UK Deputy Prime Minister Resigns over Tax Error
UK deputy prime minister Angela Rayner resigned Friday after an independent inquiry found that she fell short of the standards expected of government ministers over a tax error on a recent house purchase.
Rayner, who acknowledged on Wednesday that she didn’t pay enough tax on her purchase of an apartment in Hove, on England’s south coast, conceded that she should have sought more specific advice, while stressing that the report found that she had acted in good faith.
“I take full responsibility for this error,” she said in her resignation letter to Prime Minister Keir Starmer. “I would like to take this opportunity to repeat that it was never my intention to do anything other than pay the right amount.”
In response, Starmer voiced his sadness, but said that Rayner had made the right decision to stand down, The AP news reported.
“I have nothing but admiration for you and huge respect for your achievements in politics,” Starmer wrote. The handwritten letter signed off “with very best wishes and with real sadness.”
Rayner will remain a U.K. lawmaker on the back benches. She referred herself to the independent adviser on ministerial standards, Laurie Magnus, on Wednesday, who delivered his report to Starmer on Friday.
Though Magnus concluded that Rayner had “acted with integrity and with a dedicated and exemplary commitment to public service,“ he said that “with deep regret” she had breached the ministers’ code of conduct.
