My Lords, with the leave of the House, I will repeat the Statement given in the other place by my right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The Statement is as follows:
“Growth is the No. 1 mission of this Labour Government. To grow the economy, we need to help Great British businesses export around the world, including to China. As the second biggest economy in the world and our fourth-largest trading partner, not engaging is simply not an option. That is why I led a delegation, including the Governor of the Bank of England, the chief executive of the Financial Conduct Authority and representatives of some of Britain’s largest financial services firms, including HSBC, Standard Chartered and Schroders, at the 2025 UK-China economic and financial dialogue—the first of its kind since 2019.
This dialogue has delivered a set of tangible benefits to ensure that British firms have greater access to the Chinese market, while safeguarding our national security—the first duty of any Government. In China, I met outstanding British companies, such as Brompton, Jaguar Land Rover and AstraZeneca, that will benefit from the steps that we have agreed. We have worked to lift market access barriers across a range of goods and services, particularly in the agri-food sector. On financial services, we have successfully secured new licences and quota allocations for UK firms to improve operating access in China. We agreed to co-operate further, including by renewing our shared commitment to the UK-China Stock Connect scheme, first launched in 2019, deepening our co-operation on wealth management through a UK-China wealth connect scheme and progressing initiatives on pensions and sustainable finance, delivering significant benefits for UK firms and the City of London. I am pleased that China agreed to issue its first ever overseas sovereign green bond in London during 2025, underlining the UK’s position as a global capital for high-quality sustainable finance.
The UK is a global leader in financial services. There are significant opportunities to expand our presence in new markets. The tangible outcomes that we have delivered this week will help to deliver that. These steps are part of a wider programme to make substantive progress in improving arrangements for UK exporters and investors. This is reflected in new agreements on vaccine approvals, fertiliser, whisky labelling, legal services, automotives and accountancy, which set us on course for this dialogue to unlock £1 billion of value for the UK economy.
These outcomes, agreed with my counterpart Vice-Premier He Lifeng, represent pragmatic co-operation in action and support secure and resilient growth, because security and growth go hand in hand. This means finding the right way to build a stable and balanced relationship with China in our national interest—one that recognises the importance of co-operation in addressing the global issues that we face, competing where our interests differ, and challenging robustly where that is required. In Beijing and Shanghai, I was clear that while we must co-operate on areas of mutual interest, we will confidently challenge on areas where we disagree. I expressed our country’s real economic and trade concerns to the Chinese, including trade imbalances and economic security, and I raised concerns about Russia’s illegal war in Ukraine, human rights, and the restrictions on rights and freedoms in Hong Kong, including the case of Jimmy Lai and the completely unjustified sanctions against British parliamentarians.
A key outcome of this dialogue is that we have secured China’s commitment to improve existing channels, so that we can openly discuss sensitive issues and the ways in which they impact our economy, because if we do not engage with China, we cannot raise our real concerns. This dialogue is just one part of our engagement with trading partners right across the world. Since becoming Chancellor, I have travelled to New York, Washington, Toronto and Brussels to build our global economic relationships, while my right honourable friend the Business Secretary has travelled to the Gulf to boost trade and investment, and my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary is engaging with partners all over the world to deliver growth that benefits people across the United Kingdom.
We must continue to go further and faster in driving economic growth to make working people better off. That is why, yesterday, the Prime Minister launched our AI opportunities action plan to throw the full weight of government behind artificial intelligence in the UK, revolutionising our public services and making our economy more productive. It is why next week I will be meeting business leaders, investors and entrepreneurs at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos to make the case that the UK is one of the best places in the world to invest. In the coming weeks, I will be setting out further details of our plans to kick-start growth in the economy after 14 years of failure from the party opposite”.