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Ministers are plotting a shake-up of Britain’s drive to attract inward investment days before a summit they will claim demonstrates the country is “open for business”.
Sky News has learnt that officials are drawing up plans to merge the Office for Investment – a joint venture between the Department for Business and Trade and Number 10 – with other units of Whitehall to establish a more powerful cross-government investment agency.
The proposals are expected to lead to an announcement at around the time of the International Investment Summit, which takes place in London a week on Monday.
It was unclear whether a new body would be formally created using the Office for Investment as its nucleus, although one official said the blueprint under recent discussion resembled an agency that could be called “InvestUK”.
The beefed-up agency will be designed to counter long-standing criticisms of Britain’s inward investment efforts, and will come just a fortnight before Rachel Reeves delivers her first budget as chancellor.
Her decisions on corporate and personal taxation on 30 October will be closely watched to see if they align with the pro-enterprise, pro-investment claims that ministers plan to make at the investment summit in nine days’ time.
This weekend, Sky News can reveal that three of Britain’s biggest high street banks – Barclays, HSBC and Lloyds Banking Group – have agreed to pay £175,000 each to be principal sponsors of the gathering, which will be attended by more than 150 business leaders and financiers from around the world.
The other major sponsors are to be M&G Investments, the FTSE-100 fund management group, Octopus Energy and TSL Projects, which constructs data centres, according to people close to the event.
None of the banks, M&G or Octopus Energy would comment, while TSL Projects did not respond to an enquiry.
Together with Sir Keir Starmer, the prime minister, and the chancellor, Jonathan Reynolds, the business secretary, wants the 14…
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