Successful Party Conferences season
At the Conservative Party Conference we held a member dinner with MPs, sponsored the prestigious 1922 Committee welcome drinks reception and hosted a fringe event on regional growth with the former cabinet minister Rt Hon Theresa Villiers MP. At the Labour Party event we sponsored the New Statesman welcome reception and hosted a fringe event focusing on the role of our industry in delivering growth across the country with the Shadow Economic Secretary to the Treasury Tulip Siddiq MP and Treasury Select Committee member Rushanara Ali MP. We partnered with the City of London Corporation at the SNP Conference to host a fringe event on sustainable finance and green growth with the Scottish Minister for Business, Trade, Tourism and Enterprise Ivan McKee MSP. The Liberal Democrats conference was cancelled in 2022 due to the sad passing of HM Queen Elizabeth II. We attended the Liberal Democrat business conference in London as an alternative and took the opportunity to engage with their Treasury and Business Spokesperson, Sarah Olney MP.
Delivering member asks to Government
We consulted widely with our members to produce ‘Going for Growth’, our manifesto for the prime minister. This was covered prominently on the front page of City AM, with Rishi Sunak referring to our goal to make the UK the world’s leading international financial centre in some of his speeches.
In November, we set out a series of recommendations to drive economic growth and ensure the competitiveness of the UK as a world-leading international financial centre in our ‘Six point plan for growth’. The areas covered in this plan: regulatory principles, regulatory reform, regulatory culture investment in innovation and sustainability, tax and global trade underpin our advocacy and policy asks in 2023 and our submissions to consultations such as the Budget, and the Labour Party’s manifesto development.
Influencing the opposition
We have had extensive engagement with the Shadow Treasury team, including the Shadow Chancellor, Rt Hon Rachel Reeves MP and Tulip Siddiq MP. The Shadow Chancellor spoke at our Annual Conference in June, during which she also announced Labour’s conditional support for the new competitiveness and growth objective in the Financial Services and Markets Bill. She also joined one of our recent Extraordinary Leadership Council meetings.
The Labour Party’s Start Up, Scale Up report was published on 8 December and included many of the recommendations we submitted to the Party’s review on this issue including:
- The formation of a UK ‘Tibi’ Scheme, to pool VC and institutional capital an invest in high-growth, high-tech, businesses.
- Further review in how savings and pensions can be used to invest in Long-Term Asset Funds and the performance of UK equity markets following reforms in the Financial Services and Markets Bill, the Hill Review and Secondary Capital Raising review.
- Fostering greater links between academia and finance to accelerate the growth of high-tech start ups.
- Building on the current R&D tax system.
In May, we organised a briefing session for the Shadow Secretary of State for International Trade, Nick Thomas- Symonds MP, and the other shadow international trade ministers to bring them up to speed on our international strategy asks and highlight the importance of trade in services to the UK economy.
Influencing Select Committees and All Party Parliamentary Groups
We gave oral and written evidence to Lords European Affairs Select Committee around the future of financial services and followed up with a policymaker roundtable with the chair of the committee, the Earl of Kinnoull. We worked with members to make a detailed submission to the inquiry into the role of the industry in levelling up, which was led by the APPG for Financial Markets and Services and colleagues at UK Finance. We were pleased that our submission and reports from our Economic Research Programme were referenced in the final report.
The London as a Global City APPG published a response to its inquiry into London’s status as a global city in which we were pleased to see our proposals referenced. We also held a member roundtable with APPG Chair, Gareth Bacon MP.