Joshua Reynolds MP: speeches

Speeches

• 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.

• 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.

• 29 Jan 2026 · Finance (No. 2) Bill (Fourth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I am very glad that the Government have ditched the plan to converge the rates of landfill tax and to massively hike the charge for inert waste, adding tens of thousands of pounds to the cost of a new build home at a time when the Government want to build 1.5 million new homes. That was not joined-up government, and I am concerned at the lack of joined-up thinking when the Treasury put forward this proposal. There are a number of gravel quarries in my Maidenhead constituency, and converging the rates would have meant that a significant number of those quarries would have gone unfilled, resulting in more quarry lakes in our town. We know that quarry lakes are dangerous: they are quite shallow until they suddenly become incredibly deep. That is dangerous when young people are out on the water or swimming, and in areas not too far from my own we have seen some unfortunate deaths as a result. I am glad that the Government have decided to back down on this and are not going to burden the quarry sector or developments with that proposal. However, can the Minister confirm what the cost would have been to UK infrastructure projects such as High Speed 2, and what the additional cost to the taxpayer would have been?

• 27 Jan 2026 · Finance (No. 2) Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source

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  The Liberal Democrats share the concerns of the SMMT. Given that the sector is struggling with severe uncompetitiveness across the country, anything that undoes the progress that the Government are seeking to make would not be welcome. Nissan tells us that its plant in Sunderland is the most expensive for electricity of any of its plants worldwide. That is not good for British business or for British car manufacturers. The SMMT worries that these proposals will not be good for British car manufacturers either. On clause 18, we would like some draft guidance on proposed new section 116A to be published this year and consulted on. A number of the definitions could be clarified to give the industry some certainty about what will and will not be included.

• 6 Jan 2026 · Warm Home Discount · Hansard source

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  Citizens Advice notes that the warm home discount has not kept pace with rising energy bills and will struggle to touch the sides for families in energy debt. Will the Minister therefore commit to a Government review of whether the £150 discount provides sufficient support for the families who really need it right now?

• 19 Nov 2025 · Specialist Manufacturing Sector: Regional Economies · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Harris. I congratulate the hon. Member for Calder Valley (Josh Fenton-Glynn) on securing the debate. When I woke up on this cold Wednesday morning, I did not think I would learn so much about the manufacturing in all our regions—and when there are so many Members from Stoke-on-Trent in the Chamber, how could we not learn so much about ceramics? Specialist manufacturers do not operate in a vacuum; they need certainty to make investment decisions spanning years—often decades—and they need to know that the Government understand their sector and will back it for the long term. I welcome the fact that the Government have listened to British business and reinstated the industrial strategy, and I am pleased to see it focusing on many of the same sectors that the Liberal Democrats have prioritised for so long: life sciences, clean energy, professional business services, aerospace and automotive. Obviously, the background to that is disappointment from the previous Government’s decision to scrap the industrial strategy in 2021, pulling the rug out from under businesses that had planned on the basis of Government commitments. However, I am disappointed that not enough attention has been paid to the agrifoods industry and the rural economy. Agricultural technology was one of the 11 priority sectors that Liberal Democrats identified in our industrial strategy. Recognising and supporting that sector will help make food healthier, safer and more affordable. Agrifood tech is not a niche industry; it is about applying the same precision engineering we have for aerospace and pharmaceuticals to the sector that feeds our nation. It is disappointing that the Government have relegated it to a handful of mentions in the White Paper. We cannot have this debate without discussing the issue that keeps specialist manufacturers awake at night: energy costs. Many other Members mentioned that we have some of the highest industrial energy prices in the world, and measures to bring them down will always be welcome news. When Nissan tells us that its Sunderland plant has the highest electricity cost of any of its plants worldwide, Britain’s competitiveness is obviously going to become an issue. That lack of competitiveness will harm our regional economies in the future. Britain’s businesses are not only struggling in this sector. When it comes to regional economies and these specialist manufacturers, they do not just rely on affordable power for themselves and their factory floors; they also need it for the companies that supply them, such as local services and the businesses that form the ecosystem to allow them to be viable. It is also important for the hospitality sector and small and medium-sized enterprises, so the Government need to do more to ensure that small businesses across all those sectors have access to better energy deals. There cannot be a thriving specialist manufacturing area when broad business in the region is struggling. Manufacturing is reliant on skills, and specialist manufacturing sites cannot be run without people with deep technical knowledge. When I speak to businesses across the country, they tell me that after energy bills and tax, skills comes out as their most pressing issue. Multinationals have the choice of where they put their facilities across the world, so we need to ensure that they are in Britain. That means that we need the talent pipeline, and not just the talent density, to ensure that that we are at the front of manufacturing in the future. The Liberal Democrats have set out a comprehensive approach to reforming skills that includes replacing the broken apprenticeship levy with broader flexibility in the skills training levy, guaranteed apprenticeships paid at least at the national minimum wage and lifelong skills grants so that adults can learn to use new technologies as they evolve. I will briefly touch on two areas where specialist manufacturers are facing significant challenge, the first being trade. These are international sectors, and if the Government are serious about backing British business, they must show more ambition on trade with Europe. We would do that by negotiating a new UK-EU customs union, because our specialist manufacturers face red tape and friction when they trade with our largest and closest market neighbours. That makes them less competitive and increases costs. Secondly, there is the national insurance contributions—the jobs hike. The Government must scrap that damaging measure, because making it more expensive to employ people is counterproductive. I conclude by pressing the Minister to work cross party to ensure that we get a fix for those issues and asking him about national exporting. We are hearing concerning news from the Department for Business and Trade about its plans to reduce its international export team by between 27% and 38%, and in particular reports about cuts to the Latin America trade support team of up to 54%. I would appreciate the Minister’s views on that, as that is an area we must focus on to ensure that Britain is competitive and is exporting. Given that we must support our small businesses to export, those reductions cannot be correct.

• 17 Nov 2025 · Small Modular Nuclear Reactor Power Station: Wylfa · Hansard source

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  The Minister is right to say that we want as many individual components of these SMRs as possible to be built in the UK, as well as the final SMRs themselves, but what work is he doing across Government to ensure not just these SMRs, but the world’s SMRs are built in the UK?

• 14 Oct 2025 · Great British Energy: Public Sector Renewable Energy Use · Hansard source

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  By prioritising partnerships with schools, we will help to protect their budgets. I draw the Secretary of State’s attention to schools in Maidenhead, and specifically Furze Platt senior school—where I happen to be a governor—which recently partnered with MaidEnergy to install solar panels on the school’s building, thereby doing right by its budgets and by the environment, and setting a great example for the students taught there.

• 4 Sept 2025 · Water Company Executives: Accountability · Hansard source

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  The public will have been pleased to hear recently about the bonus ban for water company bosses, but they would have been equally surprised to hear that a water company boss in England was awarded a massive pay increase to £1.4 million, with the public being told that that was not a bonus but a two-year long incentive plan. What further steps can the Secretary of State put in place to ensure that water companies are playing fair, when those are the tactics that they use to circumvent the rules?