Labour claimed Angela Rayner was a victim of class warfare today as senior ministers rallied tried to save her career amid an official probe into her tax affairs.
Cabinet colleagues of the Deputy Prime Minister suggested she was being unfairly treated for being a successful, working-class Northerner after she admitted underpaying stamp duty by £40,000.
Ms Rayner, 45, faces an anxious wait to see if she will be cleared or pilloried by ethics watchdog Sir Laurie Magnus for her purchase of a lavish £800,000 flat on the south coast.
He is due to rule within days whether she is culpable for the underpayment when she bought the seaside apartment in Hove in the summer, when she declared it as her primary residence.
Sir Keir Starmer has faced calls to sack her as DPM and Housing Secretary. But senior ministers led by Rachel Reeves today circled the wagons around her.
The Chancellor used a media interview to say she has ‘full confidence’ in her ‘good friend and colleague’.
And in Westminster, Commons Leader Lucy Powell accused the Tories of having a go at her Mancunian colleague ‘because she is so bloody good at her job’.
That followed an allegation from Tech Secretary Peter Kyle last night that Mr Rayner was ‘being treated very differently’ because she was from a working class background.
He told LBC: ‘Just because it is Angela, with her accent and her background, people are treating her in a way they wouldn’t, that if a Tory MP who was born in wealth had a second home, which many of them do already.’
It came after it emerged that Ms Rayner used some of her disabled son’s NHS compensation to buy her second home – which was this morning daubed with grafitti by vandals.
After weeks of stonewalling from Labour the DPM yesterday tearfully admitted she was not eligible for a £40,000 stamp duty discount she received when she bought the property near Brighton.
As well as an ethics probe by Sir Laurie HMRC is also investigating.
But Sir Keir is said to be determined to save her, and sent out his cabinet today to bat for her.
Ms Reeves told broadcasters she had just made a ‘mistake’, adding: ‘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.’
She said the ‘definitive advice’ on the Deputy Prime Minister’s stamp duty arrangements came in on Wednesday morning.
Ms Powell later told MPs that Ms Rayner was ‘a huge, huge asset to this Government’.
‘She’s an incredibly effective minister and she has been delivering,’ she added.
‘Whether that’s record investment in social housing, the flagship Employment Rights Bill, the biggest settlement for local government in many years, major planning reforms to get more homes built and delivering devolution and community empowerment and much, much more. They have a go at her because she is so bloody good at her job.’
The investigations continued as new details emerged about the financial arrangements behind her new home purchase.
The Deputy Prime Minister received £162,500 from a trust fund set up to care for 17-year-old Charlie, who was born prematurely.
The money, which she put towards the deposit on the flat, was paid to her when she sold a 25 per cent share of her house 260 miles away in Ashton-under-Lyne into trust.
Ms Rayner said on Wednesday that the Greater Manchester property had been adapted for her son’s special needs, and she had transferred her share of the house to the trust to ensure he had ‘stability in the family home’.
This morning senior Cabinet minister Bridget Phillipson revealed the DPM received new legal advice on Monday suggesting she had underpaid the housing tax. But No10 continued to defend her into Tuesday.
She said her son had received an award in 2020. The Telegraph said it followed an 11-year legal battle waged between the Rayners and the hospital where her son was born in 2008, weighing less than 1 lb, that resulted in the NHS paying compensation.
The Labour MP has previously suggested a locum doctor made an error that contributed to his lifelong disabilities. It is unclear how much money was paid out as part of the NHS damages claim. The Rayners set up the trust in 2020. In 2023, they transferred half the ownership of the house into it.
Stockport NHS Foundation Trust declined to reveal details of any settlement reached, saying ‘these are confidential patient matters’. Ms Rayner’s office was approached for comment.
The BBC reported today that Ms Rayner sought advice from three lawyers – a conveyancer and two trust experts – regarding her flat purchase this summer.
Shoosmiths, which acts as a trustee of the Greater Manchester property, says it did not act for her in the Hove purchase.
Ms Phillipson, the Education Secretary, told Times Radio that Ms Rayner had been ‘open, she set out the information and referred herself to the independent adviser’.
Responding to the suggestion the Deputy Prime Minister could have set out the position a week earlier, Ms Phillipson said: ‘She sought legal advice, fresh legal advice, expert advice, which came back on Monday, then applied to the court to have the necessary order lifted on Tuesday, and made a full public statement and gave an interview on Wednesday.
‘So, she has acted in good faith, sought to act appropriately with the information available to her.’
No 10 repeatedly refused to say yesterday whether the PM knew the claims against her were true when he accused her critics of making a ‘mistake’.
Sir Keir told MPs he had been ‘speaking at length’ with Ms Rayner about the scandal in recent days, but No 10 refused to say exactly when these conversations took place.
Downing Street has spent the past 10 days defending the Deputy Prime Minister, describing claims that she dodged tax as being ‘entirely without basis’.
This defence continued until Tuesday. No 10 refused to say whether the PM or his officials had made any independent attempts to verify public responses being given by Ms Rayner.
Sir Keir, the ultimate arbiter of whether a minister needs to resign for breaking the ministerial code, gave his deputy a friendly pat on the shoulder today as he entered the Commons for the weekly session of Prime Minister’s Questions.
He said: ‘I can be clear that I am very proud to sit alongside a Deputy Prime Minister who is building 1.5 million homes, who is bringing forward the biggest upgrade to workers’ rights in a generation, and who has come from a working-class background to be Deputy Prime Minister of this country.’
