Joshua Reynolds MP: speeches

Speeches

• 1 Jul 2026 · Engagements · Hansard source

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  Q12. Yesterday the Prime Minister visited Maidenhead to announce his new defence investment plan. However, we now know that he is leaving it to his successor to decide how to fund the majority of it. We cannot fund our armed forces without growth, and we cannot get growth in Britain without dismantling the red tape that businesses face and trading closer with our closest neighbours. Does the Prime Minister agree we can properly fund our forces with a new growth and defence partnership with Europe, and will he urge his successor to drop Labour’s red lines to get it done?

• 30 Jun 2026 · Steel Tariffs: Northern Ireland · Hansard source

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  Businesses across Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom are concerned that from tomorrow they may face tariffs on the steel that they are importing even if that steel is not manufactured in the United Kingdom in the quantities or grades they need. The Under-Secretary has requested that we write to him with specific examples, and I did so on 19 June on behalf of Hewland Engineering in my constituency, but it is concerned that it has not heard back yet and 1 July is coming quickly. The Minister mentioned in his response to the urgent question that he was working hard to ensure a single market in this area between us and the European Union. The Liberal Democrats are really grateful to hear that, because we have long argued that this friction is an inevitable result of our leaving the European Union and the single market. Will he help support the Liberal Democrats’ campaign to ditch the Government’s red lines and have a new, bespoke UK-EU customs union, along with joining the single market for our new growth and defence partnership with the EU, to help protect British companies and help get Britain growing again?

• 17 Jun 2026 · Customs (Tariff and Miscellaneous Amendments) (No. 4) Regulations 2026 · Hansard source

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  Steel matters for our national security, for our defence and for our critical infrastructure, and it sustains jobs in every single part of the United Kingdom. British Steel supports thousands of jobs and more than £1 billion-worth of economic activity through its own operation and supply chain, as well as underpinning hundreds of thousands of jobs and several more billion pounds-worth of activity across the industries that depend on it. This is an industry that is worth defending. It has been battered by President Trump’s trade war and by years of unfair practices from China. But supporting the goal is not the same as supporting the method, and the method before us today—a flat 50% tariff, sweeping away the preferential rates across 20 categories of steel—gets the balance badly wrong. It risks protecting one part of British industry by punishing another. Two of those categories make the point very sharply: category 14, which covers stainless bars and light sections, and category 27, which covers cold-finished bars. Those are not commodity steel products bought by the tonne; they are long precision products on which aerospace, defence and motorsport rely, machined to fine tolerances and certified to exacting grades. Those are also categories in which Britain has little or no production at the volume that we need. A 50% tariff here will not redirect demand to British mills, because there are no British mills to redirect that demand to; it simply lands a 50% tax on those British businesses that need those products. Hewland Engineering in my constituency is a fine example. It employs more than 120 people and turns over £15 million. It sells precision drivetrains for aerospace, defence and motorsport across the UK, Europe and Japan. The Government’s answer to Hewland and many other businesses is to buy British, but Hewland has looked at the list of approved domestic suppliers, and not a single one meets the grades or certifications that its customers require. This is not a company that is choosing to buy foreign steel over British steel. There is no domestic option, and yet from 1 July, Hewland faces a 50% tariff on the specialist steel that it needs. That is the central flaw in the Government’s proposals: non-domestic availability. The specialist steel that is required for aerospace, defence and other sectors is not made here at the volumes that we need. It therefore should not have this 50% tariff applied to it. Who bears the cost of the 50% tariff that the Government are proposing? All the downstream industries that put steel into engines and aircraft parts. They employ around 300,000 people across the country, but this blanket tariff, which is meant to protect, risks weakening that workforce and making it smaller. The Government know that there is a problem here—that is why Ministers have been meeting industries about this issue for a long time—but it feels as if they are just ignoring these sectors entirely. In an urgent question today, I asked the Industry Minister about this. He said that if I wrote to him, he would help with the quotas and set out the proposals. If we are suggesting that this will happen on 1 July, writing to a Minister on 17 June to ask for some thoughts when we know it will take several weeks to get a response—probably beyond 1 July—will not be of any benefit. This is not a steel strategy; it is a steel tax on domestic business. We will not support the regulations today, but if the Government intend to press ahead with them, I have some questions for the Minister. Will he consider delaying or tapering start dates to agree some mitigations with industry, removing categories with no realistic domestic capability, particularly in categories 14 and 27, and committing to exemptions for specialist steel that cannot be made at scale in the United Kingdom? Those businesses are crying out and sounding the horn to say that they are at risk of going under. I am worried that, if the Government do not listen to them, swathes of organisations and businesses in my constituency and others will just fold overnight.

