Rachel Reeves says accepting Sabrina Carpenter freebie looked ‘a bit odd’

Rachel Reeves said she recognised that her acceptance of free tickets to a Sabrina Carpenter concert at the O2 arena was “a bit odd”.

The Chancellor has faced criticism over her decision to take free tickets to the show before announcing cuts to welfare during Wednesday’s spring statement.

She has cited security as her reason for accepting the hospitality, for herself and a family member, and said she would declare their value to parliamentary authorities.

Ms Reeves told reporters that she is “not personally a huge Sabrina Carpenter fan, being a 46-year-old woman”, but that a member of her family “did want to go and see that concert”.

The chancellor said she is “not in a position” to “easily just go and sit in a concert”.

She went on: “I had advice that it would be better to be in a box, the owners of the O2 (arena) had a box, tickets that are not available to buy, and they said that I could go in there, and that was better for security reasons.

“I do recognise that people think that that’s a bit odd but that’s the reason why I did that rather than just being in normal seats, which to be honest for me and my family, would have been a lot nicer and a lot easier.”

Ms Reeves was also pressed about accepting the “freebie tickets” by a former Labour MP in the House of Commons.

Zarah Sultana, the independent MP for Coventry South, said: “Since Labour came into power, 25,000 more children have been pushed into poverty due to the two-child benefit cap and now, according to the Government’s own impact assessment, over 250,000 people will be pushed into poverty as a result of these cuts, including 50,000 children.

“So I ask the Chancellor, who earns over £150,000 annually, has accepted £7,500 worth of free clothing and recently took freebie tickets to see Sabrina Carpenter, does she think ‘Austerity 2.0’ is the change people really voted for?”

Ms Reeves said the national living wage would rise from next month, adding: “There’s nothing progressive and there’s nothing ‘Labour’ about pouring more money into a broken system. Under the changes that we’re bringing about, we’re going to help young people who are not in education, employment or training by giving them targeted support.

“And as I set out in the statement earlier, the OBR (Office for Budget Responsibility) so far have not scored any of the back-to-work programme – which is the biggest back-to-work programme that we’ve seen for many, many years.

“They’re going to do that work over the autumn, but we know that the best way to lift people out of poverty is to get them into good work, secure work, paying a decent wage.”

Ms Reeves is paid £67,505 as Chancellor on top of her £91,346 MP’s salary.