Agenda item

To receive any questions or petitions.

Notes:

1.  The deadline for Member’s questions is 12.00pm four working days before the meeting (6/3/2023).

2.  The deadline for public questions is seven days before the meeting (3/3/2023).

3.  The deadline for petitions was 14 days before the meeting, and no petitions have been received.

There were five questions from five members of the public.  The questions and the responses were published as a supplement to the agenda.  Supplementary questions and responses included:

1.    Jennifer Condit stated on behalf of Kevin Clarke - Kevin's question is predicated on the idea that pensioners may not entirely understand how to use your website and he notes that while there is more information on the website related to your investments and you do say that you will be publishing all of the comments about the RI consultation on the website. His concern is that Members may nonetheless not understand that it’s there, so his request is that in the next round of the newsletter that you're sending to Members, would the committee please consider including?

The LGPS Senior Officer explained that one of the key priorities of the pension funds, new strategic plan is a customer insights programme. So, there is work within the customer services team to reach out to customers, members and to the employers to find out what they want, whether they're satisfied with the communications and the engagement that the Fund is currently providing.  This was very much at the forefront in our strategic plan this year.

2.    Luciana Cole stated that she was concerned with the lack of urgency, given how urgently we needed climate action and asked if there was scope to speed up this work with the potential to escalate before the end of 2023 if engagement wasn't getting the desired results.

The Chair acknowledged the issue and reported that this was being looked at later this afternoon with Border to Coast.  The LGPS Senior Officer stated that Surrey was one of 11 partner funds and had a contributing role through the Joint Committee in the formation of Border Coast responsible investment policy.  Officers had pressed for more information on the escalation process and would continue to do so.

3.    Jennifer Condit asked on behalf of Lindsey Coeur-Belle if the committee agree with her view that without addressing climate change in a robust fashion via a fossil fuel emission that the possibility of attaining any of the other 16 UN sustainable Development Goals will be very much more difficult, if not impossible, and hence her view that dealing with number 13 climate change must have priority.

The Chair stated that the committee had debated the comparatives of merits of one versus the other but was keen that they looked at this together.

One Member stated that he was sympathetic to that question and later on in the agenda when the responsible investment strategy was to be discussed he would raise this whole question of divestment again.

4.    Jackie Macey asked whether the committee feels that now is the time for the steps set out in the engagement plan to be implemented with a speed that reflects the urgency of the climate emergency we are all facing?

The Chairman responded that this was a matter of growing importance, and this was going to be looked at, and accelerated.

5.    Jennifer Condit stated she was particularly interested in looking at holdings at Newton Investment Management. She had attempted her own estimate of what the fossil fuel holdings of the Surrey Pension fund were which she thought was about £75 million. It seems to her that based on the disclosures that only the £8 million invested in Shell via Newton was in the committee’s direct control. In other words, all the other fossil fuel holdings are in some sort of collective investment scheme. Consequently, she wondered whether reducing the fossil fuel exposure of this fund would be the goal.

The Chairman responded that he thought the figures calculated were broadly correct and the challenge for the committee was that the direction of travel was towards pooled funds, such as Border to Coast Pensions Partnership (BCPP). A government consultation coming out shortly is expected to re-emphasise the importance of local authority pooling. On top of BCPP, the Fund owns LGIM funds which are also pooled funds. The question of reducing fossil fuel exposure is quite a difficult issue that all the pools will be facing and in a pool it is more difficult for us to have a direct influence on that. We will speak with Newton but probably we are looking to move more of our funds into BCPP over time.

The Chairman responded that he thought the figures calculated were correct and the challenge for the committee was that the direction was going towards pooled farms. With Border to Coast that's the direction of government and there's a consultation coming out shortly that we expect that to be pushed even further down the road. On top of Border to Coast, we have the LGIM funds the pooled funds in that regard. It was thought that this would be quite a difficult issue that all the pools will be facing and would be much more difficult for us to have direct influence on that. We will speak with Newton but probably we are looking to move more of our funds into BCPP in the course of time.