Ian Lavery, the shadow trade unions minister and an ally of Jeremy Corbyn, has confirmed that a home loan that he received from a National Union of Mineworkers’ (NUM) benevolent fund has been written off.
For more than a month Lavery had declined to say whether he had repaid the £74,995 that he received in 1994 from the Northumberland NUM provident and benevolent fund.
In a statement this weekend the Wansbeck MP said that an endowment policy set up by the fund’s trustees to pay off the loan had gone wrong. “The trustees proposed a compensatory award,” he said. “At this stage it was agreed that the mortgage be settled.”
Lavery declined to name the trustees at the time the loan was written off.