Exclusive: Kemi Badenoch makes her pitch to the City
Kemi Badenoch has apologised to the business community for any trust lost under previous Tory governments, insisting that “the Conservative party is the natural party of business.”
The Tory leader said “I’m sorry if at any time over the last 14 years we did not seem like that,” adding that hers is now “the only party that is talking about fiscal responsibility and trying to get spending down rather than just increasing it a little bit more slowly.”
In a direct pitch to the business community, Badenoch drew on her previous City career and said “We know business, we get it, we come from a private sector background and we are the ones who are going to make sure that we deliver what they need to see. We are their champions.”
Speaking exclusively to CityAM, the leader of the opposition also took aim at state-imposed mandates in financial services, such as the government’s threat of mandating allocations in pension funds if they don’t invest enough into UK assets, saying such moves are “the Labour way” and were “yet another example of people believing it is government that creates growth, not business.”
“We need to change our business environment so you don’t have to mandate things,” Badenoch said.
“We keep creating problems and then creating legislation to try and fix the problem [but] having more and more rules and regulations is not the answer.
“When you have government trying to squeeze out growth here and there with all these mandates you end up in the wrong place. We need government to create a proper regulatory environment and then step out of the way.”
Labour is ‘killing jobs’
Badenoch said too much of the focus of the government had been on manufacturing, while areas like professional services have been ignored, adding that recent hikes to national insurance contributions were “killing jobs” because “it’s employers that pay it and they’re not hiring.”
“We need to remind ourselves that we are an 80 per cent services economy. If you listen to Labour you would think we’re just manufacturing goods and just exporting them. But the services economy is what’s really paying for quite a lot and we need to make sure we support that and financial services are absolutely critical for that.”
The remarks come ahead of Rachel Reeves’ Mansion House speech later in July, in which the chancellor will seek to reset her relationship with businesses which are still reeling from April’s tax hikes.