BRITAIN is now better placed to take advantage of the benefits of Brexit, according to the Economic Secretary to the Treasury.
Speaking after Jeremy Hunt announced the biggest loosening of City regulations in a generation, Andrew Griffiths told GB News: “This is a really ambitious set of measures. The financial services sector affects us all and we all depend on it to generate tax revenues.
"The reforms that the Chancellor announced yesterday help us to take advantage of some of our Brexit freedoms. A lot of the rules around financial services were increasingly made by Brussels. And because you have to get your 27 or 28 countries to agree, a lot of them weren't right for us in the UK.
"We have different sorts of pension arrangements, for example, we save a lot into defined benefit or private pension schemes. In Europe, they tended to do it differently. So when it came to setting those rules as to what pension schemes could do and invest, the UK got out voted.
"Now that we’re outside of the European Union, we've been able to go back and look at the rulebook again."
Andrew Griffiths
GB News
In an exclusive interview with Philip Davies and Esther McVey, he continued: “So one of the things the Chancellor has done is to ask them to have a lot more focus on growth, and growing the economy so we remain internationally competitive. So I think they're a really good set of reforms.
"For those that have been saying, you know, what are the benefits of Brexit? Point me to something? Yesterday's package and reforms are a good example. A lot of them, not all, but a lot of them, we could not have done if we were still in the European Union.”
Mr Griffiths’ comments come after Jeremy Hunt said Britain can now compete with the US and Asia's financial centres after he unveiled the biggest loosening of City regulations in a generation.
The Chancellor denied that it is reckless to be relaxing financial regulations that were put in place after the global financial crisis in 2008. Billed as the biggest shake-up since Margaret Thatcher's wave of deregulation in the 1980s, the Chancellor's proposals - published yesterday - include a relaxation of rules on what banks can do with their money; a new requirement for regulators to make London more competitive internationally; and scrapping red tape that holds back the stock market.
As he launched the reforms in Edinburgh, he told how he wanted to make sure banks "can compete with other financial centres, whether it's the United States or Asia" adding that "Scotland is in a fantastic place to do that. That's why these reforms will make a big difference".
