Can I thank the Member for Alyn and Deeside for bringing forward this very interesting debate today? Before I begin, I'd like to confirm that the Welsh Conservative group will be abstaining on the motion before us today.

This is not because we don't agree with the premise of the motion. It's important, if we're to meet our climate change commitments, that we continue to move away from our reliance on fossil fuels, not just to power our cars and fuel our homes, but also to support our public finances. Of course, investing pension funds into things like fossil fuel companies has been standard practice for some time. It's not just the public sector pension funds that have been used in this way, but many private sector pension funds also. So, it's about time that we start looking at different and innovative ways of investing public funds into socially and environmentally responsible initiatives.

And so, it is in this regard that I'm pleased that the local government Wales Pension Partnership announced a new decarbonisation initiative across £2.5 billion of its investments in April last year. It's also welcome that the partnership has developed a climate risk policy with an ambition to report on progress towards reducing exposure to carbon-intensive investments. Councils and local authority pension funds have also made good progress in decarbonising their investments. For example, back in 2018, Monmouthshire County Council, when it was under Conservative leadership, agreed to ask Gwent pensions fund to disinvest in fossil fuels. Deputy Llywydd, there has been a wealth of good work by councils here in Wales on this agenda, but I absolutely agree that there needs to be more done.

However—and going back to why we are abstaining from today's motion—what I would just caution is that any disinvestment may result in some unintended consequences for the values of people's hard-won pensions. The latest statistics show that over £500 million-worth of pension funding is currently locked up in such companies. And so, we need to be careful as to how this is managed and it's important that all pension trustees have the independence to do what is best for their fund, as well as to use their knowledge to ensure that any shift in funding strategy has a minimal impact on investment returns. However, in saying this, I do believe that public bodies in Wales should be encouraged to ensure that any investments made by their individual pension schemes are environmentally and socially responsible, as well as meeting the needs of their members. Diolch.