Labour continues to be engulfed by the donations row after it emerged its top team have all received freebies.
Its party conference in Liverpool has been overshadowed by revelations that prime minister Sir Keir Starmer, chancellor Rachel Reeves and deputy prime minister Angela Rayner were all recipients of gifts.
Speaking from the conference on Monday, Reeves defended her acceptance of £7,500 of clothing donations from friend Juliet Rosenfeld, but admitted she understood that it “looks a bit odd”.
More than £700,000 worth of free gifts and hospitality has been received by MPs across the political spectrum in the past year, according to The Observer, with 141 Conservative MPs receiving a total of almost £360,000 in freebies, compared to nearly £300,000 among 118 Labour MPs.
MPs are required to register gifts and donations within 28 days, and there is no suggestion so far that Labour’s top team have broken any rules.
However, Starmer and others have been criticised for accepting freebies from donors at the same time as scrapping winter fuel payments for millions of pensioners.
Sir Keir Starmer
Gifts
Records show that Starmer has received about £39,000 from Labour Party donor Lord Waheed Alli since December 2019, including free clothes and glasses.
He has also been given four Taylor Swift tickets worth £4,000 and £35,000 worth of tickets to Arsenal football matches.
Most of his tickets were provided by individual football clubs or the Premier League, while investment firm Cain International and Teescraft Engineering paid for him to go to matches against Chelsea and Newcastle respectively.
Starmer’s wife Victoria also received free clothing, a personal shopper and alterations, which Starmer initially failed to declare. The Tories had asked the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner to investigate why they were not initially declared, but Downing Street said there will be no investigation.
The row over donations deepened when it emerged that Alli was given a temporary Downing Street security pass after Labour came to power.
What he said
Responding to the row, Starmer has said there is a “massive difference between declarations and corruption”.
Speaking about tickets at Arsenal, where two seats have been made available to him in the corporate area, Starmer said it would cost the taxpayer a “fortune” in extra security for him to watch games from the stands.
Watch: Lisa Nandy says Starmer ‘very sensible’ to accept football tickets worth thousands.
He said: “Frankly, I’d rather be in the stands but I’m not going to ask the taxpayer to indulge me to be in the stands when I could go and sit somewhere else where the club and the security say it’s safer for me to be.”
Starmer also said: “Shortly after the election, my team reached out for advice on what declaration should be made, so it’s in accordance with the rules.
“They then sought out for further advice more recently, as a result of which they made the relevant declarations.
“But for me it’s really important that the rules are followed. It is very important that we have transparency, very important that you and others can see the rules are being followed.”
Rachel Reeves
Gifts
The chancellor Rachel Reeves received £7,500 of clothing donations from her friend Juliet Rosenfeld during the election campaign, which was categorised as general office support.
The Financial Times reported that Reeves received the money in four instalments from January 2023 to May 2024, which it said was used to pay for clothing.
What she said
Reeves defended her acceptance of £7,500 of clothing donations. but admitted: “I can understand that to a lot of people it looks a bit odd. I get that.”
She told Times Radio: “Juliet and me have been friends for a long time, and she said to me about a year-and-a-half ago ‘I want to help you in the election campaign and the thing I’d really like to do is make sure that for big events and for the campaign trail, you’re smart and well turned out’.
“I really appreciated that, she’s made a big difference to me. That’s not something that I’m going to do in government.”
Reeves said on Monday she had bought the suit she was wearing for her conference speech this afternoon.
She said she “declared all of those donations in the proper way”.
Reeves also said a donation of £98,500 for her shadow office when she was in opposition was not for clothing or personal effects.
She told BBC Breakfast it was for “a whole range of things, primarily research in my office, research on the economy, helping with policy development and speech writing – a whole range of things”.
Angela Rayner
Gifts
The deputy prime minister and housing secretary declared a stay in a New York apartment owned by Labour donor Lord Waheed Ali last December along with Sam Tarry, then the Labour MP for Ilford South, the Sunday Times reported.
The Financial Times also reported that she received a donation of £3,550 from Alli in the form of clothing. Rayner received received three other donations from Alli in the past year, totalling more than £17,000, declared as money “to support me in my capacity as deputy leader of the Labour Party”.
What she said
Rayner said she understood why people were “frustrated” and “angry” that Labour figures had received thousands of pounds in gifts.
But she said such freebies have been “a feature of our politics for a very long time”, and argued that donations were necessary because of the expense of running for office.
Rayner denied braking any House of Commons rules about declaring that she stayed in the apartment in New York.
She told the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme: “I don’t believe I broke any rules. I had the use of the apartment and I disclosed that I had the use of the apartment.
“In fact, I think I was overly transparent because I think it was important despite it being a personal holiday because that person, as a friend, had already donated to me in the past for my deputy leadership.”