Reeves says she was let down by letting agency, but she says she should have checked they obtained rental licence
Downing Street has now released the new material.
Here is the letter from Rachel Reeves to the PM explaining what happened.
She says the letting agency had told the family that they would sort out the licence, and failed to do so. But she accepts that it should have been her responsibility to check that this had happened.
Key events
-
Early evening summary
-
Tories refuse to accept Reeves wasn’t to blame for rental licence error – and demand ‘proper investigation’
-
No 10 releases redacted email exchange between Reeves’s husband and letting agency
-
Reeves says she was let down by letting agency, but she says she should have checked they obtained rental licence
-
DfE proposes 6.5% pay rise for teachers in England, spread over three years
-
Letting agency used by Reeves apologises, saying it’s to blame for rental licence error
-
Jaywick in Farage’s Clacton constituency named as most deprived neighbourhood in England
-
Scottish government heading for £5bn gap between its income and its spending, auditor general warns
-
No 10 says ethics adviser now reviewing new information about Reeves’s rental licence error – but PM still has confidence in her
-
Southwark council says it only acts against landlords who ignore licence warnings, implying Reeves should avoid fine
-
Lib Dems call for Katie Lam to be sacked – as Lam wins Spectator award after calling for mass deportations on cultural grounds
-
Boris Johnson tells Tories they won’t win next election by ‘bashing green agenda’
-
Badenoch says ministers who break the law should have to resign
-
DWP appoints two welfare experts to co-chair review of Pip disability benefit with Stephen Timms
-
No 10 won’t say if PM’s ethics adviser obtained proof that Reeves was wrongly advised over rental licence
-
Nearly 40,000 prisoners let out under government’s early release scheme, MoJ says
-
UK rule change allows Palestinian scholars to bring families from Gaza
-
Badenoch says Tories have ruled out retrospectively removing indefinite leave to remain from migrants living in UK
-
Priti Patel calls for Reeves to be prosecuted over rental licence error
-
John Swinney and Rhun ap Iorwerth discuss SNP/Plaid Cymru ‘progressive alliance’ to challenge Labour
-
Home Office welcomes figures showing almost 60,000 knives taken off streets
-
Badenoch says Reeves has more questions to answer about rental licence error
-
Badenoch declines to commit to reversing any tax rises in budget
-
Badenoch says Reeves should have to resign if she puts up taxes in budget
-
Badenoch says, if Reeves can’t handle her own paperwork, she can’t manage the country’s
-
Badenoch and Mel Stride hold press event
-
Tories say Starmer should sack Reeves for breaking law and breaking ministerial code
-
No 10 releases letters from Reeves and Starmer about chancellor inadvertently renting home with necessary licence
Early evening summary
For a full list of all the stories covered on the blog today, do scroll through the list of key event headlines near the top of the blog.
This is from the former Tory MP Miriam Cates, criticising the party for calling for Rachel Reeves’s resignation over her rental licence error.
If most Brits seriously think that inadvertently failing to obtain an obscure housing rental licence makes someone unfit to serve as Chancellor, then quite frankly we richly deserve to be governed by uninspiring technocrats.
The former Tory chancellor Nadhim Zahawi has posted a message on social media saying he agrees.
In the last parliament Cates co-chaired the New Conservatives group with Danny Kruger, who has defected to Reform UK. Reform UK hasn’t been calling for Reeves’s resignation today. And, in general, the Reform leader Nigel Farage is reluctant to call for ministerial resignations over misconduct allegations – perhaps in part because he is regularly criticised on standards grounds himself.
Tories refuse to accept Reeves wasn’t to blame for rental licence error – and demand ‘proper investigation’
The Conservatives started the day calling for Rachel Reeves’s resignation over the rental licence error. (See 8.42am.) In the light of the apology from the letting agency (see 5.35pm), most reasonable observers will conclude that the blame lies largely, or wholly, elsewhere.
But CCHQ is in less forgiving mood. It has just issued this statement from a Tory spokesperson.
