Issue - meetings

a)    A Member question and response is attached. 

b)    Public questions and responses to follow.

c)    No petitions were received.

There were no petitions.

There was one Member question.  This and the response were published with the agenda. As a supplementary Steve Williams asked:

a)    in relation to the response to the first part of the question, I would like to ask professional officers whether they were aware of the advice provided to the Derbyshire and Cheshire funds criticised in the report by Professor Steve Keen. Both the LGPS Senior Officer and the Independent Adviser responded that they were unaware of the advice. In response to a requested for this to be a future agenda item the Chairman stated that he would look into the matter and consider whether appropriate to have this on a future agenda.

b)    in relation to the second part of my question, do officers still consider, particularly in the light of COP 28, reference to the beginning of the end for fossil fuels, that there is a trade-off between the fiduciary duty and divestment from fossil fuels? I am suggesting that the approach to date has been that on the one hand, there is the fiduciary duty of the committee and on the other hand, the committee’s desire to do something about carbon reduction and climate change, and that the two are diametrically opposed. My suggestion was that the two are now synchronised because fossil fuel assets will easily become stranded assets and so our fiduciary duty requires us requires us to divest from fossil fuels.

The LGPS Senior Officer agreed in that there was no contradiction between fiduciary duty and good stewardship of assets from the point of view of climate, and also other characterisations of ESG. Hence the committee had agreed on that approach to its responsible investment policy.

There were six public questions submitted.  These and the responses were published as a supplement to the agenda.

There were six supplementary questions:

1.    Kevin Clarke asked if the two banks referred to in the response could be identified and whether there had been any engagement with either of those two companies, and what had been the result so far? 

The Chairman responded that there were some specific examples of engagement in a later item on the agenda.

2.    Jenifer Condit asked on behalf of Lindsey Coeur-Belle: the 18th edition of the Global Risk Report, published in January 2023, states that climate and environmental risks are the core focus of global risk perceptions over the next decade and are the risks for which we are seeming to be least prepared.  Border to Coast acknowledged the fact that six out of ten short term global risks are climate and environmentally related issues. As a result of this growing urgency, will the committee commit to fossil fuel divestment by 2025? 

The Chairman responded that the responsible investment policy would be reviewed in June 2024. Things were changing and it was expected investment managers to take all these factors into account and for them to both engage and consider whether fossil fuels and particular companies are the  ...  view the full minutes text for item 73