UK Politics
Reynolds: Employers Are “Not Working People” – Then the Climbdown
Reynolds told GB News employers are “not working people, they are companies.” Jenrick piled in. She corrected the record in the Commons days later.
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Should Labour ministers who call employers “not working people” resign?
News | By Matt, Editor
“I don’t think employers are working people, they are companies.” That is Chief Secretary to the Treasury Emma Reynolds, live on GB News, drawing a line that cuts millions of small-business owners out of Labour’s “working people” promise.
GB News carried the exchange with Camilla Tominey after Healey’s Budget raised income tax on rents and savings interest. Reynolds insisted the manifesto was intact because headline income tax, VAT and employee National Insurance rates were untouched. Tominey put the old Reeves National Insurance argument back on the table: employers can also be working people. Reynolds doubled down.
Key facts
- Who: Emma Reynolds MP (Wycombe), Chief Secretary to the Treasury.
- Where: GB News interview with Camilla Tominey, 1 November 2026, defending Healey’s Budget tax rises on landlords and savers.
- Exact line: “Well, firstly let me say I don’t think employers are working people, they are companies.”
- Follow-up: she drew a “distinction between employers and employees,” including when Tominey asked about employing a cleaner.
- Reform Shadow Chancellor Robert Jenrick on X: “Tell that to the millions of small business owners who employ people. Labour haven’t a clue about business.”
- Climbdown: in the Commons on 3 November she said she wanted to “correct the record” and that “the brilliant men and women across the country who run small businesses are working people” (Bucks Free Press / Morning Advertiser).
- Context: Healey’s Budget raised income tax bands on property and savings by two percentage points while freezing thresholds; employers’ National Insurance rise from the previous Budget still hangs over firms.
What she said on air
Tominey pressed whether landlords and savers count as working people after the Budget. Reynolds answered the manifesto question first, then volunteered the employers line. GB News quotes her in full. She did not hedge. “They are companies.”
That is the clip that has been recirculated all week. The GB News post of the grilling has been viewed more than a million times. Reform UK’s daily brief and business owners piled in behind it.
Jenrick, pubs and the Reform lane
Reform UK framed the remark as proof Labour cannot define the people it claims to protect. Jenrick’s post sits next to Reform’s own small-business tax list: a higher VAT threshold, a £15,000 personal allowance and overtime tax relief. Lee Anderson’s line, carried by Reform, put it in street English: pub landlords, plumbers, electricians and shop owners are “not a worker… according to this Labour Minister.”
A second GB News piece put pub and hospitality operators on camera. Heath Ball of the Frisco Group called the comments “short-sighted” and said employing people does not mean you have stopped working. That is the lived answer Reynolds eventually had to walk toward.
The Commons climbdown
By Tuesday 3 November Reynolds was on her feet correcting the record. The Bucks Free Press and The Morning Advertiser both report the same Commons wording: small-business owners “are working people,” with thanks to bakeries, cafés, restaurants, beauticians, hairdressers and “the local pub.”
A climbdown is not a deletion. The original interview is still online. The political point is the instinct that produced the first answer: when a Treasury minister needs to defend tax rises, employers suddenly become “companies,” not people who work six or seven days a week and sign the wage cheques.
Why it lands on tax
Labour’s manifesto pledge was sold as a shield for “working people.” Reeves and then Healey have used a narrow reading of that phrase to defend employer National Insurance and now higher tax on property and savings income. Reynolds said the quiet part out loud. If employers are not working people, the manifesto shield never covered them.
That sits next to today’s other Labour sticks: Rayner’s tourist tax with a 14-year jail tariff, the 36-pesticide EU phase-out, £4.7 billion of border posts Labour’s food deal will idle, and a £2.4 billion Skynet choice that sits awkwardly with “buy British.” Different departments. Same pattern: the private citizen absorbs the hit while ministers redefine the words.
Our view
You cannot run a high-tax Budget and then pretend the people who create the jobs are not workers. Reynolds said it, the clip exists, and a Commons correction three days later does not make the first answer disappear. Small-business owners already pay the wages, the taxman and the risk. They do not need a Treasury lecture that rebrands them as “companies.”
Should Labour ministers who call employers “not working people” resign? Vote in our poll below.
Sources
- GB News, 1 November 2026: Labour minister sparks outrage after saying Britain’s employers are “not working people”; full Tominey exchange
- GB News follow-up: small business owner hits back
- Reform UK, 2 November 2026: Labour doesn’t know what a working person is; Jenrick / Anderson lines
- Bucks Free Press, 3-4 November 2026: Wycombe MP backtracks in Commons
- Morning Advertiser, 4 November 2026: clarifies small business owners are working people
- Posts on X by GB News, Robert Jenrick, Artemisfornow and Daily Mail (embedded above)
- Main image: Emma Reynolds, official UK Parliamentary portrait 2024 crop 2, Wikimedia Commons, © House of Commons / Roger Harris, CC BY 3.0 (cropped to 16:9 for site hero)
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