PM will no longer accept donations to pay for clothes

Sir Keir Starmer, Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner and Chancellor Rachel Reeves will not accept any further donations for clothing after a row over gifts, a Downing Street source has said.

The prime minister has faced growing criticism after it emerged he had received more than £16,000 for work clothing and spectacles for him, and further donations for his wife, from Labour peer Waheed Alli.

The Financial Times has reported that Rayner and Reeves declared thousands of pounds in work clothing from wealthy donors as general office support.

The prime minister has maintained he has always followed the rules on donations.

Explaining the decision to stop accepting donations for clothing, Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy told BBC Breakfast: "People are really struggling in this country and we don't want people to believe that we are living very different lives from them."

She said it was important to show that government's priorities are the same as the country's and that most people in politics are "ordinary people who want to make people's lives better".

Labour is trying to draw a line under the controversy as the party heads to Liverpool for its first annual conference since its landslide general election victory in July.

Rayner will open the event on Sunday and, in comments ahead of her speech, she spoke of "restoring trust in politics" as she vowed to make "irreversible" changes to devolution laws to ensure Northerners are no longer "dictated" to by Whitehall.

The relationship between the Labour’s leadership and Lord Alli, a wealthy donor made head of party fundraising, has come under renewed scrutiny since it was revealed earlier this week that Sir Keir failed to declare £5,000 in donations for clothing for his wife, Lady Victoria Starmer.

The Conservatives asked Parliamentary Standards Commissioner Daniel Greenberg to investigate why gifts for a personal shopper and clothing alterations were not declared in the MPs' register, but no investigation was launched.

Sir Keir is one of seven cabinet ministers who received donations and gifts from Lord Alli in the lead-up to the general election.

On Friday, the Financial Times reported a £3,550 donation to Rayner by Lord Alli registered as “to support me in my capacity as deputy leader of the Labour party” was for clothing.

In addition, the paper said that Reeves received £7,500 from a donor, Juliet Rosenfeld, in four instalments from January 2023 to May 2024, which it said was used to pay for clothing.

On Thursday, former deputy Labour leader Baroness Harman told BBC Newsnight that the prime minister having clothes and spectacles paid for "feels a bit like a misstep because most people have to buy their own clothes to go to work and the prime minister is not low paid".

'Very bad look'

The Conservatives said Labour were "pure hypocrites".

A Tory spokesperson said: "Keir Starmer and his top team have accepted thousands of pounds in freebie clothes whilst simultaneously consigning 10 million pensioners to a cold and hard winter.

"And not only have they loaded up on freebies whilst lecturing the public about integrity, morality, and tough choices - they also appear to have continuously failed to properly register these crony gifts."

Tory MP Sir Bernard Jenkin told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "One would have thought Keir Starmer might have learned from our own [Conservatives] mistakes when we were in government."

He said "just complying with the rules is not going to protect your reputation".

"Rules are the backstop – what matters is how you behave, how you are seen to behave, how you adopt your leadership role in public life, how you deliver your integrity and about your commitment to your role".

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage said the row was a “political mess” for Sir Keir after he had tried to present himself as “different to the entitled Tories” and “holier than thou”.

“It’s just a very bad look for somebody who said everything was going to change,” he added.

SNP work and pensions spokesperson Kirsty Blackman said: "Voters were promised change but instead the Labour Party is copying the worst excesses of the Tories on sleaze, austerity cuts, and cronyism."

'Safer'

It is not yet clear whether the new policy of not accepting donations for clothes will apply to the prime minister's wife. Lord Alli paid for clothing for her and a personal shopper. It is also not clear whether it will apply to other donations in kind.

The prime minister, a keen Arsenal fan, has also come under pressure for accepting thousands of pounds worth of free football tickets over the last Parliament.

Although he is an Arsenal season ticket holder, Sir Keir told the BBC on Thursday that security concerns meant he could no longer watch games from the stands without security.

In a series of BBC interviews, he said he was "not going to ask the taxpayer to indulge me to be in the stands when I could go and sit somewhere else where the club and the security say it's safer for me to be".

Sir Keir's register of interests shows most of his tickets have been provided by individual football clubs or the Premier League, although investment firm Cain International and Bishop Auckland-based Teescraft Engineering paid for him to attend games against Chelsea and Newcastle respectively.

He is far from the only MP to have received freebies over the past year, with more than 70 current MPs from across the House of Commons listing free tickets to sporting events in their registers of interests.

Tickets have been provided by private donors, corporations, football clubs and sports governing bodies, among others.