Angela Rayner has faced intense scrutiny about her living situation before a house sale a decade ago, involving capital gains tax, council tax and electoral law.
She has promised to resign if she is found to have committed a crime, but has said she is “completely confident” she followed the rules at all times.
The Labour deputy leader was reported to Greater Manchester police by James Daly, a Conservative MP, over concerns she may have broken electoral law. The force said in early March that it had found no evidence of any offence, but a month later, following a complaint from Daly, it reopened an investigation. The investigation is understood to be examining a series of allegations, not limited to potential electoral law offences.
Stockport council is also reviewing suggestions that Rayner committed electoral or tax fraud.
What is the council house row all about?
Angela Rayner was criticised by Conservative MPs and reported to police over allegations that she owed more than £1,000 in capital gains tax linked to the sale of her former council house in Stockport, Greater Manchester.
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The claim was revealed in an unauthorised biography written by the Tory peer Lord Ashcroft.
The book said Rayner bought the former council house in Vicarage Road for £79,000 in January 2007. She paid bills and council tax and was registered to vote at the address. If it was her primary residence, she would have been exempt from the levy when she sold it in March 2015 for £127,500.
However, there have been claims that she was primarily living at a property about a mile away, in Lowndes Lane, after marrying Mark Rayner in 2010. Neighbours are adamant that she lived “full-time” at his terraced home for about six years.
She re-registered the births of their two sons that year, giving her husband’s address. Residents of Vicarage Road have claimed that her brother, Darren Bowen, was living in the former council house rent-free. Under electoral rules voters have to register at their permanent address.
Social media posts from 2014 unearthed by the Mail on Sunday show Rayner describing her ex-husband’s house as “home”.
How much could she owe?
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A relatively modest amount. Tax experts estimate that the figure could be up to £3,500.
What has Angela Rayner said?
She has denied wrongdoing and said she had spoken to tax and legal experts to ensure she did not owe tax.
In a statement she said: “As with the majority of ordinary people who sell their own homes, I was not liable for capital gains tax because it was my home and the only one I owned.”
But the tax expert Dan Neidle, writing for The Sunday Times, said the rules did not quite work like that. He said that although it was right that people are exempt from capital gains tax on their main residence, married couples can have only one main residence between them.
Rayner later said that no such tax was payable. Sir Keir Starmer said he had taken her word that she did not owe any tax, and backed her right to privacy.
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The Conservative Party has demanded that Rayner publish the tax advice she received, to which she has responded by calling for Tory MPs to publish full details of their own finances.
David Lammy, the shadow foreign secretary, said she had the “full support” of the Labour Party. He suggested she was being “smeared” over her tax affairs because she is a northern woman and blamed the row on distraction tactics by the Tories.
A spokesman for Rayner said: “Angela has always made clear she also spent time at her husband’s property when they had children and got married, as he did at hers. The house she owned remained her main home. Angela looks forward to sitting down with the appropriate authorities, including the police and HMRC, to set out the facts and draw a line under this matter.”
Could it be right that she was not liable for capital gains tax?
Yes. If Rayner and her husband at the time nominated the Vicarage Road property as their main residence, the sale would have been exempt, but when her husband’s house in Lowndes Lane was sold, tax would have been due on any capital gain made.
She also could have spent more than £15,000 on improvements to the house, on which she could have claimed tax relief, potentially wiping out any payment that would have otherwise been due.
What have her neighbours said?
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A next-door neighbour of the Rayners in Lowndes Lane told The Times that the deputy Labour leader had lived there for a good “six or seven years”.
Sylvia Hampson, 83, who has lived in her home for 50 years, said: “She was definitely living here full-time from about 2009 or 2010. I saw her all the time, coming and going, and her mum would come and visit a lot. This was her home … There’s no doubt she was living here all the time.”
Hampson, who has voted Labour in the past but not for a few years, said: “Angela lived here as a family with Mark and the three kids.
“Her son was partially blind so she used to have a blue badge in their car. I remember as she got a grant to do up the house because of her son. They had the kerb lowered so they could drive their car straight on to their driveway. And they had the loft made into a bedroom and they got the kitchen renovated too.”
Will she be in legal trouble?
Rayner was reported to Greater Manchester police (GMP) by the Tory MP James Daly, who asked them to investigate whether she had given false information or had broken electoral rules.
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Rayner was registered on the electoral roll at Vicarage Road. Under electoral rules voters are expected to register at their permanent address. There are penalties for providing false information, although there is a time cap of two years — except in exceptional circumstances — for starting a prosecution.
In early March police found no evidence that an offence had been committed. But Daly, a deputy chairman of the Conservative Party, wrote a letter to the force complaining about the thoroughness of the investigation. In response, GMP said a detective inspector would now “reassess” the decision. Following this, GMP said it would investigate if any offences have been committed.
The force is investigating Rayner over where she lived in the 2010s and the sale of her former home. They are examining tax matters and other issues on top of the question of whether she gave false information for the electoral register.
The Sunday Times reported that a former aide told police there was “no doubt in my mind that this was Rayner’s family home” when he visited her at what she says was her husband’s address in 2014.
Daly also asked Stockport council to investigate whether Rayner was living at her house on Vicarage Road rather than her husband’s home and whether she had claimed a single-person discount on council tax on her home. Council tax fraud can incur both criminal and civil penalties. The council has said it is reviewing the questions.
