Joshua Reynolds MP: speeches

Speeches

• 28 Apr 2026 · Park Home Owners · Hansard source

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  I thank my constituency neighbour for that point. It is incredibly important that everybody responds to the consultation, so we must encourage more people to do so. The financial cost of the 10% commission is only part of the story. We have heard time and again about unscrupulous site owners who have used intimidation to drive residents off their pitches. There are fewer bad actors who own sites than there were a number of years ago, but some still know that if they intimidate residents and force a sale, they will get a 10% commission. We see that time and again. In my constituency, one owner bought a site for £200,000. They then intimidated countless park home residents, who sold their properties, and made that £200,000 back within less than 12 months. That is the business model of unscrupulous site owners. We need to think about where the 10% commission came from. It has not always been 10%: it was 15% a number of years ago, so it is an arbitrary number. I pay tribute to Sonia McColl OBE and the Park Home Owners Justice Campaign. Over decades, she and the campaign have done what many in this place only wish we had been able to do. They secured two legislative changes: ending sale blocking, and shifting pitch fees from RPI to CPI, which the hon. Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) spoke about. Sonia and the Park Home Owners Justice Campaign have driven lots of the work that is happening here. Another petition is going to Downing Street later today. I was lucky to be able to present one to Downing Street last year, and I know that many of us are willing to submit them in future. We need to be honest about what we are going to do. There is a consultation on the table, but lots of residents have been consulted before. I ask the Minister for a clear timeline for when we will see action, when we will have a conclusion with published responses, and when the 160,000 residents will get the fair deal that has been promised for so long but postponed for much longer.

• 28 Apr 2026 · Park Home Owners · Hansard source

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  Many park home residents in Maidenhead have told me that complete swathes of the consultation are not relevant to residents but are to site owners. Can the Minister clarify which questions he expects residents to be able to respond to, because many feel that those questions are just not relevant to them?

• 27 Apr 2026 · Draft Vaping Duty Stamps (Requirements, Reviews and Appeals) Regulations 2026 · Hansard source

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  The Minister knows we spoke at length about this subject in Committee stage of the 2026 Act, and I seek confirmation on a few points that we made back then. We spoke quite a lot in the Public Bill Committee about enforcement action, which will obviously be a key element. We discussed who would face enforcement action if they were selling products that were not licensed and did not have the correct stamps on them. “The seller” was mentioned as the person responsible, against whom enforcement action would be taken. Can the Minister explain who is meant by “the seller”? Is it the shop owner? Is it the brand? Is it the potentially 18 or 19-year-old shop assistant behind the till, who is just doing the job they are told to do? What assurances can the Minister give that, in using the enforcement powers, we will not penalise young shopworkers, who are simply doing their job as directed and who have no power, if they are doing something that is later found not to be compliant because of what their managers or retailers are doing?

• 22 Apr 2026 · Pension Schemes · Hansard source

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  Capita has failed time and again, yet it is constantly awarded more contracts. Sally, one of my constituents, had been told multiple times that her lump sum payment was coming or had already been paid, but it was not paid. She and other civil servants would have been worried to hear in March that Capita is to be awarded a £700 million contract for the civil service payroll. Is that not just another example of how when Capita fails, the Government award it yet more of our money?

• 22 Apr 2026 · Government Procurement Strategy · Hansard source

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  On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Cabinet Office was asked several times about trade union requirements in public procurement contracts, yet Hansard records him as saying on 4 December that “The Government’s social value model provides opportunities to reward suppliers that recognise a trade union”. —[ Official Report , 4 December 2025; Vol. 776, c. 1144.] Could I seek your guidance as to how I could ask the Minister to confirm those two points together?

• 22 Apr 2026 · Government Procurement Strategy · Hansard source

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  On the Business and Trade Committee, we have heard time and again that if we want to transform the economic health of small and medium-sized enterprises, we need to direct a greater share of public procurement towards them. However, the British Chambers of Commerce has said that we are “stuck in a rut” at 20% of spending going to SMEs. What is the Minister doing to join up the approach across Whitehall to ensure that a greater amount of spending goes to SMEs?

• 20 Apr 2026 · Security Vetting · Hansard source

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  The Prime Minister once promised to end the chaos, and to restore honesty and integrity to Government. Does he think that appointing a man who called a convicted child sex offender his “best pal”, and whose connections with Epstein were already well known, is consistent with that promise? If it is not, will he step aside and let someone else end his chaos and restore honesty and integrity to Government?

• 20 Apr 2026 · Crime and Policing Bill · Hansard source

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  The Minister is using words such as “may”. What she has outlined is incredibly important, but Lords amendment 342 obviously goes further than “may”—it insists that diversion orders will involve those necessary consultations. Will the Minister commit today to making sure that the police will have all these statutory duties, not just that they may have them, and that the consultation will be required?

