Rachel Reeves freebies exposed from £699 of Adele tickets to £360 flower show treat

Rachel Reeves lapped up a trip to a sold-out Adele gig, Wimbledon tickets and a £350 day at the Chelsea Flower Show, parliamentary records studied by the Express reveal.

Free hospitality gifted to MPs has come under the microscope after Prime Minister Keir Starmer accepted almost £40,000 worth of football tickets and other politicians bagged free entry to sold-out Taylor Swift concerts.

Now analysis of past records has shown that in the summer of 2022, a year after she was appointed Shadow Chancellor, Rachel Reeves started to reap the benefits of being one of Britain’s most recognisable figures and snapped up invites to a host of sought-after events.

Performing live for the first time in five years, global superstar Adele was the hottest show that year and tickets for her Hyde Park gig in London sold out within minutes of being released.

However, Reeves and her boss Keir Starmer didn’t have to worry about hitting refresh on their internet browser because they both snagged tickets worth hundreds of pounds for free.

Records show the Shadow Chancellor attended the July 1 gig in Hyde Park with a guest courtesy of industry body UK Music who covered the £699.90 cost.

Two days later, Reeves enjoyed the hospitality at another exclusive establishment, Wimbledon, taking three guests to the All England Tennis Club in SW19 courtesy of the Lawn Tennis Association - with the tickets being valued at £580.

Just five weeks earlier Lloyds Bank had also spent £360 so Reeves and a guest could attend the Chelsea Flower Show.

This summer of fun had slipped off the most visible records of the Chancellor’s expenses due to a quirk in the way they are recorded. It was only after the Express’s data team started digging into the gifts handed to the senior Labour figure that they came to light.

This is because the gifts MPs receive and register are published on a rolling basis throughout the year using the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

Appearing fortnightly on its website whilst Parliament is in session, any gift, trip or donation only remains on the Register “for 12 months after their date of registration, most recent update or end date, whichever is later”.

Expenses that fall within the parliamentary session normally appear in the final pdf versions available at the top of each page, but those which come outside term time will be less visible.

So you can only find Reeves's 2022 Adele, Wimbledon and Chelsea Flower Show expenses by carefully combing through the oldest parts of the archive for that year.

Changes have now been made to the way the gifts are published which should make future versions easier to navigate.

Reeves's acceptance of a host of expensive freebies has come under particularly scrutiny given she is stripping millions of pensioners of their winter fuel payments, with worried campaigners warning it will leave many struggling OAPs having to choose between "heating or eating".

Investigations by the Express into hospitality gifted to MPs revealed Channel 4 spent nearly £15,000 taking MPs involved in the debate over whether it should be privatised to BAFTA awards and that the Premier League believed it was ‘normal’ to splash £8,500 on a night out for politicians discussing its future at the BRITs.

Graphs compiled by the Express data team also show the staggering way in which Keir Starmer’s hospitality went through the roof after becoming Labour leader.