Financial Services: Mansion House Speech

Lord Birt Excerpts

Thursday 21st November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Birt (CB)]

My Lords, I strongly support the plan to consolidate the UK’s pension funds. However, I used to chair the investor relations committee for a major UK private equity fund and dealt with many of the world’s most illustrious and successful pension funds. Their mission, which we all understand, was to achieve assured, long-term returns for their members and to do so, in part, by managing risk and investing in not one but multiple geographies and sectors. I am unaware—though there may be examples—of any constraints placed on any of those leading funds by their Governments. What justification can there be for the Government to constrain the investment strategies of the UK’s pension funds by requiring them to focus on particular geographies—most obviously, our own—and sectors?

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for his question and the expertise he brings to this conversation. This comes back to the issue of growth that the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, began with; we see these reforms as part of our wider growth strategy and want these significant consolidations and amounts of money to flow, in part, into UK infrastructure and assets to contribute towards our growth strategy. That is a key part of our investment objectives.