Angela Rayner has resigned as housing secretary and deputy prime minister two days after admitting she underpaid the stamp duty due on her \u00a3800,000 flat in Hove.<\/p>\n
She has also stepped down as deputy Labour leader, a position to which she was elected by party members.<\/p>\n
Her departure comes after the prime minister\u2019s ethics adviser Sir Laurie Magnus said Rayner had \u201cacted with integrity\u201d but concluded that she had breached the ministerial code.<\/p>\n
In his report, he said she did seek legal advice when buying the property, but failed to seek further expert tax advice as recommended.<\/p>\n
Writing to the PM, Rayner said: \u201cI deeply regret my decision to not seek additional specialist tax advice\u201d<\/p>\n
She added that she took \u201cfull responsibility for this error\u201d, adding: \u201cIt was never my intention to do anything other than pay the right amount.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rayner had been on the Labour frontbenches since 2015 and took on her government jobs in July 2024, when Labour won the general election.<\/p>\n
Her resignation leaves a big hole at the top of government, both as deputy PM and in her role at the housing department where she was responsible for delivering one of Labour\u2019s key pledges \u2013 to build 1.5 million homes by the end of the Parliament.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, Rayner acknowledged that she had not paid enough tax when buying her East Sussex flat but said this was a \u201cmistake\u201d resulting from legal advice that had failed to \u201cproperly take account\u201d of her circumstances.<\/p>\n
She said she had contacted HMRC to work out the additional tax she needed to pay and referred herself for investigation by Sir Laure Magnus, the PM\u2019s standards adviser.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Angela Rayner has resigned as housing secretary and deputy prime minister two days after admitting she underpaid the stamp duty due on her \u00a3800,000 flat in Hove. She has also stepped down as deputy Labour leader, a position to which she was elected by party members. Her departure comes after the prime minister\u2019s ethics adviser […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-120947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120947"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120947\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}