THE GUARDIAN 🔵 Keir Starmer pays back £6,000 worth of gifts and hospitality

Keir Starmer has paid back more than £6,000 worth of gifts and hospitality, including Taylor Swift tickets and rented clothing for his wife, that he received after becoming prime minister, Downing Street has said.

The prime minister is covering the cost of six tickets to Swift’s sought-after concerts, four to the races and a clothing rental agreement with a high-end designer favoured by his wife, Victoria Starmer.

However, he does not appear to be returning tickets to a football match in September donated by Tottenham Hotspur with a value of £920, or another in August from Arsenal at a value of £1,000, having previously said that he needs to be in a box rather than the stands for security reasons.

Starmer’s decision to return the cost of the hospitality comes after weeks of criticism of the prime minister for accepting more than £100,000 in hospitality and free gifts.

This includes clothing worth £32,000 and multiple pairs of glasses worth about £2,400 from the Labour donor and businessman Waheed Alli, as well as the use of an £18m penthouse in Covent Garden during the election campaign. The latest MPs’ register of interests, published on Wednesday, also showed that Starmer accepted £6,134 from Alli for clothing for his wife in June.

He has already said he and his wife, as well as cabinet ministers, will no longer receive free clothing while in office.

A Downing Street spokesperson said Starmer had committed to overhauling hospitality rules since coming to office and his return of the hospitality was part of this process.

On Wednesday, a Downing Street spokesperson said: “The prime minister has commissioned a new set of principles on gifts and hospitality to be published as part of the updated ministerial code.

“Ahead of the publication of the new code, the prime minister has paid for several entries on his own register. This will appear in the next register of members’ interests.”

Gifts paid for Starmer include four Taylor Swift tickets from Universal Music Group totalling £2,800, and two Taylor Swift tickets from the Football Association at a cost of £598. He also returned the cost of four tickets to Doncaster Races from Arena Racing Corporation at £1,939.

An £839 clothing rental agreement with Edeline Lee, the designer recently worn by Victoria Starmer to London fashion week, along with one hour of hair and makeup, was also covered by the prime minister.

Starmer has repeatedly defended his decision to accept hospitality from football clubs, saying it would cost more in security to have him sitting in the stands.

While in New York last week, he also defended borrowing an £18m penthouse flat from Alli during the election, saying he took the offer so that his son would have a place to study for his GCSEs without having to walk past journalists and protesters outside their family home.

The prime minister brought up the “human” reason for having moved his family out of his Kentish Town house in north London, saying no cash changed hands as a result of the move.