How Moroccan solar power could rescue Rachel Reeves

A project that could boost the UK economy by nearly 20m is caught in a bureaucratic quagmire, writes Chris Blackhurst

- Chris Blackhurst

Another week and another slew of initiatives from Rachel Reeves. The chancellor is urging Britain's biggest financial services firms to work with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and British International Investment - the finance institution overseen by the Foreign Office - to seize more investment opportunities in emerging markets. She wants to speed up securities trades.

Reeves has held talks with investment bankers and asset managers to obtain their ideas on how to kickstart the UK economy. We're told that regulators are in her sights; what are in theirs? On it goes. All part of what has become the ministerial mantra of going "further and faster in delivering the government's plan for change". Meanwhile, inflation is climbing again, and next week we will learn how much our energy bills will rise by from April.

Still, there's the third runway at Heathrow, and Britain's own Silicon Valley (between Oxford and Cambridge) to look forward to and 300,000 new homes to be built. The fact that Heathrow abuts the M25, and that rivers crisscross the local area, making the airport's expansion a nightmare - and that previous governments also set a housebuilding target of 300,000 and failed to get anywhere close to it - seemingly does not matter.