A senior aide to Jeremy Corbyn has hit back after allegations by the Sunday Times that he is engaging in electoral fraud by claiming to live in Barking, east London, where he is a councillor, while really living in Brighton with his wife.
Sam Tarry, who is Corbyn’s leadership campaign director and spoke up for the Labour leader during the “Traingate” row last week, denied claims of improper behaviour regarding his second home in Brighton.
“This allegation is categorically untrue,” Tarry said. “The evidence irrefutably demonstrates I meet all residency requirements set out in electoral law to be a councillor in Barking and Dagenham.
“My wife, whom I married in June this year, lives in Brighton and works as a junior doctor. Like many people these days we try to strike a balance between our careers and our personal lives.
“Unfortunately this means we cannot live together as a husband and wife every day as we one day hope to do. When you serve people in the NHS or as a local councillor that’s a choice that sometimes has to be made.
“Those promoting this story for political reasons tried to use the same false allegations against me before, and I was completely cleared by the police.”
Similar questions about Tarry’s residency were raised in 2014 when it was claimed he had given inaccurate details on his nomination papers. Police later dropped the investigation.
The Sunday Times alleged that while Tarry says he lives in a flat in Barking, where he was elected as a councillor in May 2014, he actually lives in a £550,000 house in Brighton with his wife.
The Brighton address is on their marriage certificate and Land Registry records show that Tarry and his wife, Julia Fozard, jointly own the property, said the Sunday Times.
The newspaper also reported that a trade union official, named Elly Baker, lived at the Barking flat. Tarry’s lawyers said she was his lodger.
To serve on a council, a councillor must sign an official declaration that they live or work in the area.
Tarry said the Sunday Times’s allegations were false and that he provided the newspaper with a full statement on Saturday, which it did not include in its front-page story, though it is in an online version of the story.
Tarry’s lawyers said “any suggestion of criminality or breach of election law is defamatory and inaccurate”.
Tarry, who is a member of the Transport Salaried Staffs Association (TSSA) Union, last week defended Corbyn after claims that the Labour leader had lied about not being able to get a seat on a Virgin train to Newcastle.
Tarry was interviewed on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme and criticised the Virgin Trains owner, Sir Richard Branson, whom he called a tax exile who was “literally laughing all the way to the bank at the British taxpayers’ expense”.
Tarry said Branson’s involvement in the spat came because Branson was upset at Corbyn’s plans to renationalise the railways.
• This article was amended on 30 August 2016 to clarify that although councillors must live in the area, they do not need to live in the ward they represent.
