Climate-related Financial Disclosures

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Tuesday 30th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, my noble friend makes another point. If these impacts are going to be beneficial, there will be an even greater reason for companies to wish to list them in their financial disclosures. As I said in response to other questions, whether we make them mandatory is obviously a matter we want to consider in due course.

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, the City recently released an excellent report, Fifteen Steps to Green Finance. One of its recommendations was that the UK should set up a green finance standards board. That would enable this country to take that sector of the finance market and call it its own, set standards globally and make sure that issues such as greenwash did not undermine that concept. Will the Government take that on? Should they not do it urgently to make sure that we corner that market globally?

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, that is something else we can consider. Quite a lot of task forces and other boards exist at the moment; the Question itself relates to the task force on climate change and financial disclosure, set up by the Bank of England, and there is our own green finance task force. There is also the consultation I referred to earlier—consultations seem to be coming out of our ears. But I will certainly look at what the noble Lord said; whether it is right to set up yet another body is another matter.