• 15 Apr 2026 · Single Status of Worker · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Efford. I thank the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Bromborough (Justin Madders), with whom I sit on the Business and Trade Committee, for securing this debate. The world of work has changed beyond recognition in the past several decades, but our employment laws have been severely left behind. We still sort people in work into three rigid categories—employees, workers and the self-employed. The framework for that was built in a different era, when people had one job, one employer and the reasonable expectation that the law would protect them if things went wrong. That is obviously not the reality for millions of people today. It is not the reality for the delivery drivers who log into apps and spend hours under the management of an algorithm; they cannot set their prices and they are disciplined if their ratings drop, yet when they fall ill or are injured on the job, they are told, “Sorry, you are self-employed—you are on your own.” It is also not the reality for the agency care worker who has been looking after the same vulnerable residents for years without ever accruing a single day of redundancy protection, and it is not the reality for the freelance designer who depends entirely on one client but has no holiday pay, parental leave or pension contributions. These people are trapped in a gap in the law. They are doing essential work, but they are being denied the essential rights that go along with that. The legal case that created those gaps was rooted in case law going back to 1968 and relied on concepts designed for the factory floor, not for the platform economy. It means that the rights of many workers depend not on the work they do or the hours they put in but on how cleverly designed their contract is. Let us be completely honest about who benefits from those contracts and that complexity: it is most certainly not the worker. The problem has not gone unexamined. The Taylor review reported in July 2017 and recommended significant reforms. The Government of the day responded with the “Good Work Plan” in December 2018 and committed to legislate. Although the previous Government identified the problem and promised to fix it, they never did, and that has left people waiting for far too long. The current Government have taken important steps in the Employment Rights Act 2025: guaranteed hours for workers if they want them, a day one right to make flexible working requests and the establishment of the Fair Work Agency. Those steps are all welcome, but the Act did not address the fundamental structural problem that the categories themselves are broken. The Government can strengthen the rights attached to the “worker” category, but if people cannot tell which category they fall into, those rights remain words on the page. The Government’s next steps document commits to consulting on a simpler two-part framework for employment status, but we have been here before, and consultation commitments alone are not enough. The Liberal Democrats believe that reform in this area should be built on clear principles. First, we need a dependent contractor status that sits between those who are fully employed and those who are genuinely self-employed. If someone works personally for another party and is not guaranteed business on their own account, they should have access to minimum levels of earnings, sick pay and holiday entitlement. The idea that someone can work full time for a single company and have fewer rights than a Saturday shop assistant is an indictment of our current system. Secondly, the tax and national insurance treatment for employers in different categories must be aligned, because the current framework creates fiscal incentives for businesses to push people out of the protections they deserve. When it is cheaper to classify someone as self-employed, that is exactly what happens, and the cost is borne by the worker, and ultimately the Government. The third principle concerns the burden of proof in disputes, which should shift from the individual to the employer, because asking someone on low or irregular pay with no savings and no legal protection to take on that legal risk against the company that controls their livelihood is not a fair fight. If an employer has classified someone as self-employed, it should be for the employer to justify that decision. Fourthly, the Liberal Democrats believe that pension provision for those in non-standard work must be addressed urgently. Far too many people in the gig economy sector are building no retirement security whatever. They are invisible to the auto-enrolment system, and when they reach retirement with nothing, that cost will fall on us. In the Commons, we are currently going through the Lords amendments to the Pensions Schemes Bill. The Government should be acting on the issue in the Bill. Finally, where zero-hours contracts remain, there is a strong case for a higher minimum wage at times of normal demand to begin rebalancing the risk that currently falls entirely on the shoulders of those people who are least able to bear it. I urge the Minister to confirm when the promised consultation on employment status reform will come forward and to commit to a timetable for legislation that does not repeat the sorry patterns of promises and retreats that we have seen from Government time and again, because the people caught in the gap have been patient for a long time. They have been told time and again that reform is coming and they deserve more than warm words; they deserve the law to be on their side.

• 14 Apr 2026 · Access to GPs: Bracknell Forest · Hansard source

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  The Bracknell Forest wards of Maidenhead constituency have seen massive amounts of house building in recent years, many without the GP facilities to join them. In a recent health survey of mine, 70% of respondents said they found it difficult or very difficult to get access to a GP appointment. Will the Minister back the Lib Dem plan for all new house building developments to come with new or expanded GP facilities in time for those first residents moving in?

