Rachel Reeves’s pension ‘megafund’ plans could hinder BDS, campaigners warn
Calls for councils to divest from Israel’s war on Gaza and climate change could be ignored if power is taken away from councillors
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Rachel Reeves’s plans to merge English councils’ retirement pots into eight “megafunds” could have disastrous consequences for efforts to stop Britain bankrolling war and climate change, campaigners have warned.
It comes after the Labour chancellor announced plans under a new pension schemes bill to unlock an estimated £80bn for investment by consolidating the UK’s 86 local government pension schemes — expected to be worth about £500bn by 2030 — into much larger funds that are similar to large Canadian and Australian public sector workers’ pension schemes.
Local government pensions have long been key targets for divestment campaigns because of the hefty investment power wielded by the relatively small number of people on councils’ pension committees. In 2016, after public pressure from local groups, Waltham Forest became the first council in the UK to commit to fully divesting from fossil fuels.
As a response to Israel’s onslaught in Gaza, organisers and campaigners around the country, including in Leeds and Hackney, have been calling on their local councils to divest from arms manufacturers and companies that they say are complicit in Israel’s bombing of Gaza through the supply of weapons components.
According to the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC), 52 of the 86 local government pension scheme funds have £1.1bn worth of investments between them in companies linked to the supply of weapons or systems to Israel. Among them are some of the world’s largest arms manufacturers including Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Elbit Systems — Israel’s largest arms firm.
Campaigners who spoke to Hyphen fear Reeves’s reforms will be “harmful”, essentially removing the ability for people to have a say in how local government staff pension fund money is invested. The chancellor’s announcement vowed that investments would be “run by professional fund managers”, “meet rigorous standards to ensure they deliver for savers, such as needing to be authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority” and include a portion of funds invested in each area’s local economy — but made no mention of ethical considerations.
Green party councillor Mothin Ali, who represents Gipton and Harehills in east Leeds, said: “Now, instead of local governments deciding on what’s best for their citizens and what’s best morally for their citizens locally, it’s going to be the national government imposing whatever ideology they support. We’ve got a government at the moment that is very pro-Israel, even with the genocide in Gaza at the moment. When we have that sort of situation, I think it’ll take away the ability of ordinary people to influence their local councils and their local pension funds.”
Public bodies that resist calls to make their investments more ethical sometimes argue that they leave it up to investment managers to choose where to put money to maximise returns, and that they are unable to withdraw from individual businesses that are packaged up into larger funds. But the pension committees that take decisions such as these are made up of elected councillors who are ultimately answerable to voters at the ballot box, and campaigners fear that centralising the funds will remove this accountability.
Asmara Kazmi, chair of the Leeds PSC, said: “What I’m worried about is twofold. Firstly … the people who are involved in the pension fund — either as fundholders or as people who are delivering them — what are the mechanisms for their accountability? How can the people who are impacted by these decisions make their voices heard? And how can those voices actually be honoured when you’re looking at larger and larger pension funds?”
The Leeds branch of PSC took part in a deputation to the local council on 13 November demanding that the West Yorkshire pension fund reconsider its investments in companies that they say are complicit in Israel’s attacks on Palestinians.
West Yorkshire Pension Fund is one of the UK’s largest pension schemes and manages pensions for councils in Leeds, Bradford, Calderdale, Kirklees and Wakefield, as well as more than 300 other public sector employers.
The deputation was met with support from a number of councillors, with 64 voting in favour of referring the issue for further investigation and consideration. A further 22 councillors voted against, and two abstained. But the PSC maintains that the support from the majority of councillors is “a significant first step”.
Emphasising that the need for accountability is particularly important when urging fund managers to invest ethically, Kazmi singled out arms manufacturers, fossil fuel companies, big banks and tech companies as firms to steer clear of. “These particular examples are very highly profitable and that is why they persist,” she told Hyphen. “However, fund managers must weigh up what the long and short-term costs and benefits are of the choices that they make.
Rob Noyes, a divestment campaigner at Platform — a network of campaigners, researchers and artists tackling the fossil fuel industry — said: “Further consolidation could be a good thing; increasing investment in much needed infrastructure while reducing fees going to the City. It could also prove a bad thing — if it heralds a reduction of democratic oversight, or if it invests poorly in the wrong infrastructure.
“The megafunds must invest in meaningful infrastructure projects that help build a future worth retiring into — wind farms and housing, not airports and pipelines.”
Ali echoed Noyes’s call for ethical investments under Reeves’s new plans. “There needs to be some kind of guarantee by the national government that investments will be ethical,” he said.
The Treasury has been contacted for comment.
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