Angela Rayner has thrown down the gauntlet to Conservatives calling for her to publish tax advice amid increasing scrutiny over the 2015 sale of her council house.
The Labour deputy leader named Rishi Sunak, Jeremy Hunt and Tory deputy chairman James Daly, saying: “If you show me yours, I will show you mine.”
Her challenge came after Greater Manchester Police said it would review claims she may have broken electoral law over information she gave about her living situation a decade ago.
Bury North MP Mr Daly has alleged she may have made a false declaration about where she was living on the electoral register.
(PA Wire)
He says has been told a detective chief inspector is reassessing the force’s decision not to open an investigation into the claims.
Grilled about the development on Thursday, Ms Rayner said the police had been put under pressure by Mr Daly to launch an investigation and she was “confident I have done absolutely nothing wrong”.
“I have been very clear about the advice I have received,” she told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. “I don’t need to publish all of my details, my child’s birth certificate was put out in the public domain and it is not fair on my family.”
Ms Rayner promised to comply with HMRC, the police and any authorities who want to see her tax advice and, in a challenge to Mr Daly and the Conservatives, she added: “If you show me yours, I’ll show you mine.
“If the deputy chairman, Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt all want to say I’ll give you the last 15 years of my tax details, I’m happy to disclose all of mine as well at the same time.
“I’m open to that if that’s what they want us to do.”
Ms Rayner has faced scrutiny about whether she paid the right amount of tax on the 2015 sale of her council house due to confusion over whether it was her principal residency.
She has rejected suggestions in a book by former Tory deputy chairman Lord Ashcroft that she failed to properly declare her main home.
Ms Rayner has accused Lord Ashcorft of having an ‘unhealthy’ interest in her private life
(Oli Scarff/AFP via Getty Images)
The unauthorised biography alleges that the MP for Ashton-under-Lyne bought her former council house, in Vicarage Road in Stockport, Greater Manchester, with a 25% discount in 2007 under the right-to-buy scheme.
The former carer is said to have made a £48,500 profit when selling the house eight years later.
Government guidance says that a tenant can apply to buy their council home through the right-to-buy scheme if it is their “only or main home”.
Her husband was listed at another address in Lowndes Lane, about a mile away, which had also been bought under the right-to-buy scheme.
In the same year as her wedding, Ms Rayner is said to have re-registered the births of her two youngest children, giving her address as where her husband resided.
Ms Rayner has insisted that Vicarage Road was her “principal property” despite her husband living elsewhere at the time but neighbours have reportedly disputed her claim that she lived apart from her husband.
Tax experts have estimated that, while Ms Rayner may not have owed anything in capital gains tax following the sale depending on her residency situation, there are circumstances in which she could have owed as much as £3,500 to the taxman.
The latest scrutiny came as Ms Rayner and Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer prepare to launch the party’s local election campaign in the west Midlands.
In an appeal to disgruntled Tory 2019 voters, Ms Rayner heaped praise on Boris Johnson’s levelling up agenda, saying the former PM was “onto something”.
And, attempting to drive a wedge between Mr Johnson and Mr Sunak, she said: “The problem is that the Tories then decided not to do that, hollowed out and took money under the guise of austerity from those areas and then created this Dragon’s Den bidding process where councils spent millions of pounds bidding against each other for little pots of their own money back.”