• 13 Apr 2026 · Statutory Menstrual Leave · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Mundell. I thank the hon. Member for Colne Valley (Paul Davies) for introducing the debate and I congratulate the lead petitioner on securing more than 109,000 signatures on their petition. That number should stick in all of our minds, because it sends a clear signal that this issue has been ignored for far too long and that the people affected by it are exhausted by the neglect they are feeling. One of the women affected, a constituent of mine, wrote to me ahead of this debate. She talked about how endometriosis has shaped her life through pain, exhaustion and suffering for far too long. From a young age, she knew that her symptoms were not normal, enduring irregular cycles, severe clotting, chronic pain and debilitating symptoms that were too often dismissed or ignored. She was told that she may never have children, and although she was fortunate enough to have two, she told me that her condition worsened, bringing miscarriages, severe blood loss, iron deficiency, IBS and relentless pain. My constituent said that, time and again, she would visit the GP, hospitals and specialists, and she was often told—as we have heard many times today—to simply manage the pain. Women with endometriosis are expected to suffer in silence, while their health, careers, families and quality of life deteriorate around them. She told me that she was not asking for miracles; she was asking to be heard, to be taken seriously and to receive the care that she deserves. My constituent’s testimony is not exceptional; it is representative, and it is backed up with data. Last year, Endometriosis UK found that the average wait time for a diagnosis has now reached nine years and four months. That has gone up significantly in the last six years. During those nine years, the condition progresses, fertility is affected, and women are forced to manage debilitating pain in workplaces, education and at home. Shockingly, 83% of respondents to Endometriosis UK’s survey were told by a healthcare practitioner prior to their diagnosis that they were making a fuss. On top of that, women wait an average three and a half years after first noticing symptoms before seeking medical help at all, largely because severe period pain has been thoroughly normalised in our society. That women wait such a long time before they get their diagnosis is simply not acceptable. We also need to think about women from ethnically diverse communities, whose average time to diagnosis is even longer, at 11 years. The House should find that inequality unacceptable. This is not just a health crisis. Endometriosis UK estimates that the economic loss to the UK from absenteeism due to severe period pain, heavy periods, endometriosis, fibroids and ovarian cysts is about £11 billion a year. The case for investment in women’s health and women’s support is not just moral; it is economic. I wanted to touch on a point that Members have made multiple times about the arbitrary hit points for absence in absence management systems. When I was working in the private sector, we had a very similar system: if someone hit three absences within a defined period of time, they would go through an investigation and a disciplinary meeting—just like that. Although there may be mitigations for long-term conditions, the stress of the idea of going through an investigatory meeting because of their long-term condition adds to the cycle of women not wanting to go to their doctor or talk to professionals about what they are experiencing. They have been told for so long to just get on with it and manage the pain, and the absence management system in this sector does not help at all. The Government’s response to the petition acknowledges the hardship that women are facing, but the action they talk about falls short. Ministers point to the Equality Act, reasonable adjustments and the Employment Rights Act, specifically on flexible working. I want to be clear that the Liberal Democrats support the right to day one flexible working, and we are glad to see these changes coming into force, we think, in April next year. Flexible working genuinely helps people to manage conditions such as endometriosis, and employers should be actively engaged in using it, but it relies on individual employers, and it cannot be a substitute for proper medical care or compensate for decades of misdiagnosis. Before women can be properly supported in the workplace, they need to be diagnosed, and before they can be diagnosed, healthcare professionals need training. Time and resources need to go into being able to recognise and act on the symptoms. When over half of women with endometriosis are forced to attend A&E before receiving a diagnosis, we know that there is a failure in primary care, and that is adding to the pressure on our hospitals. We need to invest in GPs and other healthcare professionals to ensure that anyone with long-term conditions such as endometriosis has access to named GPs who know their history and can provide continued support. We also need to make sure that people are actually able to receive a GP appointment and be seen when they need it; far too often, they are unable to do so. I want the Government to commit to a new target to bring down substantially the average endometriosis diagnosis time, working towards the one year or less by 2030 target that Endometriosis UK is calling for. I also want them to put in place a proper awareness campaign and ensure that National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidelines are fully implemented across the primary care sector, with standardised referral pathways in place. The Government must also take seriously the role of mental health support, which, after years of pain and dismissal, many women will require. Such mental health support is currently severely lacking. The petitioners and individuals who signed the petition —100,000 across the country and the many more they represent—are not asking for the impossible. They are asking to be heard, taken seriously and to receive the care that they need. I urge the Minister to match that urgency with her response today.

