Shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves has said some of Labour’s reforms were shaped by issues raised at a “smoked salmon and scrambled eggs breakfast” as she told business chiefs she hoped their fingerprints could be seen all over the party’s manifesto.
Labour has sought to push its business and economic credentials since the beginning of the General Election campaign, focusing its manifesto on “growth”, limiting specific tax rises, and this week announcing that a billionaire former Tory donor would be giving Labour his vote.
But the party has clashed with its union backers and the traditional left, who criticised a weakening of Labour’s package for workers, and the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) think tank said its promised public service spending increases are “tiny, going on trivial”.
Ms Reeves was speaking at the Times CEO Summit, where industry leaders from some of Britain’s highest valued companies were gathered.
Speakers included Sir Jim Ratcliffe, the billionaire head of Ineos; Allison Kirkby, the new boss of BT; CS Venkatakrishnan, Barclays’ chief executive; and Dame Emma Walmsley, the GSK chief executive.
Ms Reeves told the summit that Labour had “campaigned as a pro-business party, and we will govern as a pro-business party”.
She said: “My mission is to make Britain the best place in the world to invest or to start and grow a business, and that’s why I hope when you read our manifesto, or see our priorities, that you see your fingerprints all over them.
“So, the reforms about planning, that’s not something that we came up with in our office, that’s something that was probably first mentioned to me at the first smoked salmon and scrambled eggs breakfast that I had three-and-a-bit years ago where that was raised as an issue, and then raised countless times.”
The shadow chancellor added: “I’m not going to be able to create wealth and prosperity from the Treasury, but you are going to be able to create that.
“What is my role is to remove as many of the barriers that are stopping you from investing as I possibly can.”
