I want a budget seats, says Reeves as she defends taking £600 Sabrina Carpenter freebie in personal field on safety grounds – and claims she is not even a fan!

Rachel Reeves tonight insisted she only accepted free tickets in a posh private box at a Sabrina Carpenter concert on the advice of her security team.

The Chancellor faced mounting questions over her decision to accept the £600  freebie at the O2 earlier this month as a guest of owner AEG.

At a Downing Street press conference this afternoon after her Spring Statement Ms Reeves said she was not even a fan of the Espresso singer, 25, and would have preferred being in ‘normal seats’ with a member of her family.

She has faced criticism, including from within the Cabinet, over her decision to attend. 

Asked if she regretted accepting the tickets and if she will repay the cost, Ms Reeves told a press conference in Downing Street: ‘It may come as a surprise to some of you that I’m not personally a huge Sabrina Carpenter fan, being a 46-year-old woman, but a member of my family did want to go and see that concert. 

‘I’m not in a position now that I can easily just go and sit in a concert,’ she told reporters this afternoon.

‘Some of the things that I might have been able to do in my everyday life in the past are not so easy now, and so I had advice that it would be better to be in a box, the owners of the O2 had a box, tickets that are not available to buy, and they said that I could go in there, and that was better for security reasons.

‘I do recognise that people think that that’s a bit odd but that’s the reason why I did that rather than just being in normal seats, which to be honest for me and my family, would have been a lot nicer and a lot easier.’

The Chancellor faced mounting questions over her decision to accept the £600 freebie at the O2 earlier this month as a guest of owner AEG.

At a Downing Street press conference this afternoon after her Spring Statement Ms Reeves said she was not even a fan of the Espresso singer, 25, but attended along with a member of the family who is.

Yesterday Housing minister Matthew Pennycook said it was ‘inappropriate’ to take free tickets to gigs, insisting: ‘If I want to go to a concert at the O2 I’ll pay for it.’

That came after Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander effectively cut her fellow Cabinet minister adrift saying she did not have ‘anything further to add’ and stressing she had not taken any tickets personally.

Downing Street also gave a lukewarm endorsement, saying the Prime Minister ‘supports all of his ministers making their own judgments’ over hospitality.  

Ms Reeves was last year forced to vow not to accept any clothing as Chancellor after it was revealed she had taken £7,500 for outfits while in opposition.

Sir Keir Starmer, who received £32,000 for clothes from Labour donor Lord Alli, had to pay back thousands of pounds in gifts, including tickets to see Taylor Swift.