'A disgrace' Anger on streets of minister's seat in Tameside

"I've got to pay my taxes, and so has she, it's as simple as that," Andrew Davies, 57, said, a common view on the streets of Angela Rayner's Ashton-under-Lyne constituency.

- Hannah Al-Othman

On Wednesday, the deputy prime minister acknowledged for the first time that she had mistakenly not paid the correct amount of stamp duty when she bought a flat in Hove, East Sussex, earlier this year.

When she bought the £800,000 property in May, she paid the standard rate of stamp duty, estimated to be about £30,000, rather than the rate for second homes, which is higher, and would have been as much as £70,000.

Rayner said that she had done so because she had, in January, put her stake in her Greater Manchester constituency home in Ashton-under-Lyne in Tameside into a trust for her children, with her name no longer on the deed.

The deputy prime minister, who is also the housing minister, said she had received legal advice that she would no longer count as the owner of the Tameside house, meaning the Hove flat would count as her sole property.

She said after the outcry she had taken further legal advice and now understood that because of the trust arrangements on behalf of her children she was still regarded as having an interest in the Tameside property and should therefore have paid higher taxes.