Tories demand tax fraud investigation into Angela Rayner – UK politics live

Deputy PM was told on Monday that the stamp duty she paid on £800,000 flat might be too little, according to cabinet colleague

Good morning. Keir Starmer does not want to lose Angela Rayner, and his defence of her in the Commons yesterday was a lot more robust than usual for a PM commenting on a minister who has self-referred to the ethics adviser, but Starmer does not have total control over what is going to happen. Quite a lot of the facts are not in the public domain, and may not be known to Starmer himself (mainly – what exactly was the tax advice Rayner had that led her to think she did not need to pay a higher rate of stamp duty, and how much had Rayner disclosed to these advisers?), and although in theory Starmer can ignore a recommendation from Sir Laurie Magnus, the ethics adviser investigating Rayner, there is a chance Magnus could come up with conclusions that make resignation inevitable.

Here is our overnight story about Rayner’s plight.

Rayner was told on Monday that her original assumption about how much stamp duty she had to pay on the flat she bought in Hove might be wrong. In controversies like this, ‘who knew what, when?’ always becomes a key issue and yesterday Downing Street ducked questions about when Keir Starmer first realised there was a problem. Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, was giving interviews this morning, and she was more forthcoming about when Rayner learned there was a problem. She told the Today programme:

My understanding is that whilst Angela Rayner had received some advice on Monday, it was definitively given to her on Wednesday that she had made a mistake in terms of the amount of stamp duty that she had paid on the purchase. So that was on Wednesday, but there were limitations in what she could discuss and disclose, including with others and including in public, until that court order [a court order saying she could not discuss details of the trust set up for her disabled son, which affected her stamp duty liability] had been lifted on Tuesday.

Given this timeline, it seems very likely that Starmer knew Rayner had failed to pay her taxes in full when he defended her in public on Monday afternoon and said her critics were making ‘a mistake’

Rayner consulted three people before she concluded that she only needed to pay the standard rate of stamp duty on her flat purchase, not the higher rate for a second home, broadcasters have been briefed. In their BBC story, Billy Kenber and Damian Grammaticas report:

It is understood the deputy prime minister consulted one individual experienced in conveyancing and two experts on the law around trusts before the purchase.

However, it is unclear if any of those people were experts in complex tax law and it is not known if they knew about the full details of the trust, which was set up to help fund care for her son.

Kevin Hollinrake, the Conservative party chair, has written to HM Revenue and Customs asking it to investigate whether Rayner was guilty of tax evasion. As Sky News reports, Hollinrake said in his letter:

Why did [Rayner], or her representatives, not take the necessary steps to check with HMRC on whether second homes stamp duty was actually payable. This was ‘careless’ at best, and did not meet her requirement to act responsibly.”

There are legitimate questions on whether Ms Rayner could have afforded the property if she had been liable for the additional £40,000 in second homes stamp duty, on top of the £30,0000 standard stamp duty and the £150,000 downpayment towards the Hove flat.