Question to the Department for Business and Trade:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, what assessment she has made of the implications for her policies of the application by Vanguard Asset Management Ltd to be admitted to the UK Stewardship Code 2020; and whether she has had discussions with the Financial Reporting Council on this issue.

The Financial Reporting Council (FRC) sets the UK Stewardship Code and has an independent and robust process to ensure that each applicant seeking to or remain a Code signatory has sufficiently demonstrated how they have applied the Principles of the Code. As part of this, signatories must report annually on how they have followed the Code and these reports are reviewed by the FRC.

The FRC does not comment on individual applicants or signatories to the Stewardship Code.