A statement from Ashok Gupta, Founder and Director of New Capital Consensus, on the Chancellors proposed 'Leeds Reforms' and Mansion House speech on 15th July 2025:

"The steps taken to rewire the financial system to boost investment by the Chancellor are important acknowledgements of the scale of the problem with the UK investment system. New Capital Consensus warmly welcomes both the Chancellor’s determination to rewire the way UK citizens participate in UK capital markets, and the Pension Minister’s ambition to ‘replumb’ the UK pensions system.  Both recognise the importance of a systemic perspective and have the correct impulse to return the financial system to fulfilling its natural utilitarian purpose. 

However, the measures outlined in the Mansion House speech do not go far enough to address a chronic system malaise; the lack of UK growth companies is merely a symptom. 

The problem is not a shortage of investment capital in the UK but one of the key issues is that allocators' decision-making is gravitating towards passive benchmarks that primarily support large global companies instead of UK growth businesses. 

When investing against the MSCI global index, almost 25% of your money goes to buy shares in the 7 largest US technology companies (4% alone into Amazon) whereas only 3.8% goes to buy shares in the whole of the UK. 

The Leeds Reforms and Mansion House accords need to go further to address the lack of incentives in order to shift entrenched industry behaviours - through tax measures designed to encourage the pensions industry to support the UK economy. 

They also need to address the freedom of superfunds to invest outside of the Solvency UK straitjacket and change how the industry manages liquidity and risk so that the regulatory system can support the economy’s needs, not permit the regulators to dictate economic outcomes.

The Chancellor's first shot at fixing the system is in the right direction, but the ball has barely landed on the fairway. It needs to swing harder and with greater purpose with its next shot, or it’s game over. The future of the UK economy and Labour’s re-election hopes depend on getting this right."