Angela Rayner has said she will not repay a ministerial severance payment after returning to cabinet, and refused to put a deadline on Andy Burnham's pledge to end rough sleeping.
The Ashton-under-Lyne MP was reappointed as Housing Secretary by Mr Burnham after he became Prime Minister on Monday. She previously held the role from July 2024 until September last year, when she resigned following an investigation into her tax affairs.
She faced a backlash after admitting she underpaid stamp duty on a flat in Hove, Sussex, which she bought for £800,000 earlier that year. The Stockport-born MP admitted she failed to pay £40,000 in stamp duty as she claimed the property was her main home rather than a second home. A report by ethics watchdog Sir Laurie Magnus found she had breached the ministerial code.
Severance payment refused
In May this year, she said she had been 'exonerated' by HMRC who had 'cleared (her) of any wrongdoing.' She said she had taken 'reasonable care and acted in good faith, based on the expert advice I received, and HMRC has accepted this', adding she had paid 'every penny that I owed.'
A lump sum equivalent to 25% of the annual ministerial salary is payable when a minister stops holding office. Departing ministers who are aged over 65 or are reappointed within three weeks do not qualify. This year's accounts for the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government record the severance payment for Ms Rayner as £16,876.
When in opposition, she was a fierce critic of Conservative ministers who received the lump sum for only a few weeks' work during the chaotic period of multiple reshuffles between the premierships of Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak. The Conservatives have urged Ms Rayner to now pay back her severance package, something she was asked about as she appeared on BBC 5 Live today.
Asked if she would heed the calls from the Tories, she told the broadcaster: “No, my severance payment was given to me at the time. I’d worked in Government for a period of time, and then I came out of Government for just under a year, I think is the timetable, and I’ll be delivering in Government again. But on the Conservatives who took their severance, we’re talking weeks. Some of them were even a very short period of the time, and I think that chaos and that wider point about delivering for the British people is what we’re focused on, is not having that chaos, not looking like we’re in it for ourselves, but actually delivering on the promises that we made in 2024 in that general election.”
Rough sleeping pledge without deadline
Ms Rayner also declined to put a target deadline on the Government’s pledge to end rough sleeping. Prime Minister Andy Burnham announced, in his first speech as UK leader on Monday, that his Government will work to 'finally end long-term rough sleeping across the UK at the earliest opportunity.'
Ms Rayner said Mr Burnham’s ambition is for a 'universal scheme working with local authorities to deliver to end rough sleeping.' During her interview with the BBC, she was pressed on the deadline by which the Government would meet its pledge. She was asked if it would be by the time of the next parliament, five years or 10 years – but she declined to put a timeframe on it.
She said: “We’ve seen temporary accommodation allocations going down in local authorities where we had quite high numbers before. So that investment is already happening. And I think, you know, as we get into the winter period, I’m already thinking about that. I know it’s been summer, I know we’ve had a heatwave, but actually we don’t want to see high levels of street homelessness during that winter period.”
Mr Burnham announced, as his 'first instruction' in Government, £340 million in funding to tackle rough sleeping, on top of the previously announced £3.6 billion funding under the National Plan to End Homelessness, which came under Sir Keir Starmer’s premiership. Number 10 described the funding as the first phase of investment 'in a wider five-year programme that will provide homes and support for thousands of the people facing the most severe and long-term homelessness', with further steps to be set out before autumn.
During Mr Burnham’s tenure, Greater Manchester ran the 'A Bed Every Night' scheme – to which the then-mayor pledged to donate at least 15 percent of his salary – to help bring rough sleepers in off the streets.
Ms Rayner said Mr Burnham had made 'significant progress in Greater Manchester' on tackling rough sleeping but suggested the availability of support in that area attracted others and resulted in figures going up again. She said: “Of course then when we have a package of homelessness (support) in Greater Manchester then we also got a lot more people from outside that wanted that support and came to Greater Manchester. So what we need to do is make sure that we have a programme across the whole of the country.”
Council house building ambitions
Ms Rayner also said she aspires to 'ramp it up' when it comes to council house building, although she declined to put a figure on how many more would be built and by when. She acknowledged the “massive difference” in housebuilding in the period after the Second World War compared with now, telling BBC 5 Live: “There is a huge gulf between that. We want to aspire to get as far as possible. And what we’ve done as a government is put more investment in that, the £39 billion for social and affordable housing grant funding that we want to get out the door. We want make sure that the right-to-buy receipts is allowing councils – under previous governments, councils have not had the facility to be able to build at that type of scale, so we’re scaling that up and we’re going to support them in doing that.”
