ANGELA Rayner faces questions over her recruitment of a “vanity photographer” – despite her past criticisms of others for doing the same.
The Deputy Prime Minister previously railed against Boris Johnson for spending taxpayers’ cash on a photographer while in Downing Street.
But it has now emerged that her Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government has hired former photojournalist Simon Walker, reportedly on a salary of £68,000 to promote Rayner’s work.
He has shot PR photographs of the Deputy Prime Minister in the course of her duties, including photographs of her sipping a whisky cocktail at the Johnnie Walker Whisky Experience in Edinburgh and visiting a John Lewis department store with London mayor Sadiq Khan.
In 2021, responding to reports about Johnson’s PR photographs, Rayner tweeted: “The public will be rightly questioning why there is apparently no limit on the money that can be found to pay for a coterie of vanity photographers for the prime minister.”
Rayner finds herself mired in sleaze allegations and the Tories have reported her to the standards watchdog after she allegedly failed to properly declare a holiday funded by Labour peer Waheed Alli.
Lord Alli paid for Rayner to stay in his luxury Manhattan apartment for Hogmanay with her friend and ex-boyfriend Sam Tarry, a former Labour MP.
While she declared her stay in the appropriate way, she failed to mention that Tarry also came along.
He paid for his own travel but benefited from the apartment stay, which could be considered a gift in kind.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves (above) has defended Rayner’s photographer and insisted the Government would cut its spend on spin by reducing the communications budget.
Speaking to BBC Breakfast, Reeves said photographers were employed by all Government departments to “to support the policy work, the campaigning work, the initiatives of Government departments”.
She added: “This is not to support Angela Rayner as a Labour Party politician. This is to support the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government.”
Walker previously worked as the chief photographer to the prime minister during Rishi Sunak's tenure.
But a Tory source told Mail Online: “Are there any greater vanity projects than the Deputy Prime Minister with her thousands of pounds of free clothes, her luxury free holiday, and now her publicly paid photographer?”
Rayner, Reeves and Prime Minister Keir Starmer were forced last week to announce they would take no more gifts of clothes from Lord Alli, who has spent thousands clothing senior Cabinet ministers, including shelling out more than £2000 for Starmer’s glasses.
He also paid for clothes for the PM’s wife, Victoria.