• 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.

• 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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  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 (Fifth sitting) · Hansard source

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  The £50,000 threshold imposed as part of schedule 16 is incredibly low. It catches small construction firms importing tonnes of cement or steel, materials that could be consumed in one single medium-sized building project. The businesses importing such volumes will lack the resource of dedicated compliance teams and environmental consultants for quarterly emission verification. Meanwhile, large industrial importers, responsible for the vast majority of imported carbon emissions, face identical per unit compliance obligations, giving them a competitive advantage through their economies of scale. CBAM introduces entirely new foreign concepts to normal commercial activities, such as calculating the emissions across international supply chains, determining whether carbon prices were paid in origin countries and applying complex fee allocation formulas. A family-run metalworking shop that has successfully filed VAT for 20 years must suddenly become an expert in lifetime emission methodologies and international carbon-pricing verifications. I do not believe that the Government have published any analysis comparing the £50,000 threshold to alternatives such £100,000 or £250,000 thresholds. I am interested to hear from the Minister what verification and changes have been made, and what assessment has been made of the compliance costs for various businesses. Schedule 16 also introduces a £500 fixed penalty plus a £40 daily charge for failure to notify a change of circumstances, and a £500 penalty for record-keeping failures. While paragraph 40 of schedule 16 includes a reasonable excuse defence, HMRC interprets that quite narrowly as applying to circumstances such as illness, postal strikes or computer failures. The idea that the system or methodology was confusing or, “My supplier could not provide the data,” typically do not fall within the reasonable excuse defence. The problem here is timings: the comprehensive penalties for CBAM take effect on 1 January 2027, so businesses navigating entirely unprecedented requirements are going to have a challenge. I note that the EU’s CBAM began with a transitional reporting period before enforcement ramped up, whereas the UK’s has no such mechanism. These are not familiar tax concepts for lots of businesses. They involve new software, new tracking and international verification. These things have not been done in British business before, and I believe that small importers will face penalties while genuinely trying to comply with the regulations. The Liberal Democrats are not against the concept of a CBAM, but we take issue with the way that it has been put together. Has the Minister considered a 12-month transitional period during which full penalties for deliberate avoidance are maintained but an allowance is given for honest compliance?

• 13 Jan 2026 · Chinese Embassy · Hansard source

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  I have raised multiple times with the Government the harassment of a constituent of mine, Carmen Lau, by the Chinese authorities. This has included bounty letters, deepfake pornography and her family being interrogated by national security agents in Hong Kong. Every time I am told that the safety of Hongkongers is of the utmost importance to the Government. Given that, does the Minister accept that to approve this application while China is still committing transnational repression would be a kick in the teeth to Hongkongers such as Carmen?

• 15 Dec 2025 · Jimmy Lai Conviction · Hansard source

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  Carmen Lau is a Hong Kong democracy campaigner, and a constituent of mine. Earlier this year, her neighbours received letters asking them to take her to the Chinese embassy in exchange for £100,000. Last month her neighbours also received fake sexually explicit photographs of her, with a Macao postage stamp. May I ask the Foreign Secretary when she last met Carmen to discuss those concerns, and how she can reassure Hongkongers living in Britain that they will be safe?

• 9 Sept 2025 · Jaguar Land Rover Cyber-attack · Hansard source

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  As has been said, Jaguar Land Rover is not the first British household name this year to experience cyber-attacks. In a recent Business and Trade Committee meeting, the chairman of Marks & Spencer said that he wished that somebody would ride in the cab with them for this experience; he felt like there was too much one-way traffic, and not enough dialogue between the Government and the business. Can the Minister reassure us that the Department has learned those lessons? Can he reassure us that Jaguar Land Rover is having that two-way dialogue, and that someone is in the cab with it at the moment?