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This Is Why

Why is the world’s gold under the streets of London?

This Is Why

Sky News

News Commentary, Daily News, News

4.0552 Ratings

🗓️ 20 February 2026

⏱️ 20 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Imagine being in a room surrounded by £64bn worth of gold.

It’s a glittering reality Sky’s economics and data editor Ed Conway experienced in one of 12 huge vaults below the Bank of England.

To be granted access to the vaults is incredibly rare, not least because the gold bars inside them has been skyrocketing in value globally.

So why is so much gold just sitting under London’s streets? Who does it belong to? Ed joins Niall to discuss what it’s like to be in the vaults below London.

Producers: Soila Apparicio, Luke Hatten, Tom Gillespie

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Sky News, the full story first.

0:10.0

Coming up, the daily takes you deep under London streets,

0:17.2

and into the vaults containing gold worth £500 billion.

0:24.6

Uber drivers, have you seen your pay go down while your fees to Uber go up?

0:29.1

All because of an algorithm that reduces your take-home pay, making you work more for less.

0:34.5

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0:39.8

Exchange has launched the Dynamic Pay claim to seek compensation for drivers who have lost income.

0:45.8

If you've driven for Uber at any time since 2020, it's time to stand together. Find out more

0:51.9

at dynamic pay.org. Add water to your will and know that from that

0:58.3

single drop, life will grow. Communities will flourish. A better world will be left. By leaving

1:08.5

a gift in your will to water aid, you'll help bring essential clean water to people who need it,

1:13.6

to change their own lives for generations to come.

1:17.6

Add WaterAid to your will. Search WaterAid Legacy to find out how.

1:22.6

Did you know that if you've ever travelled on the tube in central London,

1:30.6

you may have come within metres of more gold than you could ever imagine?

1:37.4

Hi everyone, Neil here with another of our Friday profiles,

1:41.2

and as you probably know, usually we'd be focusing on a person or an event in the

1:45.9

news. This time, it's a place that's barely heard of, let alone making headlines. So why are we

1:52.7

talking about it? Well, we are going to be following our economics editor, Ed Conway, as he makes

1:57.5

his way beneath London into the Bank of England's vaults, and what I can only describe, as a scene straight out of a Bond movie.

2:04.5

You're slightly lost for words when you get in there and just see this enormous expanse of this metal.

2:11.9

Now, usually the media just doesn't get access to places like this.

...

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