Taxing questions Tories round on Rayner over sale of council house

Angela Rayner has faced questions over the past two weeks on whether she was liable to pay capital gains tax (CGT) on the sale of her former council house before she became an MP.

- Aletha Adu 

Labour's deputy leader has said there is no case to answer and has dismissed a string of stories in the Mail on Sunday based on claims in a book by Lord Ashcroft, a former Tory deputy chairman, as a "constant stream of smears".

But she is coming under pressure to explain her personal financial affairs after a series of reports in the Mail on Sunday suggested she still has questions to answer.

What's the background to the story?

Rayner lived in rented council properties before moving to one on Vicarage Road, Stockport. It is unclear when she moved there.

In January 2007, the then mother of one, who worked as a local council care worker and union official for Unison, paid £79,000 for the property using the right-to-buy scheme first brought in by Margaret Thatcher in 1980.

As a result of the scheme she got a 25% discount off the property's asking price, which equated to £26,000.

A year after buying her first home Rayner had her second child, her first with her then partner, Mark Rayner, a Unison official.

He already owned a home at Lowndes Lane, about a mile away.