Rachel Reeves has said she recognises that accepting free tickets to a Sabrina Carpenter concert was “a bit odd”. The Chancellor had been criticised for taking the freebie at the same time as annoucing cuts to welfare reforms.

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.

“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 (arena) 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.”

Ms Reeves is paid £67,505 as Chancellor on top of her £91,346 MP’s salary and previously said she would not accept clothing from donors after revelations that she had received £7,500 worth of clothes in opposition.

Following the so-called “freebies” row, which engulfed Sir Keir’s top team after their election win last year, the Prime Minister said he would repay the costs of some gifts he received and tightened hospitality rules to ensure better transparency about what was being donated.

However, he defended his acceptance of corporate hospitality from Arsenal football club, citing security as his reason for doing so, similar to Ms Reeves.

The new code introduced last year did not ban ministers from accepting donations but does now require them to consider the “need to maintain the public’s confidence”.