Labour deputy leader makes first appearance at dispatch box at PMQs since investigation opened into sale of her council house
With Rishi Sunak in Berlin, it is deputies’ day at PMQs, and Oliver Dowden, the deputy prime minister, will be facing questions from Angela Rayner, Labour’s deputy leader. It will be her first time at the despatch box since it was announced that Greater Manchester is fully investigating various allegations relating to the council house she bought and sold before she became an MP, and where she was living during that period. It has been reported that at least a dozen officers are on the case.
Rayner does not have to firm up her position with Labour MPs. She insists that she has done nothing wrong, and most people in the party believe that that the allegtions being made against her are little more than a smear (as Keir Starmer put it at PMQs last week).
Frank was a steadfast, highly successful and diligent campaigner against child poverty. It is largely down to Frank that we have child benefit today, a truly towering achievement.
He gained support and respect from across the political spectrum and defined the concept of the ‘poverty trap’, now commonly used to describe the difficulties for working people of getting better off while claiming means-tested benefits because of the high rate at which benefits are withdrawn as earnings rise.
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