Rishi Sunak to meet FTSE 100 bosses at new business council

Rishi Sunak is to meet with bosses from FTSE 100 companies including AstraZeneca, Barclays and Shell to discuss how to attract more investment to the UK.

Fourteen of the country’s biggest companies are due to attend the first meeting of the prime minister’s new business council on Tuesday, according to No 10. The companies are “strategically important industries for UK growth”, the government said.

The companies represented will include pharmaceutical businesses AstraZeneca and GSK, financial firms Aviva, Barclays and NatWest Group, weapons maker BAE Systems and the grocer Sainsbury’s.

The UK is expected to just avoid a recession this year, after the Bank of England raised its forecasts in May to show 0% GDP growth for the second quarter of 2023. That represented a more positive outlook than offered earlier in the year, but the Conservative government is keen to spur economic growth ahead of an expected general election by the end of 2024.

However, the short and disastrous premiership of Liz Truss suggested that investors believe the UK has limited room for manoeuvre in trying to dash for growth.

Big businesses have been hoping to rebuild relations with the government after it stopped meetings with the scandal-hit Confederation of British Industry. The lobby group, which had been the UK’s most prominent business voice, was barred from meetings with government after allegations of sexual misconduct about managers by female employees. The CBI has said it has overhauled its culture and working practices under its new leader, Rain Newton-Smith, but it has struggled to regain its place.

As chancellor, Sunak was co-chair of the business council when Boris Johnson was prime minister. Sunak said at the time that that version of the council would help to “level up” poorer parts of the country, although that was replaced with a hope to “create good jobs right across the country”.

Johnson’s council of 28 featured some smaller businesses and startups, but every member of Sunak’s version, due to meet twice a year, will be members of the FTSE 100, barring DeepMind, the London-based artificial intelligence subsidiary of US tech company Google. Other companies represented on the council will include the software company Sage and housebuilder Taylor Wimpey.

Shell’s chief executive, Wael Sawan, said the council would “help drive prosperity and growth in the UK, specifically through the provision of secure, affordable and cleaner energy”. The oil company chief executive, who will represent the energy industry alongside SSE boss Alistair Phillips-Davies, attracted criticism from environmental campaigners earlier this month when he said it would be “dangerous and irresponsible” to cut oil and gas production, after the company abandoned plans to cut oil production each year for the rest of the decade.