• 25 Mar 2026 · Victims and Courts Bill · Hansard source

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  I will speak to Lord’s amendment 2, which requires the Secretary of State to issue an appendix to the victims code setting out how the code applies to the families of British nationals who are the victims of murder, manslaughter or infanticide abroad. This is not a new argument in this Chamber. I tabled amendments on Report to make precisely this case, I secured an Adjournment debate last year, and I have raised questions with the Minister several times. I thank her for the work she has done with me and others on this topic. It is also important to thank the charity Murdered Abroad, and specifically Eve Henderson who has been working on this issue for a long time, as well as the late Baroness Newlove who, in her time as Victims’ Commissioner, worked with Murdered Abroad and me to ensure that the amendments tabled to the Bill were workable in the view of the Victims’ Commissioner. Murdered Abroad is a campaign made up of bereaved families who have turned their grief into a distinct call for change. Families who are part of Murdered Abroad all have one thing in common: a family member of theirs, a British citizen, was murdered while they were outside the UK. Their calls ask for one simple thing: equal treatment. They are asking for the structured statutory support that any family would receive if tragedy struck on British soil, because a British life lost is a British life, no matter where in the world that loss occurs. Each year around 80 families receive the news that one of their loved ones has been murdered abroad. Sometimes that is via a police officer, but all too often it is from a journalist who has found out the news first and is asking for comment. When tragedy strikes, it sends any family into an unimaginable position, but when it happens outside the UK, families are left with so many other complications they must contend with. They must navigate foreign legal procedures, untranslated documents and distant court proceedings with patchy and often inconsistent support from their own Government, all at a time of trauma, vulnerability and mourning. Matthew was sitting in a bar when two door staff rushed over and grabbed him. They were joined by two more, who threw him down a metal staircase. At the bottom, witnesses saw them kicking and hitting him. A UK post-mortem identified over 20 injuries on Matthew’s body. When his mother called the FCDO, she was told that he died of alcohol consumption. That same morning, newspapers in Greece ran the headline, “Teen Drinks Himself to Death”. Matthew’s mum had to fight tooth and nail to get a family liaison officer. She also had to fight tooth and nail for translation support to get documents in English. They ended up being paid for by Derbyshire police, because the FCDO would not pay for them. Alison and Paul’s son Danny was killed in Amsterdam in 2022, aged just 22 years old. They explained how navigating lengthy and complex Dutch judicial procedures in foreign languages, while also having to arrange matters such as repatriation without any support, was an immense challenge. All the while, they were dealing with the trauma of their son having been killed. That loaded on to them and their daughter an untold amount of stress at a time when they needed support from our Government. In such circumstances, the Government should be supporting families in any way they can. Let me be clear about what Lords amendment 2 does and does not do. It does not seek to interfere with foreign judicial systems and it does not place unworkable demands on the FCDO. What it does do, however, is establish a statutory baseline, ensuring that bereaved families have access to the support and guidance that any other family of a homicide victim would receive. Lords amendment 2 inserts an appendix into the victims code which states that families must be provided with specific guidance explaining what support they can access. It explains that they must be given information by the British Government about how the foreign criminal justice process works—not getting involved in that process or interfering with it, but explaining what families can expect. It outlines that they should be given a dedicated family liaison officer to support the family at the worst time. Some police forces do that already, but many do not. We have heard that many police forces will tell families they are not entitled to a family liaison officer. Only immense pressure from families makes those police forces back down and give them the family liaison officer they need. When everything else in the world has gone wrong, it should not be up to these British families to have to push the police to give them the family liaison officer they should be entitled to. The amendment outlines that the Government must provide translation services for such families. Far too many families tell me that they were told by the Government to use Google Translate to get death certificates translated into English. That is not acceptable—that is not something we can accept ever again. One family told me recently how they found out through Google Translate that their son’s organs had been removed from his body. It is not acceptable that Google Translate told them that. We cannot accept that and the Government need to go further to provide translation services for families. The Government’s position, set out in a letter to Members on 23 March, is that the amendment would “raise expectations” that cannot be met and that it risks “confusing the legislative framework”. Those arguments are remarkable. We are talking about an appendix to the victims code, laying out what support families can expect from the British Government. The suggestion that setting out in statute what support a bereaved family can expect will somehow undermine the coherence of the entire victims code does not stand up to scrutiny. And it is not just me and the Liberal Democrats saying that. The Victims’ Commissioner must believe that too, because she was pleased that the Lords successfully voted for the amendment. I cannot understand how the amendment would raise expectations that cannot be met and confuse the legislative framework, and neither can the Victims’ Commissioner. I do not understand how the Government can think that. The Minister points to guidance published in January 2026 as evidence of the Government’s commitment. I welcome that guidance, but guidance is guidance. Guidance is not the law. Guidance can be ignored. It has no real enforcement mechanism. If the Government genuinely believe that families deserve support, we must ask the question: why do they not say so in statute? Last month, I met families from across the country whose loved ones were murdered abroad. Among that group were families who lost loved ones this year, after the new guidance had come into force. The guidance has not protected them. They have fallen through exactly the same gaps that were in the system before the guidance. The reason is clear: guidance is not statutory; it is a guide. It can be ignored and it too often is. What we need is a statutory appendix to the victims code setting out what support victims will receive, and how the Victims’ Commissioner and her team can support it. There is a lack of consistency. Some families are given a family liaison officer and some are told they cannot receive one. That is the problem we are looking at and we must do better. I will ask one question of the Minister about transparency in the needs assessment carried out by the Victim Support homicide service. What criteria are used to decide on a family’s needs following homicide abroad? Neither the Victims’ Commissioner nor Murdered Abroad charity members are able to find out what results are coming through and what criteria are being used. That is why families so often feel that there is a lack of consistency and accountability.

