Angela Rayner LIVE: Latest updates as Kirstie Allsopp and Labour minister weigh in on new stamp duty claims

Updated: 10:59 EDT, 29 August 2025

Follow our live coverage after claims Angela Rayner dodged shelling out £40,000 on her coastal flat after saying it was her main place of residence to tax authorities:

Full story: ‘Labour hypocrisy on full show’

Labour hypocrisy was said to be on ‘full show’ today after Ms Rayner was claimed to have escaped shelling out £40,000 in stamp duty on her new coastal flat.

It comes after Ms Rayner’s own department has warned against the impact of second homes in pricing others out of the housing market.

The Labour deputy leader has also repeatedly hit out at ‘tax dodgers’ during her years as an MP in the House of Commons.

And she criticised the previous Tory government when it eased the stamp duty burden on homebuyers with temporary changes to the property levy.

Read the full story from political correspondent Greg Heffer here:

Angela Rayner must be ‘very transparent’

Jack McConnell, the former first minister of Scotland, has been talking about Ms Rayner’s situation and said: ‘If she allows the perception to develop that she is part of the one rule of them, one rule for us problem…she’s going to have a problem.’

How stamp duty works on second homes

Angela Rayner has found herself in hot water over claims she may have paid less stamp duty by changing her ‘main’ residence for tax purposes.

Stamp duty is the main property tax paid by homebuyers in England and Northern Ireland. It is paid when someone buys a home, with those buying second homes liable to pay more.

Here, This Is Money senior reporter Ed Magnus takes a look at the rules around stamp duty, how much people pay and how this is increased on second homes – and gets experts’ views on Ms Rayner’s situation.

Rayner’s situation is ‘extremely knotty issue’

Jeremy Vine hosted a debate about the situation on his Channel 5 programme this morning, with panellist Annabel Denham asking how Ms Rayner can be Housing Secretary and saying it was an ‘extremely knotty issue’.

‘Government are bleeding this country dry’

Political commentator Emma Trimble has also spoken about Ms Rayner’s properties, telling GB News: ‘People are seeing that this Government are bleeding this country dry.’

‘I cannot believe you don’t see any hypocrisy’

LBC presenter Nick Ferrari had some strong words during a debate with commentator Marina Purkiss about Ms Rayner’s situation, which saw him tell her: ‘I cannot believe you don’t see any hypocrisy here.’

‘Nothing illegal about it, honest guv’

Toby Young, co-founder of the Free Speech Union, has tweeted about Ms Rayner’s situation, looking at her defence that she ‘wasn’t engaging in tax evasion’:

Full story – Angela three pads Rayner

Angela Rayner’s £800,000 Hove apartment is the latest addition to her burgeoning property empire – which includes a £650,000 four-bed in Greater Manchester and a grace-and-favour pad in Admiralty House.

Read all about the homes she owns in this new Daily Mail article today:

‘Hypocrite and a freeloader’, says Priti Patel

Shadow Foreign Secretary Dame Priti Patel has labelled Ms Rayner a ‘hypocrite and a freeloader’.

She tweeted: ‘Angela Rayner, Britain’s Deputy Prime Minister is a hypocrite and a freeloader as she wants everyone else to pay higher taxes on family homes but doesn’t want to pay it herself….’

Tories try to eject Rayner from electoral roll

The Conservatives have now begun a legal effort to get Ms Rayner struck off the electoral roll in her Greater Manchester constituency of Ashton-under-Lyne.

The party is trying to remove the Deputy Prime Minister from the register because they believe she does not “meet the legal tests for living there”.

If successful, this could make Ms Rayner personally liable for the council tax bill on her grace-and-favour home in London, according to The Telegraph.

The Representation of the People (England and Wales) Regulations 2001 gives a local elector the opportunity to dispute an entry on the electoral roll.

Conservative Party chairman Kevin Hollinrake told the newspaper: ‘Her three electoral registrations are a sham, cooked up to help her dodge council tax.

‘She wants higher taxes on family homes, but doesn’t want to pay it herself. As the minister in charge of election law and council tax, ‘three votes Rayner’ cannot be a law-maker and a law-breaker.

‘We are calling on the council to strike her from the electoral roll to safeguard the integrity of elections, and remove the fig leaf she is using to avoid paying council tax.’

Every tax-raiding scheme Labour’s looking at

In its manifesto for last year’s general election, Labour insisted it would not raise taxes on ‘working people’ – specifically income tax, national insurance or VAT.

But that pledge was made before Rachel Reeves was estimated by economists to be facing a £50billion ‘black hole’ in the public finances ahead of her next Budget.

This means there is now widespread expectation that the Chancellor will announce a fresh tax raid this autumn, as she scrambles to plug the spending gap.

