John Cooke, Chairman, TheCityUK’s Liberalisation of Trade in Services (LOTIS) Committee
Wednesday 16 March was the central day in the visit of Mr Angel Gurría, Secretary-General of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), parts of it sponsored by TheCityUK. His visit to London – part of year-long programme of events marking OECD’s fiftieth anniversary – enabled him to launch this year’s OECD Survey of the United Kingdom in London and to meet the Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Secretary of State for Business, as well as having a breakfast meeting with leaders of some of TheCityUK’s major member-businesses, speaking at a Seminar at the London School of Economics, and attending a Mansion House Reception sponsored by TheCityUK.
TheCityUK was delighted to play a prominent part in Angel Gurría’s programme, which highlighted the extent of convergent interests between the policy subject-matter at the heart of the OECD’s work and topics on TheCityUK daily agenda.
TheCityUK breakfast, hosted at the Lloyds Banking Group by Sir Win Bischoff (Chairman, TheCityUK Advisory Council) was an opportunity for wide-ranging exchanges between Angel Gurría and other guests on the range of OECD’s activities catalogued in the OECD Yearbook as it celebrated 50 years. Participants included Mark Boleat (Deputy Chairman, City of London Policy & Resources Committee), Lord Brittan (Vice Chairman, UBS), Robert Gray (HSBC, Chairman of TheCityUK Overseas Promotion Committee), Dominic Martin (HM Ambassador to OECD), Sean McGovern (Lloyd’s of London), Andrew Mitchell (Finsbury), Geoffrey Pelham-Lane (Financial Dynamics), Gabriela Ramos (Angel Gurría Chief of Staff), Tony Sims (UK Trade & Investment), Mark Tennant (JP Morgan), Andre Villeneuve (Chairman, International Regulatory Strategy Group) and Philip Warland (Fidelity).
Angel Gurría opened with an overview of OECD’s past and future direction of travel, and his ambitions for the Organisation as it entered its second half-century. He also gave a private preview of some of the OECD Survey’s general conclusions, which tended towards support for the UK government’s post-crisis measures, and a recommendation against changing course, despite the fact that the UK’s medium-term recovery was likely to be sluggish (an OECD viewpoint later underlined in the Financial Times’s comment on the Survey). Subsequent discussion brought out OECD’s distinctive character and authority as an organisation that combined an intergovernmental role with a jealously-guarded reputation for independence of thought. There was agreement that OECD’s special value lay in its ability to bring a comparative approach to bear on policies pursued by governments, not only among its members but also through outreach and peer-pressure among a widening network of associated countries and candidates for membership.
To TheCityUK’s members participating in the discussion, one of the key lessons was the relevance of the OECD to economic policymaking, and the extent to which the type of analysis offered by the OECD was of direct importance to TheCityUK and its members. This was borne out at the morning and afternoon sessions of the subsequent LSE Seminar, jointly organised by the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, LSE, and OECD. The Seminar programme covered a range of linked themes brought together under the general headings ‘OECD at 50: Better Policies for Better Lives’ and ‘Future Global Economic Challenges’. These focused on policies for macroeconomic stability, global growth, and challenges facing those developing appropriate policies for regulating financial services at a global level while maintaining open markets.
A full day of Seminar discussion (attended by the Chairman of TheCityUK’s LOTIS Committee) ranged over Growth, Skills and Jobs, the role of the OECD in policy analysis in these areas, and future global challenges. The Seminar’s morning session was devoted to presentations by Sir Howard Davies (Director, LSE), Angel Gurría and the Secretary of State for Business (Dr Vince Cable), followed by a panel moderated by Martin Wolf (Chief Economics commentator, Financial Times) with contributions from Professor Danny Quah (Professor of Economics, LSE), Pier Carlo Padoan (Deputy Secretary-General and Chief Economist, OECD), Jim O’Neill (Chairman, Goldman Sachs Asset Management International) and David Ramsden (Chief Economist, HM Treasury). All speakers offered insights on the issues inherent in promoting growth, jobs and skills worldwide at a time of uneven global recovery and fiscal constraints in many of the world’s most advanced countries, against the backdrop of a long-term move eastwards for the global economy’s centre of gravity.
The Seminar’s afternoon session was angled towards LSE’s student body and looked to the future, dealing with the forward challenges of global economic governance and OECD’s role in supporting global intergovernmental cooperation. A welcoming address by Sir Howard Davies was followed by presentations by Siddharth George (LSE Economist) on future socio-economic challenges (case-studies in South-East Asia governance) and Jonathan Coppel (Economic Adviser to Angel Gurría) on structural reform and convergent global policies to secure it. There was then a panel moderated by Maiting Zhuang (LSE) with contributions from Gabriela Ramos (Chief of Staff to Angel Gurría), Joe Grice (Chief Economist, UK Office of National Statistics), Dr John Llewellyn (Llewellyn Consulting) and Professor Keith Smith (Director of Science & Innovation, BIS). There were concluding addresses from Angel Gurría and Dominic Martin (UK Ambassador to OECD).
The day concluded with a Mansion House Reception hosted by the Lord Mayor Locum Tenens (Sir David Howard) and TheCityUK’s Chief Executive (Chris Cummings). This brought together participants who had contributed to the programme throughout the day amend enabled Angel Gurría to outline OECD’s past and future role to a wider City audience.
It will take time to digest all the messages and action points from this rich and varied programme. For TheCityUK, however, Angel Gurría’s visit was significant in adding to the range of opportunities that exist for ensuring that the voice of UK financial and professional services is heard and that our members’ views are known at the international level. The special value of OECD lies in its quality as a resource for policymakers and for all those needing accurate, evidence-based comparative data as a basis for understanding economic needs and tools for addressing them.
OECD’s work is not done in some kind of academic isolation: the organisation actively seeks and welcomes the views of outside bodies. TheCityUK has already been involved in some specialised areas of OECD work on trade policy and the evaluation of barriers to trade in financial services, where the LOTIS Committee Chairman has attended OECD Expert Groups. But the visit made clear that there would be room for TheCityUK to take a much wider interest in OECD’s work. One approach would be for TheCityUK to be more involved in the activities of OECD’s Business & Industry Advisory Committee (BIAC) which makes an input across a broad range of OECD business. But linkages with OECD are a two-way business: as well as ensuring that our thinking is known to OECD, we also need to ensure that OECD’s work – and the current OECD Survey of the UK Economy is only one example – receives the attention that it deserves from TheCityUK and its members. TheCityUK will make these tasks part of its forward programme over the coming months.
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