Will the Chancellor be sacked over her rental rules breach?

0:02Hi, I'm Charlie Duffield, and welcome back to The Standard Podcast.

0:30There's much of that in there, but it is a very masculine story. It is about all boys together, and it is about a bunch of pirates led by Captain Hook. And here, Hook's mate Smee very clearly absolutely adores Captain Hook, who is this sort of raffish, Etonian, ruined gentleman. And Smee just spends his time in very sort of servile attempts to impress his master. But first, less than two months after former Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner resigned after failing to pay enough tax on her£800 ,000 flat in Hove, Chancellor Rachel Reeves is facing calls to be sacked after breaking a London borough's housing rules when renting out her family home.

1:14The Chancellor told the Prime Minister she did not obtain the required selective rental licence for her£3 ,200 a month Dulwich home when she moved into No. 10 Downing Street following the election. In a letter to the Prime Minister, Reeves sincerely apologised for her inadvertent error and said as soon as it was brought to her attention, she took immediate action and applied for a licence. In reply, the Prime Minister said he was happy the matter can be drawn to a close. After consulting his independent ethics advisor, he has decided not to launch an investigation. The Chancellor told the Prime Minister that, regrettably, she and her family were not aware a licence was needed in their area of the Southwark borough.

2:03The issue adds to the list of the government's woes, as Reeves is in the spotlight ahead of next month's autumn budget. Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch wasted no time in saying that Reeves needs to be on top of her paperwork, whilst delivering a speech at a rally in London this morning. Apparently one in ten people think Rachel Reeves is doing a good job. Who are these people? I haven't met them. Just this morning, we've seen the news. Rachel Reeves apparently has broken a law, just like Angela Rayner before her and Louise Bluhaig before her. All we see is the Labour cabinet making mistakes, breaking laws.

2:41If the chancellor can't even get it on top of her own paperwork, how is she going to get on top of the country's paperwork? And joining us now is the Standard's Chief Political Correspondent, Rachel Burford. Rachel, what is a selective property licence and why is it needed? This is a policy that quite a few councils in the UK, many in London, have set out. So essentially, they require landlords to register and have a license to rent out properties in certain areas. It's a way of councils, first of all, seeing how many landlords they've got in certain areas and also having a register of the properties.

3:17they say it helps them ensure that renters are getting good deals and the properties are kept up to code and kept up to scratch. So they're not in all areas of the UK but there are quite a few councils now in Britain that require landlords to register. Okay so she should have really known about this right? So that's a good question. Rachel Reeves is arguing that when she obviously left her home in Dulwich and moved into 11 Downing Street after the election she did not know that she needed a licence to rent out her property. So Southwark Council's licensing scheme for landlords works slightly differently than other areas.

3:54It doesn't cover the whole borough. Certain areas have different licences and they have added different areas to the licensing scheme over the last few years. And one of those areas is where Rachel Reeves' family home in Dulwich is. The council says you can be prosecuted or fined if you're a landlord or managing agent for a property that needs a license and you do not get one. I would say the licensing scheme is slightly more complex than perhaps other boroughs that just have a blanket licensing scheme across the whole area, just because it splits up different areas. But essentially, I mean, you think if you're a government minister, particularly the chancellor of the exchequer, and after we've seen ministers have to resign over other housing scandals before, notably the homelessness minister, Nara Ali, who had to resign after renting out her home and then kicking out her tenants and then significantly hiking the rent.

4:50And obviously, Angela Rayner, who was Deputy Prime Minister and Housing Secretary, having to resign after she failed to pay stamp duty. Do you not think that after what happened to Angela Rayner and Rishnara Ali, there should have been some kind of reckoning for politicians to check that all their financial affairs are in order? Yeah, absolutely. And I think the Chancellor is facing a lot of questions today about why she didn't check this. She has said that, you know, obviously it was very busy when she moved after the election with her family in 1211 Downing Street and that she rented out her property through a letting agent, sort of suggesting that the letting, she relied on the letting agent letting her know that she needed a license and did not double check it herself.

5:35This is something that perhaps an understandable mistake for people to make. But if you are the Chancellor of the exchequer and you have seen all these other scandals hit your cabinet, hit other ministers, hit other MPs, then perhaps you should double check. And I think a lot of people are thinking, well, why didn't she just double check that? I think she's renting out for£3 ,200 a month. That's a lot of money. Should being a member of government mean that you get a free pass to be sloppy with the rules? No, it should mean the exact opposite. In fact, we saw a lot of scandals under the previous government and Labour came out and massively criticised the Tories for certain rule breaking, particularly during the Covid years, Keir Starmer said multiple times rule breakers cannot be lawmakers was the phrase he used.

