Rachel Reeves exaggerated about how long she spent working for the Bank of England in her online CV.
On her LinkedIn profile, the chancellor stated that she worked for the financial institution from September 2000 to December 2006.
However, a BBC News investigation has established that she actually left the bank nine months earlier in March 2006, when she started working for Halifax Bank of Scotland (HBOS) in West Yorkshire.
The story was published by the BBC on Thursday morning. Shortly before this, Reeves’ LinkedIn profile was updated to state that she left the Bank of England in March 2006.
A spokesperson for the chancellor said the erroneous dates had been because of an administrative error by the team, which Reeves hadn’t seen before it was published.
A photo from March 2006 showed her with other staff from HBOS at the Council of Mortgage Lenders annual lunch, and a former HR lead for the bank said he could recall Reeves’ first day in March 2006.
Reeves has publicly stated on several occasions that she spent almost a decade working at the Bank of England, citing this as a reason she can be trusted with the nation’s finances.
In a 2021 magazine interview, she said: “I spent a decade working as an economist at the Bank of England and loved it.”
During a speech at the Labour Party Business Conference last February, Reeves said: “I spent the best part of a decade as an economist at the Bank of England.”
The chancellor’s online CV also gives incorrect dates for her time at HBOS, something that has also been acknowledged by her team.
Her profile states that she left the bank in December 2009, five months before she was elected to parliament in May 2010. However, the BBC’s investigation found that her employment at HBOS actually finished in mid-May 2009.
You can read the full investigation here.
A separate BBC investigation has also uncovered an expenses investigation that Reeves was the subject of during her time at HBOS.
During her time at the bank, she was accused of using company expenses to buy handbags, perfume, earrings and wine for colleagues and having a “very cavalier attitude regarding the budget.”
Along with two other senior managers, Reeves was named in a six-page whistleblower complaint which claimed they used expenses to “fund a lifestyle” of dinners, events, taxis and gifts.
Related: MPs salaries to increase to £94k thanks to above-inflation pay rise