Angela Rayner reveals she registered her children at the wrong address for sentimental reasons as she insists there was ‘no fiddle’

Angela Rayner yesterday insisted there was ‘no fiddle’ when she registered her children as living at a different address from her own.

Labour’s deputy leader has been mired in controversy for months following claims that she may have broken the law by providing different addresses to different authorities before entering Parliament in 2015.

Greater Manchester Police dropped an investigation into her living arrangements earlier this week.

HM Revenue and Customs is also reported to have dropped a separate investigation into whether she avoided paying capital gains tax when she sold the home in Stockport in 2015.

Speaking to Sky News yesterday, Ms Rayner rounded on the Conservatives for lodging a complaint about the issue with the police, saying that the ensuing investigation had left her feeling ‘tainted’ and had ‘clipped her wings’ at the start of the General Election campaign.

Angela Rayner yesterday insisted there was ‘no fiddle’ when she registered her children as living at a different address from her own

Greater Manchester Police announced it had dropped an investigation into her living arrangements earlier this week

Experts have suggested she should have paid up to £3,000 in capital gains tax on her property in Stockport, Greater Manchester, after neighbours claimed it was effectively a second home during a six-year period in which they say she was living at her husband’s house a mile away.

Ms Rayner bought the former council home in Vicarage Road in 2007, before becoming an MP. 

She married Mark Rayner in 2010, and when the couple re-registered the births of their two sons that year they provided his address in nearby Lowndes Lane. 

But Ms Rayner remained on the electoral roll at Vicarage Road until 2015 when she sold the house, with a profit of £48,500.

She has always insisted the Vicarage Road home was her ‘principal property’, and that she and her then-husband had ‘separate finances’. 

Yesterday she said she had registered her children at Mr Rayner’s property for sentimental reasons, as he had wanted them registered in the house where he had been born and still lived.

‘There was no fiddle or anything like that,’ she said. ‘It was purely because he wanted this record for his children.’

Ms Rayner also appeared to indicate that she lived at his property for more than a year around the time she was elected as MP for Ashton-under-Lyne in 2015. 

‘I was there for a good 14, 16 months before I moved to Ashton in the April,’ she said.

She said it was ‘wild’ that 12 police officers were involved in investigating her case. 

‘That’s quite a thing for a working class person to have the police on to you,’ she said. ‘It taints you.’

Rayner has always insisted the Vicarage Road, Stockport, home was her ‘principal property’, and that she and her then-husband had ‘separate finances’