Housing minister Matthew Pennycook has said he does not “personally think it’s appropriate” to accept free concert tickets, after the chancellor took a family member to see pop star Sabrina Carpenter without paying.
Rachel Reeves defended taking the tickets for the show at the O2 arena on security grounds.
On Monday the prime minister backed his chancellor, saying “everything she has done is according to the rules”.
Sir Keir Starmer tightened the rules on ministers accepting gifts and hospitality last year, following a backlash over senior Labour figures receiving freebies.
Ministers are not banned from accepting gifts, as long as they are declared, but under the new rules they must consider the need to maintain public trust.
Asked on LBC how many times he had accepted free tickets to the O2 arena, which in his Greenwich and Woolwich constituency, Pennycook replied: “Zero”.
Asked for his thoughts on Reeves taking free tickets to see Sabrina Carpenter, Pennycook said: “I don’t personally think it’s appropriate.
“If I want to go to a concert at the O2 I’ll pay for it – but individual MPs, individual ministers, make their own decisions.
“I think that the important thing is that everything is declared and above board, so individual people can make their choices as to whether they think it’s appropriate to take tickets on occasions.
“I personally haven’t done, as I said, at the O2, and wouldn’t do.”
In an interview with the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme, Reeves defended her decision to accept the tickets because she “thought that was the right thing to do from a security perspective”.
She said: “I do now have security which means it’s not as easy as it would’ve been in the past to, to just sit in a concert, although that would probably be a lot easier for everyone concerned.”
Reeves was also asked why she did not pay for the tickets herself and responded: “These weren’t tickets that you could pay for, so there wasn’t a price to those tickets… they weren’t tickets that you were able to buy.”
Backing his chancellor on Monday, the prime minister told the BBC: “We’ve toughened up the rules in terms of declarations, and everything she has done is according to the rules. That’s what I would expect.”
In October, Sir Keir paid back £6,000 of gifts and hospitality he had received since becoming prime minister – including Taylor Swift tickets.
However, he has defended accepting tickets for the corporate box at Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium, saying he cannot watch games from the stands for security reasons.
In September Downing Street said the PM, Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner and Reeves would no longer accept donations of clothes.
