The Business Secretary was forced to admit to the House of Commons last night that he had wrongly claimed to be a qualified solicitor.
In a humiliating moment, Jonathan Reynolds told MPs he had made an ‘inadvertent error’ in an old speech and should have described himself as a trainee lawyer.
Speaking from the despatch box, just minutes after his flagship Employments Rights Bill was voted through, he said: ‘It has come to my attention that in a speech I gave on the 28th of April, 2014, on the subject of high speed rail, I made a reference to my experience of using our local transport system in Greater Manchester when I worked as a solicitor in Manchester city centre.
‘I should have made clear that, specifically, that was a reference at the time to being a trainee solicitor.
‘This was an inadvertent error, and although this speech was over a decade ago, as it has been brought to my attention, I would like to formally correct the record.’
However senior Tory Robert Jenrick said Mr Reynolds should apologise for the other occasions on which he had wrongly said he had been a solicitor, having quit his training post early to become an MP in 2010.
Shadow Justice Secretary Mr Jenrick said: ‘Jonathan Reynolds has finally admitted he lied in Parliament about being a solicitor. He should apologise for the many other instances, spanning well over a decade, where he deliberately lied about his qualifications.
In a humiliating moment, Jonathan Reynolds told MPs he had made an ‘inadvertent error’ in an old speech and should have described himself as a trainee lawyer
Shadow Justice Secretary Mr Jenrick said: ‘Jonathan Reynolds has finally admitted he lied in Parliament about being a solicitor’
‘As a former Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer knows Reynolds broke the law. Unless Starmer sacks him, it’ll be another cases of two-tier justice under Two-Tier Keir.’
It emerged last month that the Labour minister had been rebuked by the Solicitors Regulation Authority watchdog for making the claim in his online CV, and had even included it in election leaflets as well as on his personal website.
In an interview with the Mail after the row broke out, Mr Reynolds said: ‘For a speech – and I think a tweet or maybe a Facebook post over a decade ago – I don’t think it’s a huge deal, but I should apologise for that, if anyone has misunderstood that, but I don’t think they have.’
