Rachel Reeves exaggerated on her LinkedIn profile how long she worked at the Bank of England, it has emerged.
The chancellor’s LinkedIn profile claims that she worked at the Bank of England from September 2000 to December 2006, despite publicly claiming to have worked there for a decade.
But BBC News reported Ms Reeves had actually left the Bank of England by March 2006, when she began working for Halifax Bank of Scotland (HBOS) in West Yorkshire, meaning she stopped working there nine months earlier than her LinkedIn profile states.
The broadcaster unearthed a photograph of the chancellor in March 2006 alongside other HBOS staff at an annual lunch for the Council of Mortgage Lenders. A former HR lead told the BBC she recalled Ms Reeves’ first day at HBOS, and that it was in March 2006.
The chancellor’s team said the error was due to an administrative mistake and that Ms Reeves had not seen it before it was published.
A spokesman for Ms Reeves said: “As Rachel said on Good Morning Britain a couple of weeks ago when she was asked, she worked as an economist at the Bank of England between 2000 and 2006, including over a year at the British Embassy in Washington working in the economics section, and then she worked at HBOS from 2006 to 2009. She’s proud of the jobs she did and experience she gained before becoming an MP.”
The LinkedIn profile has been updated.
Ms Reeves has repeatedly claimed to have worked for the Bank of England for a decade or the best part of a decade, but questions were raised in November about the truth behind the claim.
After the chancellor told Stylist magazine she had spent a decade there, critics raised questions about the claim given the length of time listed publicly on her LinkedIn profile.
She also made a similar claim at the Labour Party Business Conference last February, a CEO summit in July 2022 and in a video published on her Facebook page in the same month.
A document published by Labour last year states: “Rachel Reeves spent most of the first decade of her career at the Bank of England; she understands the importance of financial and monetary stability to Britain’s economic success.”
The revalation about her starting at HBOS in March 2006 suggests she worked for the Bank of England for five and a half years.
Ms Reeves LinkedIn profile lists her work history from 2000 onwards.
It says she worked in three areas of the Bank over the six-year period she was employed there: its international economic analysis division, then at the British Embassy in Washington DC in the second secretary economic division, and finally in the structural economic analysis division.
After this it lists her time working for Halifax Bank of Scotland, then her political career following her election in 2010.