Rachel Reeves tried to shut down controversy about her illegal home rental yesterday as she dodged questions about the scandal.
The Chancellor had been hiding from the media since the Daily Mail revealed last week that she broke the law by failing to obtain the licence needed to let her family home when she moved into Downing Street.
Ms Reeves finally broke cover yesterday to deliver a gloomy pre-Budget speech about the state of the economy.
But she gave short shrift to attempts to raise questions about her domestic arrangements.
During a 24-minute press conference in Downing Street, the Chancellor took just one question about the episode – and dismissed it with a ten-second response which failed to address the points raised.
She refused to take questions from the Daily Mail, which has led coverage of the scandal. Asked by the BBC to explain how she had fallen foul of a law she had championed herself – and how she came to give misleading information about it to the Prime Minister – she gave only the briefest answer.
In a curt response designed to close down further questioning, Ms Reeves said: ‘There was an exchange of letters between me and the Prime Minister. And the Prime Minister’s ethics adviser has passed his judgment. I don’t have anything more to say than that.’
In the Commons later, Ms Reeves also ordered her junior ministers to block attempts by opposition MPs to raise the issue during a regular session of questions to the Treasury.
Former Tory Cabinet minister Esther McVey asked Ms Reeves: ‘The Chancellor has justified her lack of a licence for renting out her house as an “inadvertent error”, but HMRC is never prepared to accept that people make inadvertent errors. Will this now change, or does the Chancellor expect to be treated differently from everyone else who makes an inadvertent error?’
Junior Treasury minister Dan Tomlinson, who was asked by the Chancellor to respond, said simply: ‘I am not sure that the matter just raised has much to do with HMRC.’
The Daily Mail revealed last week that Ms Reeves had been letting her south London home for £3,200 a month without the proper licence. She initially said she was unaware she needed to get a ‘selective’ licence for the property, which she let when she moved into 11 Downing Street last year.
But emails between her husband and the letting agency showed the couple were in fact told about the need for a licence.
Despite the Chancellor backtracking on her previous explanation for the error, Keir Starmer rejected calls to launch a formal investigation into the row as he deemed Ms Reeves’ mistake an ‘inadvertent’ failure to obtain a rental licence.
Failing to obtain a licence is a criminal offence and can be punished with an unlimited fine on prosecution, a fine of £30,000 as an alternative to prosecution, or an order to pay back up to 12 months’ rent – almost £38,000 in Ms Reeves’ case.
Southwark Council advises tenants to apply to a tribunal to recoup rent if a landlord has not had an appropriate licence.
The local authority last week indicated Ms Reeves is unlikely to be fined as it suggested enforcement action is reserved for landlords who ignore warning letters about not having a licence.
