RACHEL Reeves has wrongly claimed that she had work published in one of the world’s leading economics journals amid growing concerns that she exaggerated her CV, reports have claimed.
The chancellor is noted as a contributor to the Journal of Political Economy in Who’s Who online list, which is a leading source of information on the world’s most influential people, when in fact she has published a single article in a far less prestigious publication, the European Journal of Political Economy, The Times has reported.
The error has reportedly been compared to claiming to have studied at the University of Oxford instead of the less prestigious Oxford Brookes University.
According to The Times, there is no record of how the entry had come to be made or who had approved the description of her publication record which has been listed on the website under her name since 2010.
Reeves has previously faced criticism and was forced to edit her CV on the networking site LinkedIn after she lied about being an economist at HBOS when she in fact worked in retail banking instead.
Last week it was reported by the BBC that she had further lied on her CV about how long her employment lasted at HBOS, a claim which is also repeated in her Who’s Who entry.
Reeves’s CV reportedly said she had worked with the bank until December 2009, but she had actually left more than half a year earlier, in May 2009.
She then spent one year out of employment, before being elected to Parliament in May 2010.
In total, she spent five and a half years at the bank, despite claiming to have worked there for “the best part of a decade”.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer (below) has repeatedly defended Reeves over her CV despite the exaggerations coming to light, as he insisted, she is the right person to restore economic growth.
In the publications sections of her Who’s Who entry, the chancellor is listed as a contributor to the Journal of Political Economy, however, the journal has no record of any article by Reeves.
Instead, Reeves and a former Bank colleague published a paper in 2007 about financial markets’ response to Bank of England statements in the European Journal of Political Economy.
The European Journal of Political Economy is regarded to have a lower impact factor as each article in it is cited on average 2.3 times a year, compared with 6.9 for the Journal of Political Economy.
Richard Barnett, an emeritus professor at the University of Ulster, told The Times the two journals were “chalk and cheese” and that any academic economist would know the difference.
He said: “One is world leading, it’s where economists aspire to publish and it’s incredibly competitive to get published in the Journal of Political Economy — if you’re seeking an academic post or a professorship where you’ve published matters as much as what you’ve published.”
Barnett added that the European Journal of Political Economy had improved its reputation but was not on the same level as the one she had listed on Who’s Who as he said: “If [Reeves] is a serious economist, she must know the difference between the two.”
Adding an economist who had published their first academic paper in the journal “would be considered to be outstanding.”
Who’s Who annually asks those who are included in their lists if their description needs to be updated, and if it does the entrant typically needs to manually update themselves.
Reeves entry was reportedly regularly updated as her promotion in Labour’s shadow team and her second book, Women of Westminster, were added in 2019.
