Rachel Reeves has admitted “unintentional errors” were made in her new book amid accusations of apparent plagiarism.
The shadow chancellor said errors will be “rectified” in future reprints after the Financial Times reported that its journalists had identified entire paragraphs taken from other sources without acknowledgment.
The book, The Women Who Made Modern Economics, includes material from Wikipedia, The Guardian and comments made by Labor MP Hilary Benn without attribution, the newspaper reported.
A spokesman for Ms Reeves said: “These were inadvertent errors and will be rectified in future reprints.”
I am very excited about the publication of my new book ‘The Women Who Made the Modern Economy’ on October 26th.
It is my tribute to the women who shaped the modern economy and whose work can inspire us to build a better economy.
Book here: https://t.co/RR0n8evwRu pic.twitter.com/C0VzP7xjbA
—Rachel Reeves (@RachelReevesMP) September 28, 2023
Basic Books, the publisher, defended the Labor leader, saying it had not sought to present the material as original research, but acknowledged that “factual sentences” were not appropriately referred to in all cases.
The Financial Times reported that more than 20 examples had been found using manual checks rather than plagiarism detection software.
The book by Reeves, who hopes to become the first woman to serve as UK chancellor after the general election due next year, offers biographical accounts of some of the women whose ideas have shaped the modern economy.
A sentence about the relationship between HG Wells and the economist Beatrice Webb is exactly the same one found on Wikipedia: “He responded by satirizing the couple in his 1911 novel, The New Machiavelli, as Altiora and Oscar Bailey, a bourgeois couple myopic manipulators.”
Similarly, a foreword to a report on international development by Mr Benn, published on the website of the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, appears to have been removed almost word for word.
Benn wrote: “When we were elected in 1997, the amount of aid we provided as a proportion of our national income had halved in the previous 18 years and was just 0.26%.
“When we left office, we were on track to hit the 0.7% target.
“This was due to the political leadership of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, who brought the lives of the world’s poorest people to the heart of Whitehall.”
Ms Reeves wrote: “When the Labor Party was elected in 1997, the amount of aid the UK gave as a proportion of our national income had halved in the previous 18 years and stood at just 0.26 %.
“At the end of the Labor Party’s term in 2010, we were on track to achieve the 0.7% target.”
“This was due to the political leadership of Blair and Gordon Brown, and his first Secretary of State for International Development from 1997 to 2002, Clare Short, who brought the lives of the world’s poorest people to the heart of government.”
Conservative Party chairman Greg Hands accused Ms Reeves of being a “copy-paste shadow chancellor” following the report.
“Rachel Reeves urgently needs to explain herself,” he said in a post on X, formerly Twitter.
He said it was “potentially very serious”, pointing to the resignations of several German ministers over plagiarism accusations since 2011 as an “example” of what can happen.
Basic Books said in a statement: “At no point did Rachel seek to present these facts as original research. There is an extensive and selective bibliography of over 200 books, articles and interviews.
“When facts are taken from multiple sources, no author is expected to reference each and every one of them,” the publisher said in a statement.
“When objective sentences were taken from primary sources, they should have been rewritten and referenced appropriately.
“We recognize that this did not happen in all cases.
“As always in cases like these, we will review all sources and ensure that any omissions are rectified in future reprints.”
