ANGELA Rayner's political future is hanging in the balance after the conveyancing firm she used to complete her purchase of her £800,000 flat denied giving her tax advice.
Joanna Verrico, the head of a small, family-run firm in Kent, said on Thursday it had not provided any advice to the Deputy Prime Minister on how much stamp duty to pay.
The firm said it completed her stamp duty return based only on information she provided.
Rayner underpaid stamp duty on the property in Hove by as much as £40k, but she alleged she was given incorrect legal advice that she did not need to pay the higher stamp duty rate reserved for second home purchases.
An independent ethics probe into the Deputy Prime Minister’s tax affairs is expected to report back ahead of the weekend on whether she broke ministerial standards rules.
Verrico and Associates said on Thursday that its lawyers “never” gave Rayner tax advice and were being made “scapegoats”.
Verrico said: “We’re not qualified to give advice on trust and tax matters and we advise clients to seek expert advice on these.”
Keir Starmer repeatedly declined to say whether he would sack his deputy, who is also the Housing Secretary, if his independent ethics watchdog rules against her.
The Prime Minister said he would “of course” act on the findings of Laurie Magnus’s probe following Rayner’s acknowledgement that she failed to pay the £40k tax surcharge.
Rayner’s colleagues in Government have lined up to defend her record, with trade minister and Scottish MP Douglas Alexander on Friday morning telling Times Radio she was in politics “for the right reasons”.
Alexander also urged patience ahead of the conclusion of the investigation, telling BBC Breakfast: “I would just ask your viewers to think, what would they want, in their circumstances, in their workplace. Of course, there need to be procedures.
“There’s frustration while that process is under way but I think everyone is entitled to due process, and that’s the process that’s under way, but, listen, I get it.”
The advice she received is likely to form a key plank of the investigation.
Sources close to Rayner said a conveyancer and two experts in trust law had all suggested the amount of stamp duty she paid on the East Sussex property was correct and she acted on the advice she was given at the time.
Rayner said she had initially been advised that she was not liable for the second property surcharge because she had sold her stake in her family home in Ashton-under-Lyne to a court-instructed trust established in 2020 to benefit her disabled son.
But she conceded she had made a “mistake” after fresh legal advice from a “leading tax counsel” later revealed that she was liable for the extra duty on her new Hove flat.
Before then, she had insisted for weeks that she had paid the correct amount of tax.
The independent ethics adviser will assess whether Rayner broke the ministerial rules, which place an “overarching duty on ministers to comply with the law”, “behave in a way that upholds the highest standards of propriety”, and “be as open as possible” with the public.
Starmer told the BBC he would “act on whatever the report is that’s put in front of me”.
