Reeves signals bonfire of regulations for the City

Chancellor hopes to spur economic growth with Mansion House speech after announcing mortgage market reforms

- DAVID MADDOX KATE DEVLIN

Rachel Reeves vowed to “take the boot of regulation off the throat of businesses” as she unveiled a bonfire of red tape to boost the economy in her keynote Mansion House speech.

The beleaguered chancellor has bet her future and her hopes of achieving elusive economic growth on a massive round of City deregulation.

It comes as Treasury sources say Ms Reeves wants to see more “risk taking” and move back to the pre-2008 model for financial services, before the banking collapse.

In his speech at last night’s event, however, the Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey stressed he could not “underestimate the challenges” involved in the global trade war triggered by US president Donald Trump’s tariffs, saying the current shift in policy was the “most sudden and fundamental in the postwar era”.

In a stark warning, he added: “Increasing tariffs creates the risk of fragmenting the world economy, and thereby reducing activity.”

Ms Reeves’s speech came just hours after she had also announced the new “Leeds reforms” to the mortgage market in a bid to open up the opportunity of buying a house to more than 30,000 first-time buyers.

The chancellor told the Yorkshire Post ahead of her speech that it was “ridiculous” so many are locked out of buying their own home and “forced to spend a fortune on rent”.

She compared the current generation with that of her parents regarding aspirations for buying a home.

She said: “A couple of generations ago, my mum and dad were primary school teachers. They own their own home in their twenties. How many primary school teachers today can get on the housing ladder? Really, really hard.”