6:21And I think now when you've got a growing number of ministers and MPs being involved in these scandals, you have to sort of look at that and think I need to get my house in order and make sure that all of the ministers I've got in my government are actually adhering to rules, the public are told that they must adhere to. And what message is the government sending to rogue landlords by dismissing this error? Yeah, so it was interesting today, the Prime Minister's spokesman gave a briefing this morning and declined to say whether Rachel Reeves had broken the ministerial code despite being asked multiple times.

6:57He said that the ministerial code sets out that an apology is a sufficient resolution in certain cases and refused to say whether Rachel Reeves failing to obtain this license was a breach of the ministerial code. He said the Chancellor rightly acted with urgency on this matter. She has set out that it was an inadvertent mistake and as soon as it was brought to her attention took immediate action applying for the license and speaking to the independent advisor on ministerial standards. Obviously we'll have to see whether the Chancellor is fined by Southwark's counsel for failing to get this license and whether she receives any other penalties for it.

7:29But I think there's going to be certainly questions for many days about her actions here. Just last week, Rachel Reeves tweeted that Leeds City Council's decision to expand their landlord licensing policy. Leeds is where she is an MP and she said, I welcome Leeds City Council's decision to expand their selective landlord licensing policy to include another area in the city. While many private landlords operate in the right way, we know that lots of private tenants face problems with poorly maintained housing. This scheme means private landlords in the area will be required by law to obtain a licence for any residential property they are seeking to let and must meet certain standards to ensure the property is safe and in a decent state of repair.

8:09And that was tweeted on the 20th of October by the Chancellor. She can't really claim that she's not aware of landlord licensing schemes when she's been tweeting about them in her constituency just a week ago. These schemes do exist for a reason. Councils have implemented them because tenants were complaining about the state of housing. There's nothing to suggest that there was anything wrong with Rachel Reeves's home at all and that she's broken any other rules or laws apart from failing to get this licence. But she has acknowledged that these schemes are a good idea. She knows that they exist.

8:43There are a lot of questions about why she never checked that the property that she was renting out needed a licence. So it sounds like this might escalate even further. This is definitely not going to be the last story about this. We haven't heard from the Lessing agent yet. I've been trying to find out who it is. We're not quite sure who it is. I think the mail will know who it is because they originally broke the story. I imagine the mail will be drip feeding out stories about this over the coming days. We also haven't heard from Southwark Council yet about what kind of penalties she may face.

9:14And I guess just terrible timing, right? Even the Lib Dems have been waiting in saying the Chancellor is meant to be delivering growth, but the only thing she appears to be growing is the government's list of scandals just weeks before the budget. This risks seriously undermining the confidence in the government. I think that's the general consensus, certainly in the opposition parties at the moment, but also many MPs in the Labour backbenchers are also thinking that. Yeah, it's a horrendous timing for the government. Polling at the moment is quite dire, particularly for a prime minister who came in on the back of a massive landslide victory, promising change.

9:47And there has just been sort of scandal after scandal. It feels like Angela Rainer having to resign, the homeless intended to having to resign. You see Peter Mandelson, the ambassador to the US having to resign, being sacked. It's been a string of scandals from a government that promised no more scandals. Let's go to a break. Coming up in part two, we're heading to Neverland to find out what it really means to grow up. We'll see you back here in just a moment.

10:21Welcome back. Ella Hickson's reworking of J.M. Barry's Peter Pan story was first directed by Jonathan Mumby for the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2013, and now it's back as part of the winter season at the Barbican in the capital. Barry's play, which he turned into a book in 1911, captures the moment carefree childhood tips into the enticing but scary world of being a grown-up. Joining us now is the Standard's chief theatre critic and host of the London Theatre Review podcast, Nick Curtis. Nick, remind us of the main story of Peter Pan. So Peter Pan was a 1904 play by J.M. Barrie that he later turned into a novel in 1911, has since been serially adapted into pantos, ballets, films, absolutely everything.

11:13And it's the story of a boy who wouldn't grow up, not couldn't, but wouldn't. He basically chooses to say a little boy into Howard Adventures rather than becoming mature. And it's about the adventures he has with a family of London children in a place called Neverland. And it's basically about whether they choose to stay with him in a state of arrested development or whether they grow and mature and sort of re-enter human society. And how has Ella Hickson adapted it for today's audience? Does it have a modern twist or did you still get a sense of its Edwardian origins? One of the things that was interesting when I was researching this is that J.M.

