Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what steps her Department is taking to ensure the UK is in a place to advance the green finance agenda ahead of its forthcoming G20 presidency.

The UK is already one of the world’s leading sustainable finance centres, and our focus is how to evolve and expand. The Financial Services Growth and Competitiveness Strategy set out how the government will strengthen the UK to support the domestic and global transition and drive growth across the financial services sector.

We are delivering a number of targeted initiatives, prioritising changes that will make the greatest impact – for example, making the UK Sustainability Reporting Standards available and bringing ESG ratings into the regulatory perimeter. This will boost investor protection and UK competitiveness and allow the UK’s world-leading sustainable finance sector to adapt and continue to develop the innovative products which have propelled the UK’s sustainable finance leadership.

In addition, we are focused on making the UK a global hub for transition finance. This is not only essential for meeting global net-zero goals, but also represents a major opportunity for UK economic growth and investment.

We are still in the early stages of planning for our G20 Presidency. No decisions have been made on structure or topics but we expect a strong focus on growth and resilience, including the G20’s role in addressing vulnerabilities and managing global shocks.