The UK’s governing Labour Party and opposition Conservative Party are aligned on the need to spur economic growth in the country, the Shadow Financial Secretary Gareth Davies has said, adding that the investment management industry is central to achieving it.
Speaking today (3 December) at the 2024 Annual Conference of the Investment Association, which represents the investment management industry, Davies commented: “Central to everything that we’re trying to do to get the Conservative Party get back in, and what Labour want to do, is economic growth, and I’m really pleased that there is a genuine consensus across parties of focusing on economic growth.”
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Davies also indicated his agreement with Chancellor Rachel Reeves on the need to at times accept some level of risk in order to achieve growth.
“I think it’s a completely underappreciated fact that sometimes not taking risk can be riskier than taking risk,” he said. “And I think that is a really important thing that we now have cross party consensus, and it was important that Rachel Reeves said: ‘We’ve gone too far to eliminate risk threats.’ I want to see the detail of what that means in practice, but we should encourage this government to harness that principle.”
Of the importance of the investment management industry to the UK, Davies, who worked in the industry prior to entering politics, said: “I see many of the many of the problems that we are trying to tackle in government, in parliament, that you are the solution to – whether that is economic growth and competitiveness, whether it’s climate change … I know many of your organisations have plans and funds in place which help achieve that, but it’s also things like financial literacy. I know all the great work that you do to bring on the next generation of fund managers, but also just people who understand savings better.
“And we have way more work to do, by the way, but it is about working together between government and your industry to improve that, and, without getting too grand about things, it is also about peace in the world. Trade is vital to avoiding conflict, but the investments that you made, not just in this country but overseas, help us diplomatically, help the British government, help the Prime Minister, the Chancellor, engage with other countries. The interplay between finance, private capital and politics, geopolitics is, I think, an underplayed factor, both in your industry but also in government too. It is a diplomatic lever that all too often we don’t pull hard enough.
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By GlobalData“If you just think about the power that is exerted through our development finance, initiatives and investments through British international investment, if you think about the trade relationships that we have with many of the fastest growing countries around the world, too few of them are focused on services, too few of them focus on sparing more private capital and investment, and I want to see that change.”
