Environmental Programme: COP 26

Baroness Altmann Excerpts

Monday 9th March 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park]

The noble Lord is right that it does not matter where an airport or a new runway is built, in terms of carbon emissions. The Government are probably enormously relieved to know that I am not the Minister in charge of airport policy. I afforded myself a quiet cheer when the court made its ruling a few weeks ago.

[Baroness Altmann (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate the Government on introducing environmental measures in the Pension Schemes Bill. I wonder if my noble friend agrees that the potential for using pension assets to improve mitigation against climate change and measures to adapt to climate change is really important? In the context of International Women’s Day, does he agree that closing the gender pensions gap, which is more than twice as big as the gender pay gap, would be of assistance in that regard?

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park]

As I rose to answer my noble friend’s question, I was told that her second point is being considered by the Government as we speak. On her first point, she is right that investment in energy efficiency and so on lends itself absolutely to pension funds, not least because it offers the kind of long-term, low-risk, medium-return investment that is exactly what they tend to favour. I do not believe that the mechanism for deploying huge amounts of private finance of the sort that we will need if we are to solve these problems exists to channel enough money into environmental solutions, but there are enough examples of what that mechanism might look like so that, by the end of this year, we as a country will be able to demonstrate real leadership in deploying the levels of private finance that we will need.