Police investigating Angela Rayner over council house sale

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Deputy Labour leader Angela Rayner is being investigated by Greater Manchester police over allegations that she potentially broke electoral law by failing to properly disclose her main residence in official documents.

Rayner was reported to police by Conservative MP James Daly over concerns she may have committed an offence in the early 2010s by giving false information about where she was living.

The Labour party said: “Angela welcomes the chance to set out the facts with the police. We remain completely confident that Angela has complied with the rules at all times and it’s now appropriate to let the police do its work.”

Police have been re-examining claims that the deputy Labour leader may have broken electoral law when she was living between two homes in Stockport in the years before she became an MP in May 2015.

Greater Manchester Police said on Friday: “We’re investigating whether any offences have been committed. This follows a reassessment of the information provided to us by Mr Daly.”

The allegations were first made in a biography by former Conservative deputy chair Lord Michael Ashcroft — and serialised in the Mail on Sunday newspaper.

The book claims Rayner bought her former council house on Stockport’s Vicarage Road at a 25 per cent discount in 2007, making a profit when she sold it at the market rate eight years later.

Because she was registered to vote at the property, she would not have been liable to pay any capital gains tax on the profit.

Yet some people have claimed she may have been living primarily at a property on Lowndes Lane, the address of her then husband, and that it was her brother occupying the property on Vicarage Road.