Rachel Reeves has said she is “absolutely certain” that Angela Rayner did not avoid paying capital gains tax on the sale of her former council house.
The shadow chancellor said the allegations related to Rayner’s living situation “more than a decade ago” and Labour’s deputy leader had sought legal advice since then.
“She’s confident and I’m confident that she has paid her tax,” Reeves said on Tuesday.
Reeves described Rayner as a “good friend” and said she had already answered questions about the sale of her former council house.
Speaking as Labour announced plans to clamp down on tax avoiders, Reeves was asked on Today on BBC Radio 4 if she was sure Rayner was not one of them.
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“I’m absolutely certain of that,” Reeves said.
Rayner has struggled to silence critics who suggest she may have lied over tax owed on her home on Vicarage Road, Stockport, when she sold it for a £48,500 profit. On Sunday, old tweets emerged in which Rayner described a nearby home owned by her ex-husband as “home”, rather than the property she now claims was her principal residence and where “I lived”.
Rayner herself has dismissed the claims as a “Tory smear”.
But senior Conservatives say it is a “serious ethics scandal” and have called on Rayner to publish the tax advice that she claims proves she did nothing wrong.
Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, has accused the Conservatives of using the saga to distract from their own failings before the local elections on May 2.
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He has also given Rayner his backing. Starmer said on Monday it would be inappropriate for him to see Rayner’s legal advice into her tax affairs.
The Labour leader said that only his team had seen the legal advice on which Rayner, his deputy, has relied while batting away claims she underpaid up to £1,500 of capital gains tax when she sold her home in 2015.
• What is the Angela Rayner council house row about?
The row began with revelations in a book by Lord Ashcroft, the former Tory peer, and was revived at the weekend when The Mail on Sunday revealed Facebook and Twitter posts from 2014 in which Rayner described a nearby house owned by her ex-husband as “home”. Alongside another selfie at the property, in Lowndes Lane, she said: “Just got back from work.”
The comments cast doubt on a statement made by Rayner on February 26, when she said she lived at her Vicarage Road property. “I owned my own home, lived there, paid the bills there and was registered to vote there, prior to selling the house in 2015,” it read.
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In later interviews, Rayner said Vicarage Road, a council house bought with a Help to Buy discount in 2007, was her “principal residence”. It appears that her ex-husband later sold the Lowndes Lane property with a similar exemption.
Married couples can nominate one residence as their primary home, Dan Neidle, a tax expert, said. He added: “A married couple get one joint main residence, and that was clearly Mark Rayner’s property regardless of what she considered her ‘home’.”
Separately, Greater Manchester police is reviewing a decision not to investigate a complaint that Rayner registered the wrong property on the electoral roll, with an update expected this week.
Labour said on Monday: “Angela and her husband mutually decided to maintain their existing residences to reflect their family’s circumstances and they shared childcare responsibilities.
“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. They were both perfectly entitled to do so. The house she owned remained her main home.
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“Angela has said that if any tax had been owed, she would have paid it but she has taken expert tax and legal advice, which confirms that no capital gains tax was payable.”