Last night Rachel Reeves said “she had not been made aware of the licensing requirement”. Today, we find out that Reeves was alerted to the need for a licence in writing by the estate agents. Having been caught out, the chancellor is now trying to make the estate agents take the blame, but Reeves never followed up with them to ensure that the licence had been applied for, or checked if the licence had been granted.
Regardless, under the law, Reeves and her husband are responsible for ensuring the licence is granted.
With more information coming to light every few hours, the prime minister needs to grow a backbone and start a proper investigation.
But the spokesperson has, though, not repeated the call for Reeves to resign; instead that seems to have been downgraded into a call for a full investigation.
(The Tories may instead be saving their ‘Reeves must resign’ effort until after the budget –see 9.26am.)
No 10 releases redacted email exchange between Reeves’s husband and letting agency
Here is part of the email exchange between Nick Joicey, Rachel Reeves’s husband, and the letting agency, Harvey Wheeler. It includes the email where the agency employee says they will sort out the licence.
Reeves says she was let down by letting agency, but she says she should have checked they obtained rental licence
Downing Street has now released the new material.
Here is the letter from Rachel Reeves to the PM explaining what happened.
She says the letting agency had told the family that they would sort out the licence, and failed to do so. But she accepts that it should have been her responsibility to check that this had happened.
DfE proposes 6.5% pay rise for teachers in England, spread over three years
Richard Adams
Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, wants to offer teachers in England an unusual pay rise of 6.5% spread over the next three academic years, according to proposals published today.
The Department for Education has asked the School Teachers Review Body (STRB), the independent group that makes pay recommendations, to back a settlement running from 2026-27 to 2028-29 that would amount to a 6.5% increase.
The DfE’s evidence to the STRB said “the department’s view is that a 6.5% pay award over 2026-27, 2027-28 and 2028-29 would be appropriate, with the level of awards weighted towards the latter part of the remit,” by allowing schools to draw up long-term budgets.
The evidence claims that based on forecasts for inflation, the pay deal “would be a real terms increase of almost 4.5% over the five years” after accounting for previous pay rises.
But the offer had drawn the ire of education unions. Daniel Kebede, general secretary of the National Education Union, said:
This Labour government is failing to deliver on its promises. Instead of 6,500 more teachers, we have botched Ofsted reforms, declining school funding, and now a pay recommendation that will do nothing to address the continued crisis in retention.
Pepe Di’Iasio, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said the proposals were “extremely disappointing”. He said:
The proposed pay award over three years doesn’t address historic pay erosion and is dangerously close to being a real-terms pay cut as it relies on inflation being low across the period.
We urge the pay review body to assert its independence once again and recommend a pay award at the level needed to attract people into teaching and keep them in the profession.
Letting agency used by Reeves apologises, saying it’s to blame for rental licence error
The lettings agency involved in Rachel Reeves’ rental arrangements said it had apologised to her for an “oversight” that led to a failure to obtain a licence.
Gareth Martin, owner of Harvey Wheeler, said:
We alert all our clients to the need for a licence. In an effort to be helpful our previous property manager offered to apply for a licence on these clients’ behalf, as shown in the correspondence. That property manager suddenly resigned on the Friday before the tenancy began on the following Monday.
Unfortunately, the lack of application was not picked up by us as we do not normally apply for licences on behalf of our clients; the onus is on them to apply. We have apologised to the owners for this oversight.
At the time the tenancy began, all the relevant certificates were in place and if the licence had been applied for, we have no doubt it would have been granted.
Our clients would have been under the impression that a licence had been applied for. Although it is not our responsibility to apply, we did offer to help with this.
We deeply regret the issue caused to our clients as they would have been under the impression that a licence had been applied for.
Presumably the emails Downing Street plans to publish later (see 4.13pm) relate to this.
Jaywick in Farage’s Clacton constituency named as most deprived neighbourhood in England
A seaside neighbourhood in Essex, part of the parliamentary constituency represented by Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, has once again been named the most deprived in England, PA Media reports. PA says:
The latest official data shows that an area of the coastal village of Jaywick, close to the town of Clacton-on-Sea in the local authority of Tendring, has been classed the most deprived neighbourhood for the fourth time in a row.
