Angela Rayner faces accusations of misleading public over her employment history
Angela Rayner is facing accusations that she misled the public over her career history after blurring the lines between her jobs as a home help and a union rep.
The newly reinstated Housing Secretary has said in the past that she spent 14 years as a council-employed "home care worker", even though she spent 10 years working either full time or part time as a shop steward.
The Conservatives suggested Ms Rayner was contributing to a "credibility crisis" for Labour that began under Sir Keir Starmer.
Ms Rayner is the latest in a line of Labour Cabinet ministers to face scrutiny over their CVs, including Rachel Reeves, the former chancellor, and Jonathan Reynolds, the Business Secretary.
Earlier this week, Ms Rayner posted a picture of herself on social media, taken in 2003 when she was "working as a home carer for Stockport council".
In a previous social media post she had said she left the council after "14 years service in local government as a home care worker".
It prompted the BBC to challenge her on Radio 4’s PM programme about her true career history. In response she said her roles "kind of get blurred" by journalists because for some of the time she was "given paid time off to do trade union duties … then other times I was fully seconded" to union work.
She was employed by Stockport council from 2000 to 2015, yet when she was running for Parliament in 2014 she described herself as a "trade union official with Unison".
The facts about Ms Rayner’s employment history are that she worked in the private sector as a home help from 1998 to 2000, then, according to freedom of information responses published by Stockport council, she worked full-time as a home help for them from August 2000 until April 2005.
She then worked part time as a home help until April 2011, spending some of her time on union work as an assistant branch secretary. Then until 2015, when she became an MP, she was on full-time secondment to union duties as branch secretary.
Ms Rayner was the Unison rep at the council but was not employed by Unison, meaning her official job title remained "home help".
It means that she spent two years as a home help in the private sector, almost five years as a full-time home help for the council, then six years combining home help work with union work and four years on full-time union work, rather than the claimed "14 years’ service in local government as a home care worker".
Kevin Hollinrake, chairman of the Conservative Party, said: "It seems to me that Angela Rayner has misled the public for years about her career history, and you have to ask yourself why.
"The public deserves transparency from those in Government and Ms Rayner’s ever-changing CV is the very opposite of that.
"The Labour Party has had a credibility crisis ever since it got into power under Sir Keir Starmer, and it seems that a change of prime minister has done nothing to change that."
A spokesman for Ms Rayner indicated that she had fully explained her career history during the BBC interview.
Ms Rayner resigned last year from her roles in the Cabinet and as Labour’s elected deputy leader after The Telegraph exposed her under-payment of stamp duty on her £800,000 flat in Hove.
Ms Reeves was previously revealed to have inflated her job status in a previous career at the Bank of England, while Mr Reynolds was rebuked by the Solicitors Regulation Authority for wrongly claiming to be a solicitor, despite never having qualified.
World Affairs Correspondent
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