• 23 Mar 2026 · National Insurance Contributions (Employer Pensions Contributions) Bill · Hansard source

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  Does my hon. Friend agree that at times like these, we want the Government to be encouraging those on low and medium incomes to invest in their pensions and their futures—and increasing the threshold would help people to do that—rather than disincentivising people from doing so, as they seem to be doing at the moment?

• 11 Mar 2026 · Finance (No. 2) Bill · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is right about pensioners being dragged into paying income tax. Does he agree that millions of those pensioners will want to be able to contact HMRC and ask it about those changes? Millions of people never manage to get through to HMRC and figures from a written question I put in recently show that HMRC has lost 2,000 customer service staff in the past few years. Does he agree that we need a red phone hotline to allow pensioners to get hold of HMRC for support and advice when they need it?

• 11 Mar 2026 · Finance (No. 2) Bill · Hansard source

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  On the simplification of our tax system, I do not see in the Government amendments any changes to the loan charge system, as we proposed in Committee, meaning that people who have already settled their loan charge will be excluded from the changes being introduced. Does the Minister agree that one consequence of this might be that when something like this comes up in the future, people will not want to settle with the Government because they will think that a better deal will be coming up? Would it not be a simpler tax system to say that we could retrospectively apply some of these changes?

• 9 Mar 2026 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  T9. British pensioners living in the European Economic Area, the United States and up to 20 other countries get their pensions uprated, but those living in Canada, Australia and New Zealand do not. Campaigners know that the Government will not uprate frozen pensions retrospectively, but will they commit to a review of uprating frozen pensions for British pensioners going forward?

• 4 Mar 2026 · Department for Business and Trade · Hansard source

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  Britain is in the middle of a cost-of-doing-business crisis. I see it on my high street and I hear about it from local employers, and colleagues from across the House will hear exactly the same in their constituencies. From the Government’s national insurance hikes to sky-high energy bills and uncertainty over what the Employment Rights Act 2025 will mean in practice, British businesses are being pulled in one direction and then another. The Government say that they want to grow the economy, but significantly adding to the tax burden of the very organisations that are trying to do that does not help. The increase in employers NICs is an unfair jobs tax, and its impact is being felt across the country. UKHospitality estimates that the combined impact of the autumn Budget has landed £3.4 billion in additional costs on the hospitality sector. Jobs are being lost, hours are being reduced and venues are closing. A Government who think that relaxed licensing laws will help hospitality when businesses are already reducing hours do not understand the sector. The Liberal Democrats voted against the NI jobs tax changes at every opportunity because we could see this coming. The Government now need to face the consequences of their own choices and scrap this jobs tax before the damage becomes irreversible. In 2019, the Conservative Government promised a fundamental review of business rates, but they never delivered it. Now this Government have promised to revamp the system, yet we are still waiting for proper rebalancing. UKHospitality estimates that the average tax increase for hospitality would be 76% over the next three years, compared with warehouses at 16%, offices at 7% and large supermarkets at 4%. The businesses at the heart of our high streets are being asked to carry an unfair share of this burden, and the adjustments do not come close to fixing that. I can point to a business in Maidenhead, in my constituency. Laura set up Piccolo Land less than a year ago. It is a children’s role-playing village, and the kind of place that gives young families in Maidenhead a reason to come to town to spend time and to spend their money. When she started the business, her business rates valuation for a 2,500 square foot unit was £71,000—significantly more than her annual rent. She challenged that figure with the Valuation Office Agency and it was reduced to £42,000, but from April 2026 that bill will rise to £55,000. Laura has done everything right, but she cannot make this work. How do the Government expect businesses like this, which is barely a year old, serving young families and employing young people, to absorb that kind of increase? Maybe the Minister will be able to write to Laura to let her know which part of the Government’s growth plan she is meant to be benefiting from, because we cannot find it. Pubs, live-music venues, hotels, restaurants, cafés, and visitor and tourist attractions are all facing the same rising bills, collapsing margins and impossible choices between cutting staff, putting up prices or closing their doors. To add insult to injury, the Government’s business rates U-turn is not going to fix the issue they have created, just make the pain less bad. The Government need to reduce VAT on hospitality, accommodation and attractions. This is not untested—the previous Government did that during the pandemic and it worked. When asked about VAT cuts in December last year, the Government did not even attempt to justify their position. They simply pointed to business rates reform and moved on. Our high streets and town centres cannot wait for a Government who will not engage with that topic. Every time we visit shops in our constituencies we will hear the same thing about shoplifting having effectively been decriminalised. Thieves do not fear consequences because there are none, and shoplifting has risen by 48% in England and Wales over the past five years. Shop owners tell me time and again that when they contact the police, they are told it is not an effective use of resources to follow up on minor thefts. However, these are not minor thefts to the people running those businesses, and they are not minor to the staff, often young people, who are being put in harm’s way simply for doing their jobs. With over 800 offences going unpunished every day, businesses are haemorrhaging money, driving up costs for consumers and pushing businesses to close their doors for good. So here is a concrete proposal that the Government should adopt: a small shop needs about £6,500 for adequate modern CCTV, so the Government can make available grants for half that cost to every independent convenience store, and they can work with high street lenders to provide affordable loans to cover the rest. This is not just our idea: it is supported by the Federation of Independent Retailers. I could go on about youth unemployment, shoplifting, business energy costs, Brexit or general trade barriers, but we do not have the time. What the Government have delivered is a jobs tax, broken business rates, unaffordable energy bills and a shoplifting epidemic that they refuse to take seriously. Businesses right across the country are resilient, but resilience has limits, and this Government have tested those limits to breaking point. The Government have the tools to act, but they needs to use them to bring down the cost of doing business, because we are in a complete crisis.

