Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Finance and Local Government – in the Senedd at 1:43 pm on 9 March 2022.
I'm grateful to you for raising that particular issue, and, over a period of time, I've had some very good discussions with the local government pension scheme representatives in respect of a range of issues—for example, divestment from fossil fuels, which again is a shared area of concern between Welsh Government and local government. But, specifically in relation to pensions, this is something that I wanted to investigate right from the start of the crisis, and we did have conversations with local government at the meeting that you've heard about, which took place close to the start of the crisis. At that point, local government provided reassurance that they'd done some early investigations and were looking at less than 1 per cent of their pension scheme being exposed to Russian interests, if you like. And, obviously, they are keen to do what they can to move that investment away and to repurpose it elsewhere. So, I did ask local government that question early on, but I wasn't happy to do it until I'd asked the same question of myself. So, we are awaiting some information from the Senedd's pension team as well to ensure that we have our own house in order, if you like, in respect of our pensions.
More widely in the public sector, it is only the local government pension scheme that is funded, so it uses contributions from members to invest in assets to provide future income for future pension costs. Most, if not all, of the other public bodies in Wales are part of unfunded schemes. So, the civil service pension scheme, NHS pension scheme, teachers' pension scheme and so on use current tax revenues and current members' contributions to fund those current pension costs, so they don't have investment in assets. And, again, more widely, thinking about assets, Welsh Government doesn't hold those kinds of assets overseas in the way that other Governments do, so we're clear of that kind of concern.