European Investment Bank

Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford Excerpts

Wednesday 24th July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

I think that is a question for Parliament rather than the Government.

[Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford (Con)]

I declare my interest as chair of Oxford University Innovation. At the heart of this question is the need to have more scale-up capital invested in UK innovations. Australian pensions invest more than 10 times the amount of capital than we do in private markets. The previous Chancellor was trying to unlock UK pension capitals into our UK innovations. Are the Government going to continue that work and unlock pension capitals into these innovations? How do they intend to make sure that that happens at pace?

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness for her question, and I agree with the premise behind it. We as a country need to get better at start- up and scale-up capital, and we need to increase the levels of investment in our economy. Our goal is absolutely to unlock billions of pounds of private sector investment into the infrastructure that our economy desperately needs. The noble Baroness will be aware that the Chancellor and the new Pensions Minister have launched a review to boost investment, increase pension pots and tackle waste in the pensions system. In order to boost investment in Britain, we want to see more pension schemes investing in fast-growing British firms. As she will know, just a 1% increase in the £800 billion of assets that DC schemes are set to manage by the end of this decade could raise £8 billion of investment into the UK economy. The sectors that she identifies are definitely ones that we should prioritise.