POLICE are investigating multiple allegations against Labour depute leader Angela Rayner and the probe is not limited to potential breaches of electoral law, the Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police has suggested.
Officers are probing whether the senior Labour MP broke electoral law after Tory allegations that she may have given false information about her main residence a decade ago.
Rayner bought her former council house in Stockport in 2007 for £79,000. She sold it eight years later, in 2015, for £127,500, making a profit of £48,500.
Rayner, who was first elected an MP in 2015, had listed the property as her principal residence, but she is facing questions around whether she actually moved in with her ex-husband after getting married in 2010.
READ MORE: Angela Rayner denies hypocrisy after selling council house for thousands in profit
The Sunday Times reported that a former aide said there was “no doubt in my mind that this was Rayner’s family home” when he visited her at what she says was her then-husband’s address in 2014.
The Labour depute leader has been accused of a potential breach of the Representation of the People Act 1983 by providing false information about her principal address. Under the act, prosecutions must be made within 12 months of any offence.
However, Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police Stephen Watson (below) has now said they are a “number of assertions” being investigated, suggesting there are further allegations being probed.
Police had initially declined to open a probe into Rayner, but they did so after James Daly, a deputy chairman of the Conservative Party, made officers aware of neighbours contradicting Rayner’s statements.
Speaking to the BBC on Tuesday, Watson said: “There are a number of assertions knocking about.
“We, on an initial assessment, made a determination that it was unlikely that we would pursue an investigation on the provision of further investigation or further information.
“We have reassessed that decision, and we have announced that we will launch a formal investigation.
“That is a neutral act – it does not imply that the information gives us any hard and fast evidence upon which to base anything at this stage.
“It is simply we have an allegation, we are going to get to the bottom of what has happened, and we’ll work out where we go with it.”
Rayner has said she will step down if found to have committed an offence, but Labour leader Keir Starmer has repeatedly stood by his deputy.
On Sunday, shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper said Rayner is “very keen” to set out the facts to police and HMRC.
Cooper said: “It allows her to set out all the facts – not the sort of gossip, not the different allegations that we’ve had from Conservative MPs.
“We understand this is the run-up to local elections, we have seen this before as we saw with the Durham case as well.
“This is obviously about her family arrangements, her personal finances, and that’s really how it should be dealt with instead.”
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