Angela Rayner, a former deputy prime minister of Britain, said on Thursday that she had been cleared of wrongdoing in a case involving her failure to pay adequate taxes when she bought a seaside apartment.
Ms. Rayner, who resigned from Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s cabinet last year after admitting she had accidentally paid the wrong rate of tax on the purchase, has been under investigation by the tax authorities for eight months. In an interview, she said the tax agency had concluded that she had not deliberately tried to avoid paying the correct amount.
A spokesman for the agency declined to comment, citing the confidentiality of personal tax records.
“People felt that I was tax dodging,” she said in an interview on ITV News that was broadcast on Thursday morning, adding that this had “hurt.” But she said the investigation had “concluded that there wasn’t any wrongdoing on my behalf.”
She said she had paid £40,000, or about $54,000, to make up for the tax she had failed to pay and that she had not been subjected to a penalty.
The news comes at a time of political turmoil in Britain, where Mr. Starmer is bracing for a possible leadership challenge from within his Labour Party in the wake of the party’s deep losses in elections last week.
Hours after Ms. Rayner’s announcement, Wes Streeting, the health secretary, resigned from the government, saying he had lost faith in Mr. Starmer. There had been much speculation that Mr. Streeting would mount a challenge to the prime minister, but he did not do so, raising the possibility that he did not have the support of enough Labour lawmakers to trigger a leadership contest.
Ms. Rayner has also been seen as a possible successor to Mr. Starmer, but she said on Thursday that she did not intend to trigger a leadership challenge. Asked in an interview with The Guardian whether the prime minister should quit, Ms. Rayner said Mr. Starmer would “have to reflect on that.”
“I’ve made it clear that I wasn’t going to trigger the prime minister — and that I want to see change,” she said. “I want to see actions, not just words.”
In a statement after the elections last week, Ms. Rayner said that “Labour exists to make working people better off. That is not happening fast enough, and it needs to change — now.”
She also said it had been a mistake for a Labour Party committee to block the possible return to Parliament of Andy Burnham, the popular mayor of Greater Manchester, earlier this year. Mr. Burnham, who is seen as a leading contender to succeed Mr. Starmer, needs to win a seat in Parliament before he can take part in any contest to take over the leadership of Labour and the government.
Michael D. Shear is the chief U.K. correspondent for The New York Times, covering British politics and culture and diplomacy around the world.
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