• 23 Feb 2026 · Industry and Exports (Financial Assistance) Bill · Hansard source

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  The Liberal Democrats support this Bill, and we support the amendments that are before the Committee today. The Bill does something that is straightforward and necessary: it raises the Industrial Development Act cap from £12 billion to £20 billion, reflecting inflation since the alignment was last set in 2009, and it nearly doubles UK Export Finance’s commitment limit from £84 billion to around £160 billion. Both the industrial assistance and export finance frameworks would hit their ceilings if we did not make these changes, so it is really important to make them. We support the Bill because British businesses need the Government’s backing to compete globally, and these limits need to keep pace with our ambition. The amendments before us would strengthen the Bill in a few distinct ways. Amendments 1 and 2 would ensure that Government-backed export finance cannot be used to support businesses whose supply chains involve modern slavery or human trafficking. That is a straightforward ethical line. British taxpayers should not be underwriting exploitation, and we Liberal Democrats are glad to support the amendments. I ask the Minister to confirm what existing safeguards are in place, and whether implementation guidance will be issued so that businesses know where they stand. Amendments 3 and 4 would address the risk that UK Export Finance could facilitate sanctions evasion through re-exporting. As we raise the statutory limit to £160 billion, Parliament must be satisfied that none of this expanded headroom can be used in a way that undermines our sanctions regime, so we support the amendments. New clause 1 would require annual reports on the impact of the limit changes on each of the four UK nations. Although export finance is a reserved matter, outcomes are not necessarily evenly distributed. A report would allow Parliament to scrutinise whether the expanded capacity is reaching every single part of the United Kingdom, so we support the new clause. New clause 2 would require annual reports on the steel industry. Steel is of profound strategic importance to the UK and deserves the dedicated parliamentary scrutiny that the new clause suggests, so we support it. New clause 3, which appears in my name, would require the Secretary of State to report on the annual impact of the Bill on GDP, on the export capacity of small and medium-sized enterprises, and on the volume of trade between the United Kingdom and the European Union. UKEF’s 2024 to 2025 activity contributed £5.4 billion to the UK economy, and Parliament should be able to verify such a claim on an annual basis. According to the Office for National Statistics, there are 5.7 million SMEs in the UK, yet UKEF’s annual report shows that it supported just 667 businesses. Annual reporting would hold the Government to their own target of supporting an additional 1,000 SMEs to export. It would make visible whether the current eligibility criteria, which require at least 20% of a business’s annual turnover to be from exports in any one of the previous three years, continue to lock out businesses trying to break into export markets for the first time. On the UK-EU trade part of new clause 3, the Chartered Institute of Export & International Trade has documented a 30% fall in EU export value among the smallest firms since the trade and co-operation agreement came into force. A recent Institute of Directors policy voice survey found that 54% of businesses that stopped exporting to the EU cited the trading relationship with the EU as one of the reasons why. These are not businesses that failed to break into new markets, but established exporters that have walked away from our largest and nearest trading partner because the barriers in their way are too great to bear. Every customs declaration and every check that did not exist before 2021 is another reason why businesses are not exporting to the EU, because it simply is not worth it for them. Those are the realities behind the statistics that simply increasing UKEF capacity alone cannot fix. Parliament should be able to see whether expanded UKEF capacity is making a measurable difference to those figures, so we hope the Minister will support new clause 3. The most effective long-term support for British exporters would be a new bespoke UK-EU customs union. Analysis by Frontier Economics, commissioned by Best for Britain, in February 2025 suggested that a customs union could boost British GDP by 2.2%. The House of Commons Library estimates that this could generate £25 billion in additional annual tax revenue for His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, which I know the Chancellor would be grateful for. New clause 3 is the link or accountability mechanism that would allow Parliament to see whether what has been proposed is working. We will support the Bill and the amendments to it, because capacity without accessibility is meaningless, and capacity without accountability is unacceptable. The Government need to accept the new clauses that match the expanded headroom with the practical reforms to ensure that they reach the 5.7 million SMEs, which are the backbone of British business, currently not being supported by UK Export Finance.

