Prime Minister David Cameron opened the ‘Business Olympics’ series of meetings at Lancaster House, 26 July, and promised permanent ‘Olympic-style’ border checks at Heathrow to speed visitors into Britain in future.
“If you really tool up and put the effort into a good service at Heathrow,” he said, business people and visitors in general would receive a much better and much quicker welcome to Britain.
Two hundred chief executives quizzed the PM over the airport issue. Cameron admitted: “We have learnt something this week – we can do better? and not just during the Olympic Games”.
Mayor Johnson weighed in to the debate saying: “We all agree, we need a new airport,” amid debate that the Government is dragging its heels over aviation policy.
Cameron said the event at Lancaster House was “the biggest business summit any British Government has ever hosted”.
Downing Street is aiming to secure an extra £1bn of investment this year on top of the £13bn boost to the economy it expects from the Games over the next four years.
Lancaster House will serve as the ‘British business embassy’ during the Games and has been interior decorated with Cool Britannia ephemera inside, with a Land Rover and Aston Martin outside.
The summit will be followed by a series of meetings on art, science, energy and aerospace.
The need for the economic boost and payback was put into sharp focus following some grim figures from the Office for National Statistics Office which show the UK now in a deepening slump. The new data also could indicate, however, to future sectoral winners and losers in event spend.
Oil production and mining dipped 5.9 per cent in the second quarter over Q1, according to the ONS. Construction also fell 5.2 per cent.
Sectors showing more resilience included Services (-0.1%); retail, hotels and restaurants (-0.4%), while bucking the downward trend completely are business services and finance +0.1%; Government services +0.3% and gas and electricity were up +5.9 per cent.
The new numbers also revealed that the public sector made a positive contribution to output in the quarter, suggesting that GDP remains heavily reliant on Government spending.
Output in the UK remains 4.5 per cent below its level before the banking crash, whereas Canada, the US and Germany have more than recovered their losses.
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