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Getty ImagesQuestions have been raised about the accuracy of the chancellor’s online CV, and the use of expenses while working at a bank, in the wake of a BBC News investigation.
Rachel Reeves and two colleagues were the subject of an expenses probe while she was a senior manager at Halifax Bank of Scotland (HBOS) in the late 2000s.
It was also revealed that the chancellor’s online CV exaggerated the length of time she worked at the Bank of England.
Sir Keir Starmer said Reeves has “dealt with any issues that arise” when asked about her CV by a reporter.
The initial stage of the investigation found that a whistleblower’s complaint was substantiated at HBOS, and the three employees appeared to have broken the rules, according to a senior source with direct knowledge of the probe.
We have not been able to establish what the final outcome of the investigation was. Indeed, it may not have concluded.
A spokesman for Reeves said the chancellor had no knowledge of the investigation, always complied with expenses rules and left the bank on good terms.
In a brief interview with a reporter, Sir Keir was asked about Rachel Reeves’s CV.
The prime minister was asked whether he was “comfortable that she exaggerated her relevant experience”.
He said the issue were from “many years ago” but that he and the chancellor “get up every day to… make sure that the economy in our country, which was badly damaged under the last government, is revived and we have growth, and that is felt in the pickets of working people across the country”.
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said the investigation raised questions for the chancellor.
She posted on X: “Keir Starmer said ‘restoring trust in politics is the great test of our era’. Until she [Reeves] comes clean – not just about her CV but about the circumstances in which she left HBOS, no one will take him seriously.”
Rachel Reeves has frequently cited her time at the Bank of England as part of the reason that voters can trust her with the public finances, and has repeatedly claimed to have spent up to 10 years there.
The chancellor left the financial institution nine months earlier than she stated in her LinkedIn profile. This means she spent five and a half years working at the bank – including nearly a year studying – despite publicly claiming to have spent a decade there.
On the professional networking site LinkedIn, the chancellor’s profile claimed she worked at the Bank of England from September 2000 to December 2006.
However, BBC News has established she had left by March 2006 when she began working for Halifax Bank of Scotland (HBOS) in West Yorkshire.
A spokesman for Reeves confirmed that dates on her LinkedIn were inaccurate and said it was due to an administrative error by the team.
They said the chancellor hadn’t seen it before it was published.
Speaking before the prime minister was interviewed, a Downing Street spokesman said the prime minister had no concerns about Reeves’s conduct.
Asked whether Sir Keir still thought the chancellor had integrity after she updated her career history on LinkedIn, his official spokesman said: “Yes. The Chancellor and the prime minister are working hand in hand to deliver on the priorities, the plan for change, and to deliver the higher growth and the improvements in living standards that the country needs.”
The Number 10 official added that the chancellor had gone through the declaration process, which all members of Cabinet go through, when asked if she disclosed that there had been an investigation into her expenses before she was an MP.
Reeves’s profile was updated on Thursday morning just before the BBC broke the news, to reflect that the chancellor left the Bank of England in March 2006
The rest of the profile was subsequently edited to clarify the dates she worked at HBOS.
A photo taken in March 2006 shows her with other HBOS staff at the Council of Mortgage Lenders annual lunch.
A former HR lead for the bank who helped with Reeves’s relocation also said she could recall her first day and it was in March 2006.
In a 2021 magazine interview, which she subsequently posted on X, she said: “I spent a decade working as an economist at the Bank of England and loved it.”
In a speech to the Labour Party Business Conference in February last year, Reeves said: “I spent the best part of a decade as an economist at the Bank of England.”
She said the same thing in a speech at a CEO summit in July 2022, and in a video posted on her Facebook page in the same month.
The claim was also repeated in a Labour party document last year which stated that she spent “most of the first decade of her career at the Bank of England”.
As she had already started at HBOS by the spring of 2006, her time at the central bank only amounted to five and a half years. This included nearly a year studying for a Masters at the London School of Economics (LSE).
Last year, during previous controversy about Reeves’s CV, the Bank of England confirmed that Reeves had left in 2006 but refused to give the month of her departure saying it was a detailed staff record which they couldn’t provide.
Reeves also stood for election in Bromley in south-east London more than three months after she had taken a job in West Yorkshire.
She stood in a by-election on 29 June 2006 but had taken up a role at HBOS in March that year and received a relocation package to move from London. It is understood she rented a flat in Leeds and kept a flat in London at this time.
The chancellor’s online CV gives incorrect dates for her time at HBOS as well, which her team also acknowledged. It states that she left in December 2009, five months before she was elected to parliament in May 2010.
In fact, we have established, her employment at HBOS finished in mid-May 2009, when she signed a compromise agreement. An invoice for legal advice on the agreement stated that it arose “from a decision by your employer to terminate your employment”.
The bank was undergoing restructuring at the time of Reeves’s departure and a spokesman for the chancellor said she had taken voluntary redundancy.
A compromise agreement, now known as a settlement agreement, is a legal document between an employer and employee which HBOS used when senior managers were made redundant.
Reeves was allowed to continue using a company car for six months, according to her spokesman.
She then spent a year campaigning ahead of the May 2010 general election without seeking further employment.
The MP for Leeds West and Pudsey has previously faced accusations that she has embellished her online CV.
Her LinkedIn profile was changed last year to describe her role at HBOS as “Retail Banking”.
It had previously claimed she worked as an economist at the bank but she instead held a management role in the bank’s Customer Relations department, which dealt with complaints.
In November, several MPs raised the row in the House of Commons while putting questions to Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner.
The prime minister’s spokeswoman also faced questions at that time, with journalists asking if Sir Keir expected members of his Cabinet to tell the truth on their CV.
The spokeswoman said the row related to “the chancellor’s time before she was the chancellor”.
“The prime minister is very clear that what is most important is having a chancellor who is able to balance the books and who is able to be straight with the public and restore the public finances,” she added.
If you have any information on stories you would like to share with the BBC Politics Investigations team, please get in touch at politicsinvestigations@bbc.co.uk
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