UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer will vow to scrap regulations holding back growth, as he seeks to soothe concerns among international investors after a rocky first 100 days in power.
Starmer is set to pitch his vision for Britain to executives on Monday at the International Investment Summit in London, which is expected to be attended by top business leaders from companies including Alphabet, Brookfield Asset Management and BlackRock.
He will tell executives in his keynote speech that he will “rip out the bureaucracy that blocks investment” and “do everything in my power to galvanise growth”.
The summit is key to reviving Labour’s efforts to turbocharge UK growth, as Starmer attempts to reset his government just months after taking power. While he has promised to boost annual GDP growth to an ambitious 2.5%, companies are still awaiting details on swathes of Labour’s economic plans from taxes to industrial strategy.
Starmer was dealt a blow just days before Monday’s summit when Bloomberg revealed that Dubai-based DP World put the announcement of a GBP1 billion ($1.7 billion) investment at its London port on hold after criticism from Transport Secretary Louise Haigh over employment practices at the company’s P&O Ferries arm.
Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds said on Sunday that the investment will still go ahead and said Haigh’s comments didn’t reflect the government’s position. He told Sky News that he “had to have a conversation” with DP World after the reports last week.
See also: St. James’s Place to shutter GBP1.8 bil UK property funds
“It’s not the government’s position to boycott them, but we are clear, we do not want this country competing on fire and rehire. We are changing that,” he told the BBC.
Starmer will hope the summit can help his government turn the corner after a difficult first 100 days that has been marred by a scandal over freebies, a backlash over cuts to winter fuel subsidies for the elderly and the departure of his chief of staff, Sue Gray.
He was spared the embarrassment of holding Monday’s summit without an investment minister to lead his drive. Just days before the conference, former Darktrace CEO Poppy Gustafsson was named as the new UK investment minister, ending a three-month search that saw the first-choice candidate, Benjamin Wegg-Prosser, pull out.
See also: UK weighs easing market access for some trading houses
Business leaders and ministers will gather at Guildhall in the City of London for the summit before heading to a reception at St. Paul’s Cathedral that will also be attended by King Charles III. Sky News reported that private-sector investments worth more than GBP50 billion are set to be announced.
It will see the prime minister discussing artificial intelligence with former Google CEO Eric Schmidt while Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves will speak on a panel with BlackRock boss Larry Fink. British banks Barclays, HSBC Holdings and Lloyds Banking Group are sponsoring the event alongside M&G and Octopus Energy.
In his speech, Starmer will promise to “do everything in my power to galvanise growth including getting rid of regulation that needlessly holds back investment”.
“We will rip out the bureaucracy that blocks investment and we will make sure that every regulator in this country take growth as seriously as this room does,” he will say to executives. The government plans to ask the competitions watchdog to prioritise growth and will also be reviewing the goals of other regulators.
Starmer is expected to say that Labour — which won a landslide victory in the July 4 election — has a “golden opportunity” and wants to harness private sector money to “rebuild our country.”
The prime minister was given a boost hours before the summit after some of the world’s biggest banks said in a letter to the Times newspaper that it was “time to invest in Britain”. The 14 signatories of the letter — which included UBS, JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Goldman Sachs — said the UK has a “very real opportunity” to grow its economy through attracting foreign investment.
Labour is hoping that an acceleration in growth can ease the pressure on the public finances and generate more money to pump into public services. However, it has added to economic headwinds in recent months with dire warnings over the state of the public finances that have rattled business and consumer confidence.
Reeves has set the stage for a tight-fisted budget on Oct 30, with reports suggesting that capital gains tax could be targeted.
On Sunday, Reynolds refused to rule out raising employer national insurance contributions to help generate extra revenue for the Treasury.
