Tories say Labour's Business Secretary spent more than a decade pretending to be a solicitor.

 

Walter Mitty - Jonathan Reynolds MP

Labour seems to be full of Walter Mitty's like Jonathan Reynolds, who descend into flights of fancy by embellishing their Job histories and CV's.

Reynolds, who is Labour's Business Secretary, had repeatedly claimed that before becoming an MP, he had been a solicitor. But he never actually finished his training contract with the Manchester law firm Addleshaw Goddard and was therefore a trainee solicitor and not a qualified solicitor. 

The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA), who protects the public against bogus solicitors and can strike solicitors off, wrote to Reynolds in January calling on him to 'stop claiming that he was a solicitor' in his LinkedIn profile. In 2014, Reynolds told the Commons that he had worked as a solicitor in Addleshaw Goddard's Manchester branch before running for Parliament.

It is a criminal offence for anyone to call themselves a solicitor if they are not on the official register. Under Section 21 of the Solicitors Act 1974, it is illegal for any unqualified person to take or use "any name, title, addition or description" implying they are qualified to acts as a solicitor.

Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary and Reform UK, are now calling for Reynolds to be sacked. In a statement to The Telegraph, Mr Jenrick accused the Business Secretary of spending more than a decade "pretending to be a solicitor" pointing out that his claims were not limited to his online CV. He has also urged the SRA to investigate Reynolds "with a view to prosecuting."   The Tories have also written to Sir Laurie Magnus, Sir Keir Starmer's ethics adviser, urging him to investigate "potential breaches of the ministerial code."

The revelations made about Reynolds and the Chancellor Rachel Reeves, who is also alleged to have embellished her own CV claiming that she worked as an economist at the Bank of Scotland between 2006 and 2009, have raised more questions about the probity and integrity of Sir Keir's Cabinet.

 A Labour source told The Telegraph that "The Business Secretary engaged fully and corrected this administrative error immediately." It has also been claimed that Jonathan Reynolds does not manage his LinkedIn profile and this was an 'inadvertent error." As Jonathan Swift famously said, "Where falsehood flies, truth comes limping after it."