Areas of Blackpool again make up most of the rest of the top 10, along with new appearances for neighbourhoods in Hastings and Rotherham.
Thursday’s data, published by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG), presented relative levels of deprivation in areas or neighbourhoods of England in 2025.
Jaywick had previously topped the list in the 2019, 2015 and 2010 publications.
Farage was elected MP for Clacton in July 2024.
Jaywick received international coverage in 2018 after it was used in a US election campaign advert, with a bleak picture of the area, showing unpaved roads and dilapidated homes, to warn voters about the consequences of not backing Donald Trump ahead of midterm elections in the US.
Farage told PA Media that he was “obviously sad that things aren’t improving more quickly” and while he felt he had helped with investment and tourism for the area, “there’s a limit to what one person can do”.
This chart from the report gives the most granular depiction of where deprived areas are in the UK. It shows deprivation by LSOAs (lower-layer super output areas, areas containing about 1,500 people).
Scottish government heading for £5bn gap between its income and its spending, auditor general warns
Severin Carrell
Severin Carrell is the Guardian’s Scotland editor.
Scotland’s auditor general has warned the government in Edinburgh it is failing to manage a “stark” gap between its income and spending, which is forecast to reach £4.7bn in four years’ time.
Doubling down on previous criticisms of its spending controls, Stephen Boyle said today the Scottish government was making only short-term and temporary cuts in its spending, and had failed to address fundamental problems with its overspending. That damaged the fiscal sustainability of the public sector.
Boyle said this year the SNP government recorded a £1bn surplus only because of an extra £2.2bn in grant funding from the Labour government in London, which also meant it could cancel plans to use £460m in offshore wind leasing revenues to prop up its day to day spending.
He said:
A forecast gap of nearly £5bn remains between what ministers want to spend on public services and the funding available to them.
The Scottish government needs to prepare more detailed plans setting out how it will close that gap by the end of the decade.
Audit Scotland added that the £4.7bn gap was “due to policy choices and higher workforce costs. However, the government’s plan to make savings over the next five years lacks detail on how they will be delivered.”
It said the government’s 2025 medium-term financial strategy paper showed a £2.6bn gap in day-to-day spending in 2029/30 and a £2.1bn gap in capital spending in 2029/30.
It added that “a lack of available data means that the Scottish government is not clearly demonstrating that public spending is delivering the intended outcomes.”
Kemi Badenoch says the revelation that No 10 intends to publish new information about the Rachel Reeves rental licence error (see 4.13pm) shows why a full inquiry is needed.
This whole thing stinks.
The Prime Minister needs to stop trying to cover this up, order a full investigation and, if Reeves has broken the law, grow a backbone and sack her!
Here is John Crace’s sketch of Kemi Badenoch’s speech this morning.
And here is his take on Badenoch’s call for Rachel Reeves’s resignation over two separate issues. (See 9.26am.)
Badenoch began with the overnight story of Rachel Reeves’s failure to obtain a licence before letting out her Dulwich house. Given that Reeves had campaigned for such a licence to be introduced, this must qualify as right up there with one of the most brain-dead blunders. Stand by for Reeves to be included on a register of dodgy landlords. Kemi couldn’t believe her luck. If the chancellor couldn’t be trusted to run her own affairs, how could she be trusted to run the economy? She had broken the ministerial code and should resign.
This presented a problem. Because within minutes of a very short stump speech, Kemi was also demanding that Rachel resign if she were – as Reeves has virtually already broadcast herself – to break a manifesto promise by increasing income tax. Now we were in two parallel worlds at the same time. One where Rachel resigned right now and another where she resigned in four weeks’ time. For Kemi, Mel and Priti Patel, both scenarios were not just desirable but totally possible. In an infinite number of universes, there could be an infinite number of Reeveses. Any number of resignations were thinkable.
This is from my colleague Peter Walker, about the Rachel Reeves emails.