11:49Berry was quite ahead of his time really. He sort of was ahead of the psychology of the day and interpreting the development into adulthood and mother fixations and things like that. I think Ella Hickson, who first did this adaptation 12 years ago for the RSC up in Stratford, has sort of struck a balance, not always an easy one, between honouring the original and sort of challenging Barry's old-fashioned Edwardian values. The original novel was called Wendy and Peter. The story's had numerous titles over the years, including at one point it was called The Great White Chief, which I think has obviously been axed as a title these days.

12:20But the most common title these days is either Peter Pan and Wendy or Peter Pan. And Ella Hickson has chosen to call it Wendy and Peter Pan, foregrounding Wendy, putting more of a sort of feminist topspin on it and trying to make her more of a sort of hero with agency. So that's interesting because one reviewer I read described it as feminist tinged. Do you agree? I mean, tinged is the right word in that it's not really entirely one thing or the other. So it is slightly woolly. Wendy is a sort of gung ho young girl here at the beginning. She's very much the sort of boss of her of her brothers.

12:55When she goes to to Neverland, she's a very sort of spirited heroine. But she is, as in the original, immediately adopted as the mother of the sort of feckless lost boys of whom Peter is is the leader and leading member. And you can't really sort of get around that in the story. This is slightly a story where we are cast as wives and mothers. and that's about it. She tries to sort of get Tiger Lily, who's here reinvented as a sort of double sword-fisted Asian warrior, and Tinkerbell to form a sort of girl gang at one point, but that's slightly half-hearted really and a bit forced. You've said that it explores sibling death.

13:29Tell me more about that. Well, sibling death, right at the start, there are four darling children. They're all adopted, which adds another sort of spin on the idea of family because they're a chosen family rather than a biological one, ones that the darlings, Mr. and Mrs. Darling, have fought for, they say, and therefore they feel they value them more even than sort of biological children. But very early on, one of them develops a cough. Wendy says, oh, you've got a loose button on your pyjamas, I must sew that on. She doesn't, he dies. We're not told of what, but it's pneumonia or something like that.

13:57And he is taken by the Lost Boys to Neverland and sort of installed as a star in the sky, which is an interpolation of Ella Hickson's. That doesn't happen in the original. So the voyage to Neverland is partly a sort of escape away from encroaching adulthood, but it is also a reckoning with that they're looking for this dead sibling. And it is coming to terms with the idea of mortality, which I suppose is the ultimate end to what happens when you grow up, really, isn't it? You grow up, you grow old, you die. That is quite heavy stuff, but it is quite lightly done. And let's talk more about the actual performances.

14:30I think it's pronounced Daniel Crickler, who plays Peter Pan. He's not an actor I'm familiar with before, but he's got a very sort of feral, exuberant energy to him as Peter. He flies very well. The flying in this production is extremely well done from him and the other Lost Boys and, you know, the darling children. So he's quite impressive, even though because Peter is a creature of pure impulse, he has no real sort of conscience or intellectual thought. He quite often flip-flops with whatever's going on at the time, and he's actually quite a tedious character. You know, he's constantly banging on about his exploits.

15:00I quite liked Hannah Saxby as Wendy, although she is also by design quite an annoying character because she's quite bossy and quite sort of jolly hockey sticks but i suppose the person who walks away with it is toby stevens who plays mr darling opposite lolita chakrabarti as mrs darling she gives a lovely a sort of succinct brief but lovely performance as mrs darling but he as his traditional doubles mr darling with captain hook and is this wonderfully louche sort of rattled world weary character trying to track down and kill Peter because he is jealous of his youth. Finally, does this still feel like family entertainment?

15:38I mean, I think you can enjoy this on various different levels. It is very definitely family friendly. I'm kind of surprised that the RSC have got two shows coming to the Barbican between now and January, but they've chosen to do this one in the autumn at the end of half term rather than over the Christmas period when they're doing Twelfth Night, which I think is a bizarre choice really, because this is much more obviously a piece of family entertainment. I think kids will love the spectacle of it. There's a huge pirate ship on stage. You know, there's all the flying. As I say, there's quite a few pyrotechnics.

16:05And there's lots of jokes. There are a few jokes, some of them modern, which don't really land very well. Some of them old fashioned, which land slightly better, I think.

16:16And that's The Standard. For all the latest news, head to standard.co.uk. If you'd like to get in touch, please do drop us a line at podcasts at standard.co.uk. We'll be back here tomorrow at 5pm. We'll see you then.