What’s happening with Angela Rayner and her old council house?

Two key questions hang over Labour MP – should she have paid tax on the property’s sale and did she break electoral law by living elsewhere?

Angela Rayner is under police investigation over claims she broke electoral law.
Greater Manchester Police have launched an investigation into complaints that she wrongly declared which house was her permanent address on the electoral roll, which is a criminal offence. The allegation is that she was actually living with her husband at a separate address.
She also faces questions over the sale of the house she claimed she was living in. If it was not her main residence, she may have been liable to pay capital gains tax (CGT) on the sale.
Daniel Martin, The Telegraph’s deputy political editor, looks at the accusations.
Long before she was an MP, in 2007, Ms Rayner bought her £79,000 council property in Vicarage Road, Stockport, under the right-to-buy scheme.
Under the terms of the scheme, brought in by Margaret Thatcher, she received a 25 per cent discount off the property’s asking price – equating to £26,000.
A year later, she had a child with Unison official Mark Rayner, her then-partner. He owned a house in Lowndes Lane, about a mile away. The couple married in 2010.
Ms Rayner owned the house on Vicarage Road for eight years and, all the time she was there, she was registered on the electoral roll there.
She sold her house in 2015 for £127,500 – a profit of £48,500. She stayed registered at the address on the electoral roll until her husband sold his home a year later.
Under electoral rules, voters are expected to register at their permanent address.
They could face penalties for providing false information, such as a fine of up to £1,000.
If the offence is not deemed serious enough to warrant a criminal conviction, civil penalties can also be imposed.
Homeowners do not have to pay CGT if they make a profit on their main residence. They do, however, have to pay CGT on second properties.
Married couples who both own properties can only have one main residence between them for CGT purposes.
So the issue of where she actually lived for the first five years of her marriage, and which was her main residence, is crucial.
If she was liable to CGT, she would have had to pay up to £1,500. However, the amount can be reduced by the cost of repairs.
Neighbours on Vicarage Road have said they were “adamant” that she was actually living at her husband’s house in Lowndes Lane.
According to an unofficial biography by Lord Ashcroft, Ms Rayner re-registered the births of two sons to her husband’s house in 2010.
This would seem to indicate she should have been liable for CGT.
When reports about her property first emerged, Rayner tweeted: “As with the majority of ordinary people who sell their own homes, I was not liable for capital gains tax because it was my home and the only one I owned.”
However, experts questioned whether this aligned with actual tax law.
Ms Rayner insists she had taken expert tax and legal advice, which stated she did not need to pay CGT on the sale of her Vicarage Road property.
Sir Keir Starmer has also said he has “full confidence in all of the answers she has given”. Labour has suggested the story is a Tory attempt to “smear” her.
The Tories have demanded that Ms Rayner publish the tax advice she says she received, which she has so far refused to do.
She said she would be prepared to hand over that information, if necessary, to either HM Revenue & Customs or the police.