The majority of voters believe Angela Rayner should publicly reveal the tax advice she received on the sale of her ex-council house, a new poll has found. The Labour deputy leader has been embroiled in an ongoing row over her past living arrangements.
Ms Rayner has faced questions about whether she paid the right amount of tax on the 2015 sale of her former council house due to confusion over whether it was her principal residency.
She has denied any wrongdoing but has so far refused to publish legal advice she had received on the matter.
The poll of 2,020 adults by More in Common found 67 percent thought Ms Rayner should make her tax advice public, while just 14 percent said she should not.
Luke Tryl, More in Common’s UK director, told the Daily Mail: “Our focus groups consistently find that Angela Rayner is one of few politicians who the public thinks speaks for people like them.
“But her popularity is rooted in the fact that people think she’s authentic and tells it like it is.
“By refusing to release her tax advice she risks unnecessarily undermining her reputation for straight talking and appearing just like other politicians who say one thing and do another.”
Sir Keir Starmer yesterday insisted he did not need to see the legal advice Ms Rayner received.
The Labour leader said: “Angela Rayner has been asked no end of questions about this. She’s answered them all. She said she’s very happy to answer any further questions from the police or from any of the authorities.
“I don’t need to see the legal advice. My team has seen it. But I will say this, that on the day that the A&E figures, people are waiting more than 24 hours in A&E, we now know that they are 10 times as high as they were five years ago.
“The idea that the Tories want to be focusing on what Angela Rayner, how much time she spent with her ex-husband 10 years ago, I can tell you here at this hospital, nobody but nobody is interested in that. They’re very, very interested in what are you going to do about the A&E problem caused by this government.
The Ashton-under-Lyne MP bought her former council house, in Vicarage Road in Stockport, Greater Manchester, with a 25 percent discount in 2007 under the right-to-buy scheme.
She has insisted she lived apart from Mark Rayner after they married in 2010 for five years until she sold her property in 2015.
Her then-husband and children lived at another address about a mile away in Lowndes Lane, but neighbours have disputed that she lived separately.
