tried to do the right thing, and of course it is incumbent on all of us to try to properly understand the rules, and she is now working to make sure that the correct tax is paid.
Reeves declines to say when she and Starmer first learned that Rayner had underpaid stamp duty
In her Sky News interview Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, refused to say when she, and the PM, first knew that Angela Rayner had made a mistake with her stamp duty payment.
Asked when she and Keir Starmer first learned about the error, Reeves replied:
Well, the definitive advice came in on Wednesday morning, and that’s when Angela put out the statement.
On Tuesday as well some court injunctions were lifted related to her disabled son and those circumstances, and that’s why Angela was able to make a full statement on Wednesday.
Rachel Reeves says she has 'full confidence' in Rayner, and thinks deputy PM can keep her job
In her interviews this morning Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, would not say whether she expected Angela Rayner to remain in post. Asked on LBC whether she thought that Rayner would still be deputy PM at the end of the year, Phillipson said she did not want to “speculate on or pre-judge” the outcome of the inquiry from the No 10 ethics adviser. She went on:
We’ve got a process that’s under way with the independent adviser. I’m not going to get into hypotheticals or speculate. I’m sorry to disappoint you. I’m just not going to do it. That process will run its course.
But Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, has given an interview to Sky News this morning, and she was willing to back Rayner unequivocally.
Asked if Rayner could stay in post despite the stamp duty mistake, Reeves replied:
Yes, I have full confidence in Angela Rayner. She’s a good friend and a colleague. She has accepted the right stamp duty wasn’t paid. That was an error, that was a mistake. She is working hard now to rectify that, in contact with HMRC, to make sure that the correct tax is paid.
Anyone that saw Angela’s statement yesterday, saw her interview yesterday, I think will have a lot of sympathy with some of the challenging family circumstances around this, around Angela’s disabled son.
But of course, it is right that people pay their right amount of tax, and it’s important that people in public life lead by example. And that’s why Angela has referred herself to the independent adviser on ethics.
Bridget Phillipson was giving interviews this morning to promote the extension of free childcare in England, that took effect this week. There will be a ministerial statement on this in the Commons from Stephen Morgan, the early years minister, at about 11.30am.
Tories demand tax fraud investigation into Angela Rayner
Good morning. Keir Starmer does not want to lose Angela Rayner, and his defence of her in the Commons yesterday was a lot more robust than usual for a PM commenting on a minister who has self-referred to the ethics adviser, but Starmer does not have total control over what is going to happen. Quite a lot of the facts are not in the public domain, and may not be known to Starmer himself (mainly – what exactly was the tax advice Rayner had that led her to think she did not need to pay a higher rate of stamp duty, and how much had Rayner disclosed to these advisers?), and although in theory Starmer can ignore a recommendation from Sir Laurie Magnus, the ethics adviser investigating Rayner, there is a chance Magnus could come up with conclusions that make resignation inevitable.
Here is our overnight story about Rayner’s plight.
Magnus is expected to report soonish – within days, rather than weeks – but until he does the government will be in limbo.
There are various new developments in the story this morning, but none that dramatically alter Rayner’s survival prospects. Here are the key lines.
Rayner was told on Monday that her original assumption about how much stamp duty she had to pay on the flat she bought in Hove might be wrong. In controversies like this, ‘who knew what, when?’ always becomes a key issue and yesterday Downing Street ducked questions about when Keir Starmer first learned there was a problem. Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, was giving interviews this morning, and she was more forthcoming about when Rayner was told there was a problem. She told the Today programme:
My understanding is that, whilst Angela Rayner had received some advice on Monday, it was definitively given to her on Wednesday that she had made a mistake in terms of the amount of stamp duty that she had paid on the purchase. So that was on Wednesday. But there were limitations in what she could discuss and disclose, including with others and including in public, until that court order [a court order saying she could not discuss details of the trust set up for her disabled son, which affected her stamp duty liability] had been lifted on Tuesday.
In another interview, on Sky News, Phillipson said that Rayner received the “original version” of this legal advice on Monday, but that it “wasn’t later clarified until the Wednesday”.
Phillipson has not said when Starmer was first told Rayner may have underpaid her stamp duty, but Jason Groves from the Daily Mail thinks the PM would have been alerted to this on Monday. Commenting on the Phillipson inteviews, Groves said:
Given this timeline, it seems very likely that Starmer knew Rayner had failed to pay her taxes in full when he defended her in public on Monday afternoon and said her critics were making ‘a mistake’
Rayner consulted three people before she concluded that she only needed to pay the standard rate of stamp duty on her flat purchase, not the higher rate for a second home, broadcasters have been briefed. In their BBC story, Billy Kenber and Damian Grammaticas report:
It is understood the deputy prime minister consulted one individual experienced in conveyancing and two experts on the law around trusts before the purchase.
However, it is unclear if any of those people were experts in complex tax law and it is not known if they knew about the full details of the trust, which was set up to help fund care for her son.
Kevin Hollinrake, the Conservative party chair, has written to HM Revenue and Customs asking it to investigate whether Rayner was guilty of tax evasion. As Sky News reports, Hollinrake said in his letter:
Why did [Rayner], or her representatives, not take the necessary steps to check with HMRC on whether second homes stamp duty was actually payable. This was ‘careless’ at best, and did not meet her requirement to act responsibly.”
There are legitimate questions on whether Ms Rayner could have afforded the property if she had been liable for the additional £40,000 in second homes stamp duty, on top of the £30,0000 standard stamp duty and the £150,000 downpayment towards the Hove flat.
This then raises the question whether the tax evasion was deliberate, to try to get away with minimising her upfront costs so she could afford her £650,000 Natwest mortgage (which is likely to cost in the region £4,000 a month to service).
Hollinrake also says it should have been obvious to Rayner that she did have to pay the higher rate.
There will be more on this as the day goes on. But it won’t just be Rayner. Here is the agenda for the day.
9am: John Swinney, Scotland’s first minister, gives a speech on Scottish independence.
Morning: Keir Starmer participates virtually in a meeting of the “Coalition of the Willing”, the European countries offering to guarantee Ukraine’s security in the event of a ceasefire.
9.30am: Steve Reed, the environment secretary, takes questions in the Commons.
10am: Jeremy Corbyn opens his Gaza Tribunal hearings, exploring British complicity in Israel’s military operations in Gaza.
Morning: Starmer visits a shipyard in Glasgow to promote the benefits to Scotland of the government’s deal with Norway to build warships.
11am: Peter Kyle, the science secretary, speaks at the Universities UK conference.
11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
Late morning: Members of the Stormont executive hold a press conference to give their response to the racist attacks that have taken place in Northern Ireland over the summer.
Afternoon: John Healey, the defence secretary, holds a press conference in Norway with his Norwegian counterpart after the signing of the warships deal.
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