I took cash for clothes too, admits Rachel Reeves

Chancellor, Sir Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner declare they will stop taking the donations as row threatens to overshadow party conference

Rachel Reeves has admitted she accepted money for clothes, as the backlash over gifts from donors threatened to overshadow the Labour Party conference this weekend.
The Chancellor has received almost £7,500 for clothing since 2023 from a friend called Juliet Rosenfeld, the widow of a Labour donor caught up in the 2006 cash for honours scandal.
It comes after it emerged that both Sir Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner, the Deputy Prime Minister, accepted thousands of pounds towards clothes from Lord Alli, the Labour donor.
The Prime Minister, Ms Rayner and Ms Reeves all made clear on Friday night that they would stop taking donations for clothes now that they were in office.
The sudden change in position, after days of Downing Street defending the Prime Minister’s stance on donations, was rushed out ahead of the party’s four-day conference in Liverpool, which was meant to be a moment of celebration after the election victory.
The decision was made after Labour figures started to express disquiet at the No 10 defence, with some MPs calling for Sir Keir to promise to take no more “freebies”.
But the Prime Minister’s new stance does not include giving up hospitality such as football tickets, indicating he will continue to have his Arsenal corporate tickets paid for by others.
There are now calls for the clothing donations to be paid back. One Labour MP told The Telegraph: “It’s either right or it’s wrong. If it’s wrong now then it was always wrong, so it follows they should reimburse.”
The development follows a week in which the Government has faced huge pressure over donations accepted by Sir Keir, his wife and other senior politicians.
Lord Alli, a former television show creator said to be worth £200 million, has given nearly £1 million to the party.
Sir Keir’s wife, Lady Starmer, had received £5,000 worth of clothing and personal shopping from the donor. The Prime Minister accepted £16,200 worth of “work clothing” from Lord Alli in April, three months before he won the election.
MPs are required to declare gifts and donations to the parliamentary authorities within 28 days of receiving them and they are then published on the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.
However, the Prime Minister declared the gifts to his wife late, after initially believing they did not need to be added to the register.
It has emerged that Lord Alli has in the past publicly called for a crackdown on “bullying newspapers”.
In a separate development, The Telegraph can disclose that David Lammy took £10,000 from a Saudi-supporting PR executive months before he became Foreign Secretary.
The Prime Minister has also faced questions over the power held by Sue Gray, his chief of staff, after it emerged she was being paid more than him.
Earlier this week, he was forced to insist that he had not lost control of Downing Street, despite Ms Gray’s salary being leaked in an apparent attempt to damage her politically.
One of Sir Keir’s most senior allies, Pat McFadden, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, rallied around Ms Gray in an interview with The Telegraph, saying he didn’t think she was “going anywhere”.
On Friday, it emerged that Ms Reeves, who has faced criticism for deciding to end winter fuel payments for millions of pensioners, benefited from cash donations for clothing.
She received four donations since the start of last year totalling £7,367 from Ms Rosenfeld, who Ms Reeves’s team said was a long-standing friend.
The donations, which all date before Ms Reeves entered government, were declared on the register of interests. However, no mention of clothing specifically was included.
Ms Reeves’s team believe no change in the declarations is needed, having consulted with the parliamentary authorities, because the money was later spent on clothes rather than clothing items specifically being donated.
Ms Rosenfeld, a psychotherapist and author, is the wife of Andrew Rosenfeld, a multi-millionaire businessman who died in 2015, aged 52, from cancer.
He had become a prominent Labour donor, and lent £1 million to Sir Tony Blair’s party ahead of the 2005 general election.
He was later invited to a dinner with the then prime minister in Downing Street and became embroiled in the cash for honours scandal after his name was suggested for a peerage.
A loophole in the law meant that while those making donations had to declare the money, loans at commercial rates did not need to be publicly declared.
It later emerged that Labour had planned to hand a number of people who had made the loans peerages in a draft honours list drawn up in September 2005.
New details have also emerged about Ms Rayner’s clothing donations. It had already come to light that she had accepted £2,230 worth of free clothing from the brand ME+EM.
On Friday, her team confirmed that a £3,550 donation from Lord Alli dated June 2024, described in the register as “donation in kind for undertaking parliamentary duties”, was actually clothing. Ms Rayner’s team is now updating her registration of interests to make the full details clear.
Reports that the donation was actually clothes first emerged in the Financial Times on Friday. It is the latest example of apparent briefing and infighting inside No 10. A hunt for the leaker of Ms Gray’s salary is already under way over fears government insiders are briefing against senior Labour figures.
Ms Reeves, Ms Rayner and Sir Keir have all now pledged not to take clothing donations in the future. Sir Keir will also not accept donations of spectacles, having done so from Lord Alli.
But the Prime Minister has not promised to stop taking tickets for football matches or concerts, such as the Taylor Swift show he attended with his wife.
On Thursday, Sir Keir defended his decision to accept corporate tickets at Arsenal, the football club he has regularly attended with his son and friends, on grounds of safety.
The Prime Minister said he could no longer sit in the same place in the stands that he had for more than a decade given the security risk, hence why he now attends in a corporate area.
That, however, does not explain why he does not take on the financial cost himself.
Some Labour MPs have called for Sir Keir to vow to stop taking all “freebies”.
One told The Telegraph: “Loads of us are livid. This is what hypocrisy looks like – and most of us have been fighting the ‘they’re all the same’ rhetoric for our whole careers, Keir’s double standards just prove it’s entirely accurate.”
Another said acceptance of such gifts could grate on the public since ordinary people “don’t have any gifts adorned on them”.