Emails will be out later – between lettings agent and Reeves’ husband. The guidance is that this will be good news for Reeves’ case.
No 10 says ethics adviser now reviewing new information about Reeves’s rental licence error – but PM still has confidence in her
No 10 has revealed that inquiries into Rachel Reeves’s rental licence error – which in effect wrapped up within hours last night – have been reopened.
At the afternoon lobby briefing, the No 10 spokesperson issued this statement.
Following a review of emails sent and received by the chancellor’s husband [Nick Joicey], new information has come to light. This has now been passed to the prime minister and his independent adviser. It would be inappropriate to comment further.
The initial reaction at lobby was that this could be career-ending for Reeves, particularly because initally the spokesperson declined to say that the PM has confidence in the chancellor. But the spokesperson swiftly corrected the impression he had given, and said that the PM does have “full confidence” in the chancellor.
Downing Street is expected to publish these emails later today.
The spokesperson would not elaborate on what the emails show, or what they imply for the chancellor’s career, but he repeated the point about the PM having full confidence in her.
Sir Laurie Magnus, the ethics adviser, is looking at the new material. But the fact that he is reviewing new material does not mean that he is opening a full, formal investigation. That decision will be a matter for him.
Asked if Reeves would still be chancellor at the time of the budget, the spokesperson indicated that she would.
Southwark council says it only acts against landlords who ignore licence warnings, implying Reeves should avoid fine
Rachel Reeves probably does not spend a lot of time reading the LandlordTODAY website. But if she did, she might have seen this article, written earlier this year, highlighting complaints about licensing schemes like the one that has got the chancellor into difficulties. It says:
Phil Turtle, a compliance consultant at Landlord Licensing & Defence, says it is increasingly the case that a missed renewal notice, a buried letter, or a forgotten deadline can cost landlords their financial stability – and even their properties.
And he believes that selective licensing schemes, enforced with increasing rigour by local councils, are catching landlords off guard with fines that can spiral into the hundreds of thousands.
“I’ve seen landlords lose everything because they didn’t have a system in place to track compliance. One missed deadline can cost you £105,000, and if you’re operating through a limited company, that fine could double to £210,000.”
He points to a recent case in the London Borough of Waltham Forest, where a landlord faced a staggering £66,000 in fines for failing to license a single house converted into two flats. “The council hit the landlord’s limited company with £16,500 per flat and then fined him personally as the sole director another £16,500 per flat. That’s £66,000 for a simple oversight – and now he’s forced to sell the property to cover the cost.”
But my colleague Peter Walker says Reeves is not likely to be fined because Southwark council only fines landlords who ignore warning letters about not having landlord licences.
Some good news for Rachel Reeves – Southwark council say they only take enforcement action (eg fines) against landlords who don’t have a licence unless they don’t get a licence within three weeks of a warning or the property is unsafe. You’d assume Reeves is safe on both of those.
He quotes this statement from the council.
Labour is facing a continued local council backlash over disapproval with its approach to the war in Gaza, with one of its councillors in Bristol having joined the Green party, PA Media reports. PA says Alsayed Al-Maghrabi is the latest local Labour councillor to have left the party over Gaza and the “direction of the national leadership”, and has joined Bristol’s ruling Green party group.
Lib Dems call for Katie Lam to be sacked – as Lam wins Spectator award after calling for mass deportations on cultural grounds
While the Tories are calling for Rachel Reeves to be sacked, the Liberal Democrats are today saying that Katie Lam should be sacked from her post as a Conservative home affairs spokesperson.
The Lib Dems say Kemi Badencoch should get rid of her because, by speaking “imprecisely”, as Badenoch put it, Lam implied the party wanted to deport potentially millions of people.
Max Wilkinson, a Lib Dem home affairs spokesperson, said:
Katie Lam’s divisive comments will have caused angst for families worried about being broken apart. Kemi Badenoch should sack her from the Conservative front bench to send a clear signal that this was not her party’s policy and restore order to her ranks.
