Keir Starmer to repay £6,000 for gifts including Taylor Swift tickets

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Sir Keir Starmer has paid back more than £6,000 of gifts and hospitality that he received this summer, Downing Street announced on Wednesday.

The decision marks an attempt to get on the front foot by the UK prime minister after weeks of revelations about clothing and other donations taken by Starmer and other senior Labour figures.

The issue overshadowed the party’s conference last week, with the prime minister forced to defend his decision to accept about £32,000 of clothing and £20,000 of luxury accommodation from the Labour donor Lord Waheed Alli.

Downing Street said Starmer had commissioned a new set of “principles” on gifts and hospitality to be published as part of the updated ministerial code.

“Ahead of the publication of the new code, the prime minister has paid for several entries on his own register. This will appear in the next register of members’ interests.”

Labour made clear two weeks ago that its most senior ministers would no longer take free clothing after revelations about both chancellor Rachel Reeves and deputy prime minister Angela Rayner receiving thousands of pounds’ worth of free clothes that were declared as generic costs.

Under current Whitehall rules, ministers can accept hospitality but cannot take any gifts of objects valued at more than £140. Instead they either need to give such gifts to their department or pay for them directly.

The £6,000 of freebies that Starmer has refunded include four tickets to see the singer Taylor Swift from Universal Music Group worth £2,800, and two tickets for Swift from the Football Association worth £598. There were also four tickets to Doncaster Races from Arena Racing Corporation worth £1,939 and a clothing rental agreement with Edeline Lee worth £839 for his wife Victoria.

The prime minister’s decision to reimburse those gifts came hours after it emerged that the Labour peer at the centre of the donations row was facing a parliamentary probe.

Alli is being investigated by the House of Lords standards commissioner over “alleged non-registration of interests,” the parliamentary authorities announced on Wednesday. 

The entrepreneur has been in the headlines for weeks after revelations about him showering Starmer and his lieutenants with suits, clothes, and stays in his luxury homes in New York and London.

The probe did not relate to donations and was instead related to a clerical element of Alli’s already-declared interests, people with knowledge of the investigation said. 

His business interests listed in the Lords register include several directorships and shareholdings in a number of entities.

Labour said: “Lord Alli will co-operate fully with the Lords Commissioner and he is confident all interests have been registered. We cannot comment further while this is ongoing.”