Sarah Jones

I am always happy to meet and to talk about what more we can do in our next 100 days, and indeed—we hope—our next five to 10 years in government. Some Conservative Members have questioned whether some of these investments were teed up under the last Government. They know perfectly well that business confidence can rapidly change investment decisions. All the announcements included are of new, firm commitments being made by companies to invest in the UK either when final investment decisions have been taken or when announcements have been accelerated or unlocked because of actions taken and support provided by this Government. I am sure that Conservative Members will have seen the letter, published in The Times at the start of the week, from five of the world’s biggest banks, joined by private equity firms, insurers and tech giants, saying that it was “time to invest in Britain”, and that Britain’s “greater stability” had increased its attractiveness to investment, which was of course a reference to Labour’s decisions when we took office. They concluded: “We are optimistic about the future of the economy, and believe it is time to invest in Britain.” The fact that scores of investors attended our summit on Monday, with tens of billions of pounds being firmly committed to new projects, shows that under this Labour Government, business and investors have a great deal of confidence in our growth mission.