Speaker 1: I think there's a huge appetite for a new agenda,
Speaker 1: for a sense of where are we trying to compete
Speaker 1: in the world? What is our strategy? No post Brexit
Speaker 1: is no good just saying we left it and we're
Speaker 1: going to have some trade agreements. It's how are we
Speaker 1: now going to compete in the world? Now we've created
Speaker 1: this dislocation in how we used to You can see
Speaker 1: it most acutely in things like the auto industry. We
Speaker 1: created friction for trade. No rightly or wrongly, that's what
Speaker 1: people voted to do. Now we need a plan for
Speaker 1: how we compete, and that's popularly called It used to
Speaker 1: be called industrial strategy. Now this government, for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: has an aversion to the expression industrial strate. It's what
Speaker 1: everybody else calls it, so they can't bring themselves to
Speaker 1: say it. But I don't care whether it's a growth
Speaker 1: strategy or competitiveness. It's got to be a profound point
Speaker 1: of view as to how Britain's going to compete.
Speaker 2: The government is sort of trying to address this idea
Speaker 2: of attractiveness the UK is are the hunt reforms, are
Speaker 2: any of the things you've seen out of government profound
Speaker 2: as you.
Speaker 1: Say, look, I just don't I think one speech doesn't
Speaker 1: make a strategy. An industrial strategy has to be profound.
Speaker 1: And it's not just about our attue where we want
Speaker 1: to compete. What it's about what skills do we want
Speaker 1: to have? Don't get Government plays a very big part
Speaker 1: in creating skills. You know, the education sectors nationalized. We
Speaker 1: have something called the apprenticeship levy, which is a tax
Speaker 1: on skills and a tax on training. Most of that tax,
Speaker 1: a large part of that tax, is taken by the
Speaker 1: treasury and not respent. Other countries are saying, no, we
Speaker 1: need laboratory assystems, No we need more coders, No we
Speaker 1: we need more data scientists. We seem to be agnostic.
Speaker 1: We don't know what we need, and that's not good enough.
Speaker 1: The footprint of government is too big in the economy
Speaker 1: to say we're just hands off, that we let the
Speaker 1: market decide, because government does create and shape the future direction.
Speaker 1: A competitive economy is one where the public and private
Speaker 1: sector work together. That doesn't mean in an old fashioned
Speaker 1: sense of taxpayers money going into owning gumbery anything like that.
Speaker 1: It means we're working together on regulation, on trade, on
Speaker 1: investment in skills on how government supports entrepreneurs, how we
Speaker 1: shape the tax system. At the moment that's come slightly
Speaker 1: adrift post Brexit.
Speaker 2: The IPO market in London is basically dried up. There's
Speaker 2: an issue around pension funds about whether or not they
Speaker 2: are allowed or are willing or able to invest enough
Speaker 2: into UK businesses, and there have been various proposals. Lord lyons,
Speaker 2: for example, the City of London Lord Mayor was speaking
Speaker 2: to me about his fifty billion pound fund that he
Speaker 2: wants to try to put money into UK business I
Speaker 2: suppose what is your thought on actually trying to make
Speaker 2: UK capital markets as attractive as they possibly can be,
Speaker 2: because that's very fundamental to.
Speaker 1: Our sits there absolutely and look, companies listing in London
Speaker 1: is not the be all end of the world, but
Speaker 1: what we did have with London was a place where
Speaker 1: people wanted to list and as a result, headquarters obey
Speaker 1: it and headquarters bring with them a lot of knowledge capital,
Speaker 1: a lot of inward investment in people, and then they
Speaker 1: support the financial markets. You're headquarters in London, you're like
Speaker 1: to raise money in London so that competing has a
Speaker 1: place where companies want to list and bath themselves is
Speaker 1: a natural thing for the UK to do and to
Speaker 1: set out to do, and we slightly lost the plot.
Speaker 1: And now some of it to do with Brexit, I mean,
Speaker 1: just because that creates an aposteric feel for people, but
Speaker 1: some of it also to with the risk a version
Speaker 1: that the amount of regulation we're imposing on UK listed companies,
Speaker 1: the amount of onerous reporting requirements. None of the things
Speaker 1: all well intended. It's just you know, the marketers as
Speaker 1: Saniel report is now two hundred and sixty pages long
Speaker 1: and next to it will be free on the pages long,
Speaker 1: and unfortunately an awful lot of that is not actually
Speaker 1: read by investors. So we just got to think about
Speaker 1: these things. Know that governance. The more and more governance
Speaker 1: we require, the more regulation we apply on people all
Speaker 1: well intended. It may be that other countries are not
Speaker 1: doing that. Then you'll lose listings. We've got to think
Speaker 1: about that. You mentioned that I think the pensions industry
Speaker 1: is all national tragedy. We have this huge sway of
Speaker 1: the funds that over the last twenty years we spent
Speaker 1: d risking by regulation. Pension tystees have no incentive to
Speaker 1: get a great return for their investors.
Speaker 2: Is anyone in government listening or are we already in
Speaker 2: transition of power mode? I mean these issues around pension
Speaker 2: funds and around creating growth, is there really a government
Speaker 2: listening or no.
Speaker 1: Look, I think what's happened here is that Rishi Sona
Speaker 1: has arrived in a semi crisis, both the convulsion of
Speaker 1: in the economy and financial markets of the Liz Trust era.
Speaker 1: So their focus has been let's create some stability and
Speaker 1: let some fix some real here and now problems. His
Speaker 1: five objectives, which I think I can roughly remember anyway,
Speaker 1: I think that was fine at the beginning, but it's
Speaker 1: not fine for the future. And my advice to this
Speaker 1: government is, if you want to be reelected, you've got
Speaker 1: to be the future, not the past. To coin a phrase,
Speaker 1: you can't be the fag end of thirteen years of
Speaker 1: conservative rule. And Rishi Sunak is a very different prime
Speaker 1: minister with a very good grasp of detail, a propensity
Speaker 1: to analyze and understand things in debt, is very receptive
Speaker 1: to these ideas. But there's come a point where you
Speaker 1: have to set out why you're a real break with
Speaker 1: the past and competition for labor, and I think that
Speaker 1: point is near