Police review decision not to investigate Angela
Rayner after Tory complaint
MP James Daly asked Greater Manchester police to
examine claims Labour’s deputy leader did not declare main residence accurately
Ben Quinn
Political correspondent
Wed 27 Mar
2024 19.44 GMT
The police
are reviewing a decision not to investigate Labour’s deputy leader, Angela
Rayner, over claims she may have broken electoral law.
The move to
“reassess” a decision not to launch an investigation earlier this month was
confirmed by Greater Manchester police (GMP) on Wednesday after a complaint by
the Conservative MP James Daly about the force’s handling of the issue.
Daly, the
Conservative deputy chair, had originally asked the force to investigate after
Rayner had faced questions for weeks over whether she was liable to pay capital
gains tax (CGT) on the sale of her former council house before she became an
MP.
She has
denied any wrongdoing relating to where she was registered as living after her
marriage in 2010.
The
complaint to police from Daly followed claims made in a book by the former Tory
deputy chairman Lord Ashcroft, which suggested that she had failed to properly
declare her main residence.
Rayner
insists a property in Vicarage Road, Stockport, which she sold in 2015 for a
reported £48,500 profit before she entered parliament, was her “principal
property” despite her then partner living elsewhere at the time.
Government
guidance says tenants can apply to buy their council home through the
right-to-buy scheme if it is their “only or main home”. HMRC rules state
married couples or civil partners can only count one property as their primary
residence.
However,
while GMP said earlier this month that Rayner would not face investigation,
Daly wrote again to suggest that relevant witness or documents had not been
considered.
He received
a reply from Cheryl Hughes, a detective chief inspector, who said she had read
a letter from him “outlining your concern over the lack of investigation into
the matters you raised in your initial complaints to GMP”.
“Following
receipt of your recent letter dated 13 March 2024, I have been requested to
review the circumstances you have outlined to reassess our decision around an
investigation. I will update with the outcome.”
A GMP
spokesperson said on Wednesday: “We have received a complaint regarding our
decision not to investigate an allegation and are in the process of reassessing
this decision. The complainant will be updated with the outcome of the
reassessment in due course.”
Rayner said
last week that the controversy about her tax affairs was “manufactured” in an
attempt to smear her. The MP, who serves as the shadow housing secretary, told
BBC’s Newsnight: “I’ve been very clear there’s no rules broken.
“They [the
Conservatives] tried to manufacture a police investigation.
“They [the
police] said there’s no issues there. I got tax advice which says there was no
capital gains tax. It’s a non-story manufactured to try and smear me.”
As well as
keeping up pressure on the police, Daly has now also written to Stockport
council to ask whether the local authority holds electoral roll information
submitted by Rayner during the period in question and if it will be supplied to
the police.
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