The problem with this line, as Sunder Katwala from the British Future thinktank and many others have pointed out, Lam was largely describing party policy (at least, party policy as set out in the Chris Philp bill – see 11.47am) when she gave her controversial interview to the Sunday Times recently.
But, to be fair to Badenoch, Lam did arguably go beyond party policy in one respect. She said that mass deportations were needed so that Britain could become “a mostly but not entirely culturally coherent group of people”. When Badenoch and Philp have spoken about Tory immigration policy, they have focused on wanting to cut immigration numbers more for economic reasons than for cultural reasons.
Last night Lam was named newcomer of the year at the Spectator’s parliamentarian of the year award. On Bluesky some commentators are appalled.
This is from Adam Bienkov, political editor of Byline Times.
Nobody had even heard of Katie Lam outside of Westminster until about two weeks ago.
Literally all it takes to be considered “brilliant” and a “rising star” on the right of British politics now is just a willingness to say something slightly more racist than all of your competitors
This is from the historian Robert Saunders.
Ironically, Katie Lam was named “Parliamentary Newcomer of the Year” last night by the Spectator.
It’s an example of the “Boris Johnson” problem in British politics: that being loud, self-promoting and outrageous brings prizes and name-recognition. Learning your stuff & being thoughtful does not.
And this is from Philip Stephens, the former chief political commentator at the Financial Times.
Conservative MP Katie Lam preaches racism of “cultural coherence” and is rewarded with a gong from The Spectator. Then, what would you expect from editor Michael Gove after his Brexit fear-mongering about Turkish (Muslim) immigrants?
Boris Johnson tells Tories they won’t win next election by ‘bashing green agenda’
Boris Johnson has warned the Conservatives they will not win the next election by “bashing the green agenda”, Aletha Adu reports.
Badenoch says ministers who break the law should have to resign
Kemi Badenoch has told Sky News that ministers who break the law should have to resign. But, in an interview with Sam Coates, she said that her own law-breaking when she hacked into Harriet Harman’s website in 2008 did not count because she was in her 20s at the time, and not a lawmaker.
Badenoch owned up herself to the Harman hack. It was not the most sophisticated example of cybercrime. According to the biography of Badenoch published by Lord Ashcroft, Badenoch got into the website by guessing, for username, “harriet”, and for password, “harman”.
DWP appoints two welfare experts to co-chair review of Pip disability benefit with Stephen Timms
Two disability experts will help to lead the government’s review of a major benefit aimed at helping disabled people with living costs, PA Media reports. PA says:
Stephen Timms, a minister in the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), suggested disabled people would be placed “at the heart” of the review he is undertaking into personal independent payments (Pip).
Dr Clenton Farquharson and Sharon Brennan have been appointed co-chairs of the Timms Review, which was launched after elements of the government’s flagship welfare Bill which would restrict eligibility to Pip were scrapped in the summer.
Any changes to Pip have been postponed until after the review takes place, ministers have promised.
Farquharson has more than 25 years’ experience as a national advocate for disability rights, and social justice, according to the DWP.
Brennan meanwhile has expertise as a director of policy and external affairs at National Voices, a coalition of health and care charities, and has advised the Department for Transport on accessibility as a member of the disabled person’s transport advisory committee.
Timms has confirmed the appointments in a written ministerial statement.
He has also published updated terms of reference for the review. Mostly they are the same as when terms of reference for the review were first published in the summer. The original document said:
The purpose of the review is to ensure the assessment is fair and fit for the future rather than to generate proposals for further savings.
This sentence is still in the new version. But the update includes a new passage saying the review must take into account the Office for Budget Responsibility’s projections for future Pip spending. It says:
It is critical that the public and most importantly disabled people themselves, can trust in the fairness and fitness of Pip. The government is committed to making sure the system is sustainable and so the work of the review will operate within the Office for Budget Responsibility’s (OBR) projections for future Pip expenditure, to ensure it is there to support generations to come. We want to ensure public money is spent as effectively as possible in supporting disabled people to live independent and fulfilling lives.
Comment ×