Starmer to hail more than £50bn in investment at key summit

The government will on Monday welcome more than £50bn of investment in the British economy as Sir Keir Starmer tries to reset his administration after a first hundred days marked by scandal and infighting.

Sky News has learnt that the International Investment Summit in the City of London will comprise more than £50bn of deal announcements - or roughly twice the £28bn unveiled at the previous comparable gathering held under the former Conservative administration.

The total figure to be announced on Monday was still being finalised this weekend amid continuing negotiations with companies.

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Sources said, however, that the final amount would "certainly" be in excess of £50bn.

The summit will be attended by executives from globally important companies such as Alphabet, BlackRock, Goldman Sachs and Deepmind.

In recent days, a row emerged involving DP World, which had been planning to announce a £1bn investment in the London Gateway port.

The company threatened to cancel its attendance at the conference and review the investment in the wake of comments by the transport secretary, Louise Haigh, labelling its P&O Ferries subsidiary "a rogue operator".

After Downing Street officials intervened, the dispute appeared to have been resolved this weekend, with the investment proceeding.

Sky News can also reveal that the summit will include a behind-closed-doors session chaired by the business secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, and a number of chief executives.

The group will, according to insiders, jointly scrutinise a green paper on industrial strategy that will also be published on Monday.

One invitee said they had been "asked to mark the government's homework".

A source close to Mr Reynolds said: "When the business secretary said this government would work in partnership with business, he meant it.

"We respect the expertise of business leaders and want their voice at the heart of policymaking.

"That's why we're getting them around the table before the strategy is published, so it works for the industries it's designed to benefit."

On Friday, Sky News revealed that Sir Keir would use his speech at the investment summit to say that his administration will scrutinise watchdogs across a range of industries to ensure that they are not acting as barriers to growth.

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Sir Keir is said by officials to be determined to deliver the message that regulators such as Ofwat, Ofgem, the Prudential Regulation Authority and the Competition and Markets Authority should be focused on the competitiveness of the UK economy.

The event is being seen as a test of Labour's economic agenda in the eyes of investors which wield influence over the destination of trillions of pounds of investment funding.

His speech will come, however, against the backdrop of a financial crisis at Thames Water, Britain's biggest water utility, which is backed by sovereign wealth funds and pension funds from countries including Abu Dhabi, Canada and China.

Reports in recent weeks have suggested that global investors have become so alarmed by Ofwat's approach to the Thames Water crisis that they are reluctant to commit further sums to British infrastructure projects.

On Thursday, the government appointed Poppy Gustafsson, the former boss of cybersecurity company Darktrace, as investment minister, ensuring that the government avoided the ignominy of staging Monday's summit without a minister for investment being in place.

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Clare Barclay, who leads Microsoft's operations in the UK, has been appointed to chair a new Industrial Strategy Council.

Officials declined to comment on Sunday on the headline figures that would be announced at the summit.

(c) Sky News 2024: Starmer to hail more than £50bn in investment at key summit