After Angela Rayner came under fire for allegedly falsely registering her address on the electoral roll, a shadow cabinet minister has come to her defence. Yvette Cooper has said that Labour’s deputy leader was keen to “set out all of the facts” as Greater Manchester Police (GMP) has reopened an investigation into the matter. It comes after former aide Matt Finnegan told the police that Rayner lived with her husband, despite being registered as living elsewhere. Rayner has denied any wrongdoing and has vowed to resign if she is found to have committed a criminal offence.
The row centres around questions over where Rayner was living before she sold her former house in 2015, and whether it meant she should have paid tax on the profits. She bought the council house in 2007 under the right-to-buy scheme, and made a £48,500 profit when she sold it eight years later. She was registered as living at that house on the electoral roll until 2015 but appears to have given two different addresses when she re-registered the births of two of her children in 2010.
The situation has further highlighted divisions within the Labour Party, as members of the party continue to defend Rayner. A Labour spokesperson stated that she had “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.” Despite this, the advice Rayner has received remains undisclosed, and while some party members are calling for transparency on the matter, the Labour leader Keir Starmer has yet to see the advice himself.
Amidst the controversy, Cooper defended Rayner’s decision not to publish the advice, stating that she would share the facts with “the appropriate authorities”. Speaking to BBC One’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, she argued that the situation was “about her family arrangements, her personal finances and that’s really how it should be dealt with”. Cooper added that Rayner was “very keen” to speak to the police and HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC), as “it allows her to set out all of the facts
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