City Corporation calls on Conservatives to enable London to support levelling up agenda

The City of London Corporation is today calling on the Conservative Party to leverage London’s role as a world-leading financial centre to contribute to the levelling up agenda, supporting growth across the UK.

The City Corporation will host a fringe event at the ongoing party conference alongside policy thinktank Onward, with a focus on London’s role in boosting economic prosperity for other parts of the UK.

The City Corporation’s Policy Chair Catherine McGuinness will be joined in the discussion [5^th October] by Stephen Barclay MP (Chief Secretary to the Treasury), Anthony Browne MP and Katherine Fletcher MP.

The financial and professional services industry is a major driver of the UK economy, and contributed a record £75.5bn in tax receipts in 2019 – 10.5 per cent of all government tax receipts. 2.3 million people work across the sector – 1 in 14 of all UK jobs – but two thirds of these jobs are outside of London, and most are high-skilled. More than 22 UK towns and cities have clusters of over than 10,000 financial professional services workers.

The importance of financial and professional services in spreading prosperity across the UK is reflected in the City Corporation’s UK Partnerships Strategy, which aims to increase inward investment into its partner cities and build awareness of how London can act as a springboard for local firms to export their products and services globally.

The City Corporation will also host a virtual roundtable in conjunction with the Centre for Policy Studies on free trade in services, which will be attended by Greg Hands MP (Minister for Trade Policy at the Department for International Trade) as well as several key organisations across the financial services industry, including Innovate Finance, Citi and JP Morgan.

Catherine McGuinness, Policy Chair at the City Corporation, said:

“London’s status as a global financial centre doesn’t just benefit the city alone, it helps to support jobs and investment across the entire UK.

“That global status has a fundamental role to play in supporting regional economic growth as we emerge from the pandemic – success for London means success for the whole of the UK.

“So we are calling on the Conservative Party to remember the hugely positive role that the City of London can play in driving forward our economic recovery, and the need to prioritise the sector in trade negotiations in order to encourage investment and support future UK-wide growth.”