There has been a flurry of reports in recent weeks about which levies the Labour party might impose – read all about them in this story:

Kirstie Allsopp: ‘Government have no shame’

TV housing expert Kirstie Allsopp – best known for presenting Channel 4’s Location, Location, Location – has had her say about the situation.

She tweeted: ‘Oh look, no one saw this coming!!! Angela Rayner dodges £40,000 stamp duty – This Government have NO shame, they imposed taxes on the rest of us but find ways not to pay them themselves.’

Angela Rayner acted ‘fully within the law’

Government minister Stephen Kinnock has given a staunch defence of Angela Rayner, insisting the Deputy Prime Minister had acted ‘fully within the law’.

He told LBC: ‘The Deputy Prime Minister has made it absolutely clear she has done absolutely nothing wrong. I do wonder sometimes about some of the newspapers out there just seem to be sort of constantly looking to dig out stories.’

Mr Kinnock also dismissed a suggestion it was an example of ‘do as I say, not as I do’ from Ms Rayner.

‘As far as I can understand it, I’m not absolutely involved in it, of course, in the detailed discussions,’ he told presenter Nick Ferrari.

‘But my understanding from the statement that has come from the Deputy Prime Minister’s office is that she has done absolutely nothing wrong. Everything she has done is fully within the law.’

Pressed on whether there was any ‘stink’ to Ms Rayner’s actions, he added: ‘I am very clear, in terms of what the Deputy Prime Minister’s office has said, and what Angela is saying is clearly is that this is not an issue.

‘She has complied with the letter of the law and that is the situation as we find it today this morning.’

Here is what LBC presenter Nick Ferrari had to say about the story:

Rayner property scoop in Mail On Sunday

The latest claims against Angela Rayner come after The Mail On Sunday reported that she had added an £800,000 seaside apartment to her burgeoning property empire – at a time when her department is cracking down on second-home owners.

The story made the front page on August 24 – and you can read it in full here:

Angela Rayner profile: From leaving school at 16 to becoming Deputy Prime Minister

A former care worker and trade union representative, Angela Rayner describes herself as a ‘socialist, not a Corbynite’.

She left school at 16 years old while pregnant with no qualifications and later studied at college for qualifications in care work and sign language while looking after her young son.

The 45-year-old mother-of-three was elected to Parliament for Ashton-under-Lyne in 2015 and quickly rose from being a junior shadow minister to being appointed shadow education secretary in June 2016.

She has championed the party’s headline policy of free tuition fees and setting up a national education service to provide learning ‘from the cradle to the grave’.

In 2020 she became deputy leader of Labour and took a position as Deputy Prime Minister and Housing, Communities and Local Government Secretary after the party won the general election last year.

What’s Angela Rayner said about the claims?

A spokesperson for Ms Rayner told The Telegraph: ‘The Deputy Prime Minister paid the correct duty owed on the purchase, entirely properly and in line with all relevant requirements. Any suggestion otherwise is entirely without basis.’

Her spokesperson has refused to reveal how much the cabinet minister had spent on stamp duty for the Hove flat, but they denied she had committed any wrongdoing.

The Daily Mail has contacted Ms Rayner and the Labour Party for comment.

Ms Rayner followed advice and longstanding rules at all times, and had paid the relevant tax required on the Hove property, sources close to the politician have said.

Sources also said she does pay the second-home council tax on her property in Hove, and that her living arrangements were due to working in several locations as a result of her role.

They also noted the Deputy Prime Minister has never owned in London, or nearby.

What’s the context of the Angela Rayner row?

Angela Rayner is claimed to have dodged spending £40,000 on her coastal flat after saying it was her main place of residence to tax authorities.

The Deputy Prime Minister reportedly took her name off the deeds of her Greater Manchester property only weeks before purchasing an £800,000 coastal flat in Hove.

It comes after the Mail revealed the Labour housing secretary had purchased the apartment in addition to a £650,000 house she owns in her constituency and a three-bedroom grace-and-favour flat in Admiralty House.

The reported deed changes supposedly allowed the cabinet minister to pay £30,000 in stamp duty instead of £70,000, which would have been applied if the property was her second home.

Ms Rayner is also said to have told Tameside Council that her home situated in her constituency continues to be her primary residence.

Brighton and Hove council have also been notified by the politician that her property there is a second home, for the purposes of council tax, according to the Telegraph.

Ms Rayner’s alleged changes to her property affairs are legal, however, they may spark debate as to whether the housing secretary purposefully made decisions to pay less council tax and stamp duty.

Daily Mail’s Angela Rayner liveblog

Good morning and welcome to the Daily Mail’s live coverage following claims Angela Rayner dodged shelling out £40,000 on her coastal flat after saying it was her main place of residence to tax authorities.

The Deputy Prime Minister reportedly took her name off the deeds of her Greater Manchester property only weeks before purchasing an £800,000 coastal flat in Hove, East Sussex, according to The Telegraph.

Stay with us throughout today for all the latest updates on this developing story.