Rachel Reeves referred to sleaze tsar over former Chancellor’s ‘secretive meetings with City firms’

The ex-Chancellor spent less than two years by Sir Keir Starmer’s side, and was sent to the backbenches after Andy Burnham arrived on Downing Street.

When she was removed from the frontbenches, her closest aide was Ben Nunn, who went on to establish his new consultancy, Arlington Road Consultants.

Now, Ms Reeves is expected to turn away from Westminster life serving her constituents to “cash in” on her experience in the top job, The Mail on Sunday revealed.

Ms Reeves and her ex-spin doctor, who were responsible for last year’s Budget, have met two City companies in the past two weeks, the paper said, where the group is said to have discussed “political advice” they could provide.

The same sources said the City firms had met up with the MP while she was still working in the Treasury.

But Parliament limits what former minister are allowed to do when they step down from their positions to prevent accusations that they could be influenced. Mr Nunn must follow similar roles as a political adviser.

Once catching wind of the “secret” meetings, the Conservatives penned a letter to Sir Laurie Magnus, the Independent Adviser on Ministerial Standards.

Party Chairman Kevin Hollinrake said the rules are “clear that former ministers must never draw on, or disclose for the benefit of others, privileged information gained in office – including contacts”.

Both he and Ms Reeves are banned from pressuring the Government two years after stepping down from office.

Mr Hollinrake laid into the former Chancellor further, telling the Mail on Sunday that yet another scandal could be on the horizon for Labour.

He said: “If Rachel Reeves has been meeting City firms with her former adviser to drum up business days before a Budget she spent months preparing, that would be a scandalous breach of very clear rules.

‘The Business Appointment Rules apply to every former minister. They exist to stop precisely this kind of use of privileged information, and the perception that it is being used.

“Rachel Reeves must come clean and explain what she has been up to.

“If she does not, it will look yet again like one rule for Labour MPs and another for everyone else.”

Darren Jones, Ms Reeves’s former Treasury official, has already weighed in on what he believes the Budget could look like in just two days’ time.

Admitting his time in Whitehall was not mistake-free, he said: “The national debt now is over £3trillion.

“We spend over £100billion a year of taxpayers’ money just paying interest payments, predominantly to American financial institutions.

“You’ve got to pay the debt interest before you can pay for the nurses and the teachers and the doctors.”