Public Sector Pension Funds

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:27 pm on 15 November 2022.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 2:27, 15 November 2022

Llywydd, I congratulate Jack Sargeant on all the work that he carries out in this area. He led a very successful debate on the floor of the Senedd here back in May and he's right, of course, to draw our attention to the fact that it is the lives of our young people that will be most profoundly affected by these decisions. It was a pleasure to meet a series of students from Hawarden High School on my way into the Chamber earlier today.

In practical terms, Llywydd, the only public sector pension fund that makes investments in Wales is the local government fund. Other pension schemes—the health service pension scheme, the civil service pension scheme, and so on—don't have investments; they rely on today's workers to pay today's pensioners. The only pension fund that has investments is the local government pension scheme, and while we must encourage them to be bold and to be ambitious, and to set targets in the way that Jack Sargeant suggests, in the end it has to be their targets and their ambition because the Welsh Government has no statutory ability to impose any targets on them.

The good news, Llywydd, I think, is that there are strong signs that Welsh local government pension funds are moving in this direction and that they are doing the things that Jack Sargeant asks them to do. The Clwyd pension fund, in which he will have a particular interest, earlier this year has formed a partnership with an investment firm specifically in order to move its investments into clean energy production and clean energy production here in Wales. It has done what the Member suggests: it has set a target of net zero by 2045 and an interim target of carbon reduction of 50 per cent by 2030. The campaign would like them to go further and to go faster, and that's why campaigns are important. I'm very happy to give an undertaking that I would meet Jack Sargeant to discuss what further can be done to encourage pension funds to move in that direction.