Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves has admitted to using Wikipedia to write her new book, despite hitting back at claims that she plagiarised sections of the book.
Reeves gave a speech at her book launch last night, hosted by the Institute for Government, in which she made the embarrassing admission of relying on the free website.
The Shadow Chancellor's new book, The Women Who Made Modern Economics, was engulfed in controversy today, after claims that she plagiarised sections of the book and had lifted sections entirely from Wikipedia.
Despite her team dismissing the claims, unearthed footage from last night's event saw her admit to using the website.
She told an audience including shadow Cabinet member Wes Streeting and former Cabinet secretary Lord O'Donnell: "In the acknowledgements, I acknowledge the research assistants that I had, particularly on the facts and the detail that went into the pen portraits of the women that I speak about.
"That came from a range of sources from books, from interviews, from articles, from Wikipedia.
"And on top of that, it’s about how they’ve influenced me."
The book included reproduced material from online blogs, Wikipedia, The Guardian and a report foreword by Labour MP Hilary Benn without acknowledging the sources.
More than 20 examples were spotted by the Financial Times.
Responding to the allegations, Publisher Basic Books admitted: "When factual sentences were taken from primary sources, they should have been rewritten and properly referenced.
"We acknowledge this did not happen in every case."
They added: "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.
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A spokesman for Rachel Reeves told GB News: “These were inadvertent mistakes and will be rectified in future reprints"
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"Where facts are taken from multiple sources, no author would be expected to reference each and every one."
A spokesman for Reeves told GB News: “These were inadvertent mistakes and will be rectified in future reprints.”
Additional reporting by Christopher Hope.
