GMP chief constable says investigation into Angela Rayner house row will be 'fair and impartial'

Greater Manchester Police Chief Constable Stephen Watson has said the investigation into Angela Rayner will be 'fair and impartial'.

The deputy Labour leader is being investigated over whether the house she once lived in Stockport from 2010 was her main residence and whether she may have avoided tax when she sold it.

The row has seen the Ashton-under-Lyne MP face questions over whether she owed tax on the house that she sold in 2015, and registered to vote at the correct address.

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Greater Manchester Police (GMP) is now investigating, following a request from Conservative deputy chair James Daly. However, Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer, has called claims a “smear”.

Chief Constable Stephen Watson has since defended the decision to investigate the Labour party deputy leader, vowing it would be done 'fairly and impartially' to establish whether 'culpability is proven or otherwise'.

Watson told the Guardian that a letter from Conservative deputy chair James Daly led to GMP conducting the investigation. The force had previously opted not to probe the claims.

He told the newspaper: “We then subsequently received a letter, it’s a matter of record, from James Daly. The information within our letter caused us to reassess whether in fact an investigation was necessary. That is now ongoing.

"Where crimes are reported to us or potential crimes are reported to us, we have a process of assessing what we know, what we think we know and what is being asserted by others.”

In Lord Ashcroft's book Red Queen? The Unauthorised Biography of Angela Rayner, he alleges that the MP bought her former council house, in Vicarage Road in Stockport,