The prime minister and Labour ministers will stop accepting clothing donations because they don’t want voters to believe they are “living very different lives” to people who are “really struggling” in the country, the culture secretary, Lisa Nandy, has said.
Speaking before the opening of the Labour conference tomorrow, Nandy told the BBC the government wants to demonstrate that its priorities are “the country’s priorities”, after it emerged Keir Starmer, his wife Victoria, Rachel Reeves and Angela Rayner have all decided to stop accepting free gifts of clothes from Labour party donors.
An investigation by the Sunday Times revealed the Labour peer Waheed Alli, Labour’s main fundraiser, gave Starmer nearly £19,000 worth of clothing and glasses this year, and paid for a personal shopper, clothes and alterations for Starmer’s wife, which were not initially declared.
Alli also gave Rayner a donation for work clothing worth £3,550, while Reeves received a donation of £7,500 from another donor, Juliet Rosenfeld, which she used to pay for clothing, the Guardian revealed on Friday.
Nandy said she had not personally accepted any donations for clothes. Asked on BBC Breakfast whether she understood why people are upset that Labour ministers have been accepting these free gifts while cutting the winter fuel payment for pensioners, she said: “Of course I understand that people are really struggling in this country, and have been struggling for a really long time.”
She added that she thinks people want a government that “is well turned out” representing the country “properly” at lots of different events, and that what was most important was for ministers to declare donations in an open and transparent manner so that people can see where there has been “undue influence”.
When pressed to explain why Starmer, Reeves and Rayner will no longer accept clothing donations in that case, she replied: “For exactly the reason that you just said, that people are really struggling in this country, and we don’t want people to believe that we are living very different lives from them.
“Most people who go into politics, of all political parties, are ordinary people who want to make people’s lives better.
“It is important to us that people know that that is what we are as a government and that we have their priorities absolutely up front and centre of ours. The country’s priorities are our priorities.”
She stressed the government was being “open and transparent about what we are doing”.
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Starmer, a season ticket-holder for Arsenal football club, has declared £35,000 of free tickets from football clubs.
Nandy defended Starmer, saying that when he accepts hospitality from donors, he declares it all so people can see who is donating and judge for themselves whether there’s any undue influence or not. “I feel really confident as a member of this government that there isn’t,” she said.
“I don’t make any judgment about what other members of parliament do. The only judgement I would make is, if they are breaking the rules and they are trying to hide what they are doing, that is when problems arise.”