I don’t need to see legal advice on Rayner’s tax affairs, says Starmer

SIR KEIR STARMER has insisted he does not need to see legal advice that his deputy Angela Rayner claims exonerates her in the row over her former council house.

Yesterday, the Labour leader accused the Tories of “chasing a smear” by questioning Ms Rayner’s property dealings and if she avoided tax over the sale.

Ms Rayner has been accused of lying over her former home in Vicarage Road, Stockport which she bought in 2007 using the Right to Buy scheme before making a £48,500 profit when she sold the house eight years later.

She was registered at the property for five years after she married Mark Rayner in 2010, while he was listed at a different address.

The confusion over which property was her principal residency has led to questions over whether she avoided capital gains tax by retaining the property for more than five years.

The Labour deputy leader has said she has “done absolutely nothing wrong” and took legal advice that no rules were broken.

She said she would present this to the police or HMRC but would not publicly release her “personal tax advice”.

Sir Keir said: “I don’t need to see the legal advice. My team has seen it. But I will say this, that A&E figures show people are waiting more than 24 hours in A&E. We now know they are 10 times as high as they were five years ago.

“The Tories want to be focusing on Angela Rayner. I can tell you here at this hospital that nobody but nobody is interested in that. They’re very, very interested in what are you going to do about the A&E problem caused by this Government?”

He added that “if you’re waiting more than 24 hours for A&E, you’re much more interested in why the Government is not absolutely laser focused on that ... rather than chasing this smear against Angela Rayner”.

Richard Holden, the Tory chairman, has written to Sir Keir and Ms Rayner, saying: “You have pledged to uphold standards in public life, but the failure by you and your deputy to answer the simplest questions about this matter makes a mockery of these claims.”

Jack Lopresti MP, the Tory deputy chairman, said Sir Keir is “trying to avoid dealing with a serious ethics scandal ... because he is too weak to lead”.

Greater Manchester Police (GMP) is also facing pressure from Tories after it said Ms Rayner would not face an investigation. GMP said: “We have received a complaint regarding our decision not to investigate an allegation and are in the process of reassessing this decision.”

The claim about Ms Rayner originated in Red Queen? The Unauthorised Biography of Angela Rayner by Lord Ashcroft, a former Tory peer.