Rishi Sunak has said the UK will not have a return to the close relationship with China pursued under David Cameron, as the prime minister met business leaders in an effort to drum up foreign investment.
The government on Monday said £29.5bn of new investment had been earmarked for the UK, including projects by the ScottishPower owner, Iberdrola, and BioNTech, the German company which partnered with Pfizer on its Covid vaccine.
Sunak met the heads of multinational firms including Goldman Sachs, Blackstone and JP Morgan at the summit in Hampton Court Palace, in south-west London. The business leaders were due to dine later at Buckingham Palace with King Charles.
Predictions for UK growth were slashed at last week’s autumn statement, heaping pressure on the government to show signs it is acting to breathe life into an economy hit hard by rampant inflation.
David Cameron had courted Chinese investment in the UK as prime minister until 2016 when he resigned after the EU referendum. He returned to frontline politics this month as foreign secretary, leading to questions over whether he would change UK policy towards China after recent years of increased tensions. Cameron hosted a private session with business leaders at the summit.
However, Sunak signalled that he did not intend a change in UK policy. Speaking at the summit, Sunak said: “If David Cameron were here he would say the China of today is not the China he dealt with a decade ago.”
Sunak said that China, the world’s second-largest economy, was an “indisputable fact of economic life” and there were “no solutions” to major global problems without China.
The prime minister made the comments during a panel with Steve Schwarzman, the billionaire chair and co-founder of the investment firm Blackstone. The chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, was due to host a panel including Jamie Dimon, the JP Morgan chief, and Khaldoon Al Mubarak of Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala Investment Company, also the chair of Manchester City.
Sunak said it was important for the UK to “reorient ourselves to places like the Middle East, Asia Pacific” when looking for investment. He also pitched the UK as an firm partner for allies, saying he wanted to “out-co-operate adversaries”.
But the shadow trade and business secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, said: “The past 13 years of Conservative government has been marked by a complete lack of stability, consistency and ambition which has turned potential investors away from Britain.”
The government hailed a string of investments alongside the summit: a £10bn commitment from Australia’s IFM Investors into energy and infrastructure; £7bn from Iberdrola into UK electricity transmission and £5bn from Australia’s Aware Super into energy and housing businesses.
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BioNTech, which developed the mRNA Covid jab, is to build a new laboratory in Cambridge, while Microsoft is to plough £2.5bn into AI infrastructure.
It is unclear which of the projects, if any, were a direct result of the investment summit.
The former prime minister Boris Johnson held a similar summit, at London’s Science Museum in October 2021, attended by high-profile business figures including Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. They were later hosted by the Queen at Windsor Castle.
Most of the £9.7bn in investments pledged alongside that summit – including £6bn into offshore windfarms from Iberdrola – is still “in progress”, the government has said.