• 23 Feb 2026 · Industry and Exports (Financial Assistance) Bill · Hansard source

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  Britain is a trading nation. When our businesses win contracts abroad, they create jobs, raise wages and generate the tax revenues that are needed to fund our public services. Expanding UK Export Finance’s capacity to £160 billion, and raising the limit for industry development to £20 billion, sends a clear signal that we are open for growth and want our exporters to compete globally. That matters for advanced manufacturing, life sciences, clean technology, and the thousands of smaller firms across every constituency that have the ambition to sell to the world. We support the Bill because that ambition deserves to be backed. I am disappointed that the Government could not support our amendments. Today we were asked to approve a near doubling of UKEF’s statutory commitment limit without the mechanisms that we feel are required to verify whether that is working properly. UK Export Finance supported 667 businesses last year, and we are concerned that its eligibility criteria lock out firms that are trying to break into exporting for the first time. That remains unchanged. We are also concerned, of course, that the structural barriers that drive former exporters away from our largest export market, the European Union, remain unaddressed. We support the Bill because it is important that we move forward in supporting businesses that are exporting, but we are concerned that we have missed an opportunity to help support British SMEs that want to start exporting, or that used to export to the European Union but cannot now. We will monitor the Bill closely to ensure that it works in practice for all those local SMEs. Question put and agreed to. Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.

• 3 Feb 2026 · Finance (No. 2) Bill (Sixth sitting) · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair this afternoon, Mrs Harris. The Minister says that HMRC will not use its powers for minor breaches; but Opposition Members are concerned, because we cannot see that backed up in the Bill. The ICAEW has called these clauses “existential” for adviser firms, and I ask the Minister to comment as to why the ICAEW uses those words when it comes to these clauses. We have heard about sanctions, and I think the words “reasonably” and “proportionately” are the words that should be used when we are talking about these clauses. Suspension of a reputable firm could force that firm to cease trading, only for the decision to be overturned a few days later because it was a genuine mistake. That would be putting good businesses and good advisers out of business—perhaps even, as we have heard, for £1. Clause 224(2) establishes that to first register, the adviser and all their relevant individuals must not have a “relevant amount overdue” to HMRC. The relevant amount is then defined very broadly to include any UK tax, national insurance contribution, devolved taxes or civil penalties—not even £1 of interest. That means that if a tax adviser makes an individual mistake with £1 of liability due, under this Bill they are due to be suspended. I think the Minister would struggle to say that £1 of liability meaning suspension and the closing of your firm was reasonable or proportionate. I have not tabled an amendment because I believe that we should be able to adopt this and hope that this ends in an agreement. However, I would like to see the Minister consider a statutory proportionality test to HMRC for the suspension powers, because these business-ending sanctions need proportionality. The idea that a £1 mistake could cost someone their livelihood and their family their home is not proportionate in any way.

