Angela Rayner rejects claims she broke rules on donations saying, if anything, she was ‘overly transparent’ – Labor conference live | Politics

Q: Will Sue Gray still be in her job at Christmas?

Rayner says she does not accept that way Sue Gray, Keir Starmer’s chief of staff, is presented in the media. (Gray has been accused of holding up decisions in No 10.) Rayner says Gray has been “incredibly supportive” of ministers.

Q: So she will still be in her job at Christmas.

Rayner replies: “I think so, absolutely.”

She says Gray has been doing “an incredible job.”

As a former union rep, she does not like the way Gray has been demonized in the media.

Angela Raynerthe deputy prime minister, is being interviewed by Laura Kuenssberg on the BBC. Normally Keir Starmer gets this slot at Labor conference, but he was on the show a few weeks ago.

Q: Starmer says he would return politics to the service of the people. Why does that involve accepting donations?

Rayner says MPs have been accepting donations for years. But it is important to be transparent about it. She says Labour, and Keir Starmer, have been transparent.

She says she comes from a working class background. She couldn’t have stood for parliament without people helping to fund her campaign.

Q: Why did you need to accept a holiday in New York?

That is a reference to this Sunday Times story. It says:

Angela Rayner appears to have breached parliamentary rules by failing to declare that a friend joined her on a “personal holiday” funded by Lord Alli, the multimillionaire peer at the heart of the Downing Street donor scandal.

The deputy prime minister did not report that Sam Tarry, then the Ilford South MP, stayed with her at a $2.5 million apartment in Manhattan over the festive period. I have paid for flights but benefited from free accommodation.

The rules say MPs must declare foreign trips which they, or anyone connected to them, undertake if a donor pays for “part or all” of it as a result of their “parliamentary or political activities”.

Rayner’s team felt she would not ordinarily need to declare even her own use of the flat because Alli is primarily a personal friend. She chose to report it, however, noting that he was also a donor to her political activities, having given her more than £50,000 over the previous four years.

Rayner says she paid for her own flight to New York. But a friend offered to lend her the use of her flat. She she that is what friends do; she has done that herself.

But she says, because the friend had also given political donations, she felt it was right to declare that too.

Q: Shouldn’t you also have declared that Alli paid for Sam Tarry to be there too. Did you break the rules?

Rayner says she does not think she broke the rules. It was a personal holiday; she was not there on parliamentary business. She says, if anything, she was “overly transparent.”

Q: People will think Alli is getting something in return for these gifts.

Rayner says she promised nothing to him and gave him nothing. She says people have donated to her because they see her as someone coming from a working class background.

Bridget Phillipsonthe education secretary, is being interviewed on Sky’s Sunday with Trevor Phillips.

Phillips asks about a story in the Mail on Sunday about donations that Phillipson received from Lord Alli, a longstanding donor to the Labor party who has been in the news all week because he paid for clothing for Keir Starmer and his wife.

Phillipson declared receiving two donations from Alli worth a total of £14,000 “to host a number of events, including on behalf of the shadow education team”. The Mail on Sunday says one of these events was a party to celebrate Phillipson’s 40th birthday.

Phillips puts it to the minister that people would read the story and conclude that Phillipson should have paid for his own birthday party.

Phillipson says she held two receptions around the time of her birthday. One was primarily with politicians, and another was for journalists, she says. She says these were work receptions, where education was discussed. They were not her birthday party, because her family were not even invited. She said her proper birthday celebration involved going out for a pizza with her kids.

She says they were declared properly. There is a long-standing Labor supporter, she says. She says he is not a lobbyist trying to influence politics.

Good morning. The last time Labor held a conference after a summer general election was in 2017. The party lost, but because Jeremy Corbyn did much better than expected, conference ended up feeling like a victory party. This time Keir Starmer won a landslide. But early messaging from the government has focused on the dire economic inheritance, and the need for tough decisions in the budget, Starmer’s approval ratings have plunged, and the past week has been dominated by controversy caused by unforced errors (freebies, and feuding about Sue Gray). It is too early to assess the mood of Labour, holding its conference in Liverpool as a government party for the first time in 15 years, but no one is describing it as pure celebratory.

In an interview with the Observer ahead of the conference, Starmer said he would protect public services from further austerity.

He had a similar message for the Sunday Mirror, telling them:

I was running a public service when the coalition government went down the austerity route. It did a huge amount of damage to our public services and we are still feeling the damage even now. So we are not going down the road of austerity.

But Starmer also told the Mirror that he wanted to use the conference to give people “hope” that Labor could deliver “a massively different and better country”. He said:

We’ve got to deal with the problems we’ve inherited, that’s what we are doing. What we’ll set out at conference is the why. What do you get for this? The hope, the changed Britain.

Starmer referred to goals like driving up living standards, fixing the NHS, delivering clean energy, improving opportunities for young people and cutting crime. He said:

This would be a massively different and better country, real sunny uplands stuff. But to get there we have to do the tough thing to start with.

Normally Starmer would do a big interview with the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg on the first day conference. But he was on the show earlier this month, and so today Angela Rayner, the deputy PM, is in that slot.

Here is the agenda for the day.

8.30am: Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, is interviewed on Sky News’ Sunday with Trevor Phillips. Sharon Graham, the Unite general secretary, is also being interviewed.

9am: Angela Rayner, the deputy prime minister, is interviewed on the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg.

11.10am: The conference formally opens. Angela Rayner, the deputy PM and housing secretary, speaks at 11.25am and Pat McFadden, the Cabinet Office minister, speaks at 12.05. The business is focused on Labor party reports.

Lunchtime: David Lammy, the foreign secretary, Louise Haigh, the transport secretary, and Anneliese Dodds, the development minister, are among the ministers speaking at fringe meetings.

1.30pm: Conference resumes, with a policy plenary. The speakers included Darren Jones, chief secretary to the Treasury at 2pm; Lucy Powell, leader of the Commons, at 2.05pm; and Lammy, at 2.30pm.

Afternoon: Lammy, Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, Nick Thomas-Symonds, the Cabinet Office minister, and Stephen Doughty, the Foreign Office minister, are among the people speaking at fringe meetings. The fringes include a Labor Movement for Europe rally.

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