LONDON, Jan 31 (Reuters) - Britain's Labour Party will champion the country's financial sector if it wins power at this year's election, its finance policy chief Rachel Reeves said on Wednesday.
She also told the BBC that Labour will not bring in a new cap on bankers' bonuses.
Left-leaning Labour has in the past found itself at odds with Britain's financial services industry, a large part of the country's economy which, according to the Office for National Statistics, employs more than 1.5 million people and accounts for 8% of GDP.
Reeves has spent the last two years courting the City and presenting Labour as its ally before the election expected later this year.
"The next Labour government will unashamedly champion the UK's financial services sector," she said in a statement a day before publishing the party's financial services plan, describing the industry as one of Britain's "greatest assets".
She also confirmed to the BBC she would not seek to limit bankers' bonuses, despite possible criticism of her stance from Labour's traditional trade union supporters.
"The cap on bankers' bonuses was brought in in the aftermath of the global financial crisis and that was the right thing to do to rebuild the public finances," she said. "But that has gone now and we don't have any intention of bringing that back."
The bonus cap, set at 200% of regular pay, was scrapped in 2022 by Kwasi Kwarteng, who was finance minister under the short-lived Conservative government of then Prime Minister Liz Truss.
Labour said its proposals for the City were aimed at improving competitiveness and streamlining regulations which it believed would help drive investment.
Britain's financial watchdog would work with industry to identify outdated rules under Labour's proposals, which are also aimed at making Britain a hub for green finance and a global standard setter for the use of AI in financial services. (Reporting by Sarah Young, editing by Elizabeth Piper)
