The chancellor has said she has “full confidence” in Angela Rayner as more details emerged about when the deputy prime minister became aware she had underpaid tax.
Rayner has referred herself to the government’s independent ethics adviser and HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) after making the admission.
The leader of the opposition, Kemi Badenoch, has called for Rayner to resign, but Keir Starmer has backed his deputy, telling MPs he was “very proud to sit alongside” her.
Rayner said in a statement on Wednesday that when she bought a £800,000 flat in Hove she took legal advice that suggested she was “liable to pay standard stamp duty”, but had then sought further advice from a leading tax counsel after headlines about the arrangement.
She learned that the initial advice had been inaccurate and she was liable to pay additional stamp duty. That was because she had put her stake in her constituency home in Ashton-under-Lyne into a trust set up in 2020 for her disabled son.
It is further understood that Rayner was given three separate pieces of legal advice before buying the property in Hove. Sources said a conveyancer and two experts in trust law had all suggested that the amount of stamp duty she paid on the property was correct and that she acted on the advice she was given at the time.
Speaking to Sky News, the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, said: “I have full confidence in Angela Rayner. She’s a good friend and a colleague. She has accepted the right stamp duty wasn’t paid. That was an error; that was a mistake.
“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.”
Reeves said Rayner received “definitive” advice on Wednesday. Earlier on Sky News, the education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, said she received initial advice on Monday – on the same day the prime minister gave a full-throated defence of his deputy in an interview with Matt Chorley on BBC 5 Live.
Phillipson told Sky News: “The deputy prime minister sought advice at the point of purchase of the house, which enacted in line with the advice that she received.
“She then subsequently sought expert advice on that. That original version returned on Monday, but it wasn’t later clarified until the Wednesday, further questions that were addressed through the advice.”
She added that it was only once a court order preventing discussion of Rayner’s tax affairs was lifted “on Tuesday evening” and “once final legal advice [was] returned on Wednesday” that the position could be set out.
Asked whether the prime minister had known Rayner had underpaid tax on Monday, Phillipson said: “The deputy prime minister has been clear for some time that she believed she had acted in good faith, that she had paid what was required of her through that house purchase.
“It then became clear subsequently that that wasn’t the case, that additional stamp duty was owed.
“That was following new, fresh legal advice, but as I say there were limitations on what could be discussed given the existence of a court order that was there to protect her family and to protect her son.”
