Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds has apologised for saying he worked as a solicitor before he became an MP, after being accused of misrepresenting his legal career.

Reynolds has previously described himself as a solicitor but he never qualified, after quitting his legal training to run for Parliament in 2010.

He told the Guardian newspaper he had “used shorthand” in a speech “over a decade ago”.

The Conservatives and Reform UK are urging Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer to sack Reynolds from his cabinet role.

The BBC has been told Reynolds has written to Sir Keir to apologise and the prime minister has accepted his apology.

Speaking in a debate about the HS2 railway line in 2014, Reynolds told the House of Commons he had “worked as a solicitor in Manchester city centre”.

“I apologise for that, but again, I don’t think anyone would have interpreted that in any way that I was misrepresenting myself professionally,” Reynolds told the Guardian during a trip to India.

“And I just want to be absolutely clear, for a speech, I think, 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.”

The cabinet minister had been described as a solicitor on his LinkedIn profile but the BBC has been told this was an “administrative error” that has been corrected.

The updated profile says Reynolds was a “trainee solicitor” at the Manchester branch of the Addleshaw Goddard law firm between August 2009 and May 2010.

A Labour source said there had been no attempt to mislead and Reynolds was proud that he had trained to become a solicitor.

On other occasions Reynolds has described himself as a trainee solicitor at Addleshaw Goddard.

Conservative shadow business secretary Andrew Griffith said: “This is a ‘sorry, not sorry apology’ delivered to a friendly journalist over 4,000 miles away rather than face his critics at home.

“He is still failing to take responsibility, claiming this was a ‘misinterpretation’ despite it being a specific legal offence to use the term ‘Solicitor’ which he must have known and for which he is being investigated by the Solicitors Regulatory Authority.”

Qualified solicitors are required to register with Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) to practice law in England and Wales.

The SRA wrote to Reynolds to flag the error on his LinkedIn profile, but initially concluded there was no need to take any action.

Since then Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary, has written to the SRA asking it to investigate claims Reynolds had made about his legal work, including in his speech in 2014.

The BBC has been told the SRA was looking into the matter and would only launch a formal investigation if was there was a case to answer.

An SRA spokesperson said: “We looked at that issue at the time we became aware of it and contacted Mr Reynolds about the profiles.

“The materials were corrected, and we closed the matter with no further action based on all the evidence we had at the time.

“However, we’ve now become aware of further information, so we will look at this.”

The change to Reynolds’s LinkedIn profile was first reported by the Guido Fawkes website.

It comes after a BBC investigation found Chancellor Rachel Reeves had exaggerated the length of time she worked at the Bank of England on her online CV.

A spokesman for Reeves confirmed that dates on her LinkedIn were inaccurate and said it was due to an administrative error by the team.