Rachel Reeves has defended herself and said it would be up to the public to judge her on her record as chancellor, after a BBC investigation raised questions about her job history and expenses.
In her first comments since claims emerged that she was the subject of an investigation into her expenses while working at Halifax Bank of Scotland (HBOS), the chancellor said no one ever raised any concerns with her.
The BBC reported she had been subject to an unfinished investigation while working at the bank, but Reeves said: “No one ever raised any concerns about my expenses.” Insisting her expenses had been submitted and approved “in the proper way”, she added: “I was never questioned, never asked to pay back any expenses.”
The BBC had also suggested the chancellor’s online CV exaggerated the length of time she worked at the Bank of England. On the professional networking site LinkedIn, the chancellor’s profile claimed she worked at the Bank from September 2000 to December 2006. However, she had in fact left by March 2006 when she began working for HBOS in West Yorkshire.
Asked about the accuracy of her LinkedIn profile on a visit to Nottinghamshire, Reeves told broadcasters: “I worked as an economist at the Bank of England between 2000 and 2006 before going to work in financial services for Halifax Bank of Scotland.
“And I’m really proud of the work that I did before I became an MP, but in the end, people are going to judge me on the job that I’m doing now as chancellor of the exchequer to grow the economy and put more money in the pockets of working people.”
The controversy was reignited after reports last year that Reeves had not accurately reflected her job title on her LinkedIn profile, which described her as an economist at HBOS from 2006 to 2009 when her role was in retail banking. Her LinkedIn profile was updated to reflect that, and sources said at the time that a staff member had been responsible for the description.
On Thursday, the BBC reported a further discrepancy over dates, and that Reeves and two colleagues at HBOS had been investigated over their expenses in relation to staff gifts. It said an initial inquiry suggested they appeared to have broken the bank’s rules, but that it was unclear what happened next.
In a statement, the former HBOS HR manager Jane Wayper, who left the bank in 2008 according to her LinkedIn page, said she did not “recognise” any of the claims.
Wayper said: “I would have been made aware of any investigation which concluded there was a case to answer. I would have been required to organise and oversee a disciplinary process. This did not happen.”
David Sorensen, a lawyer who acted for the chancellor as she left HBOS, said she was not subject to “allegations of wrongdoing or misconduct” during her career at the bank. He was responsible for overseeing “a standard-style agreement adopted by the company when a mutually agreed exit was made during the bank’s restructure”.
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Earlier on Friday, Peter Kyle, the science secretary, said a member of Reeves’s team set up her LinkedIn profile and was responsible for errors in it, as he defended his cabinet colleague. He claimed that the BBC’s reporting that Reeves was subject to an internal investigation into expenses while working at the retail bank was “totally inaccurate”.
The broadcaster reported its discoveries on Thursday and said it had looked into the chancellor’s time working for HBOS between 2006 and 2009.
Asked about the report when he appeared on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Kyle said: “Unfortunately, the reporting has been totally inaccurate, and we heard yesterday that the person who was actually head of HR at that bank at that time says it’s untrue, said that she never, ever received a file on Rachel Reeves.”
The minister was told that HBOS did not say there was no investigation, but that one had not been completed before the HR manager or Reeves had left the bank.
Source: theguardian.com