• 3 Feb 2026 · Finance (No. 2) Bill (Sixth sitting) · Hansard source

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  In the last 10 years, 80 million British residents have phoned HMRC never to have their call answered. In 2024-25, 33.47 million calls to HMRC calls were registered, and only 80% of those were answered. At a recent hearing of the Business and Trade Committee, HMRC confirmed that it was only funded by the Treasury to pick up 85% of incoming calls. That means it is Treasury policy that 15% of calls to HMRC will go unanswered. I would like to see HMRC establishing customer service standards. People will need to ring HMRC because, as the Bill explains, not everyone will be able to use the digital reporting requirements in Making Tax Digital. There will always be individuals who need to phone HMRC because they cannot do things on a computer. Ensuring that those individuals have their phone calls answered is incredibly important. It is even more important given the changes in the state pension, which will bring individuals incredibly close to the personal allowance, where they would have to start paying income tax. Even though the Chancellor seems to be of the opinion that they will not have to do that, we still do not know how that will happen. That will see a flood of pensioners and retirees phoning HMRC, wanting to get some advice on the right steps to take, only for 20% of those phone calls to go unanswered. The Liberal Democrats would like to see a new retiree red phone set up in HMRC, so that retired pensioners know that if they phone HMRC, they will get their call picked up as a priority and somebody will be on the end of the line to answer it. That is how important it is. Everyone should have confidence that if they phone HMRC, their call will be picked up and they will get their query answered. In 2024-25, 20% of people who phoned never had their call picked up. That is a lot of wasted time for businesses and individuals. HMRC should change that and not have it as Treasury policy that 15% of calls go unanswered.

• 3 Feb 2026 · Finance (No. 2) Bill (Sixth sitting) · Hansard source

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  My concerns about the clauses in this group are very similar to my concerns about clause 229. Moving from “dishonest conduct” to “sanctionable conduct” lowers the threshold, introduces more ambiguity and could catch technical differences and genuine errors rather than deliberate wrongdoing. I hope that the Minister does not believe that we are trying to be obtuse in making this point; I believe that it needs to be raised repeatedly about this group of clauses, because these are real concerns shared by the Chartered Institute of Taxation and others. Their minds were not set at ease having read the Bill, so we must push these points today. I urge the Minister to consider the statutory proportionality test again, to ensure that tax advisers have the ability to do that proportionality test, and that HMRC has a statutory duty to do so.

• 3 Feb 2026 · Finance (No. 2) Bill (Sixth sitting) · Hansard source

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  The tabling of amendment 50 is very good timing, as HMRC has revealed today its estimate that 1 million people missed the deadline, which was up to midnight on Saturday, to file their self-assessment. We very much support Opposition amendment 50, and, if the shadow Minister chooses to press it to a Division, we will support him. It is fair and proportionate that the penalty should focus on those avoiding tax obligations, and not penalising administrative delays when no tax is owed. That is particularly important for self-employed people or pensioners, who may file late despite owing zero tax. HMRC resources should be focused on collecting tax that is actually owed, rather than punishing delays on paperwork for paperwork’s sake, when there is no revenue at stake.

• 3 Feb 2026 · Finance (No. 2) Bill (Sixth sitting) · Hansard source

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  This group of clauses establishes new criminal prohibitions on promoting tax avoidance arrangements. Clause 161 creates personal criminal liability for company directors, limited liability partnership members and shadow members. We of course support the Government in preventing tax avoidance measures, but we are concerned that some boundaries may not have been drawn correctly. We support the idea that aggressive tax avoidance measures need to be prosecuted, but there is a question about the breadth of criminal liability and the absence of safeguards. Clause 161 extends personal criminal liability to directors, members and shadow members—individuals exercising informal influence, but without formal responsibilities—where an offence is committed with their consent or due to their negligence, but it creates some problems. The shadow member concept creates uncertainty, including about who exactly will fall in scope. If the neglect standard is brought, it could catch directors for oversight failures, rather than for active wrongdoing. There is also limited guidance from His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs on how it will apply these sanctions in practice. Will it draw a distinction with deliberate promotion of aggressive schemes, or will it have a counteract for technical advice where boundaries were genuinely unclear? Will individuals be pursued proportionately, or will criminal sanctions be viewed optimistically? I would be interested to see whether the Government are willing to provide annual parliamentary reports on prosecutions—numbers commenced, convictions secured, categories of responsible persons prosecuted, and examples of conduct that does or does not meet the threshold. The Liberal Democrats back strong action against tax avoidance promoters. These schemes undermine fairness in the tax base. However, criminal liability based on neglect is broad, and prosecutions could happen for oversight failures, rather than deliberate wrongdoing. The definition of shadow members also lacks clarity. I would welcome the Minister’s clarification on those points.

• 3 Feb 2026 · Finance (No. 2) Bill (Sixth sitting) · Hansard source

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  As we have heard, many of the promoters operate offshore. How will the Government take action against those offshore promoters? Could a UK-based promoter move offshore to continue to do business as a way to get around the Bill? If it could not, will the Minister point me to which part of the Bill stops the promoter from being able to do so? If we are talking about a small number of promotors with this group of clauses, does the Minister know how many of the promotors operate offshore and with complex ownership structures? How much of the money that we want to be able to claim back under the clauses would not be achievable because of the offshore companies?