CONSERVATIVE
New Forest East

TREASURY – PENSION FUNDS REFUSING TO INVEST IN DEFENCE INDUSTRIES - 13 May 2025

TREASURY – PENSION FUNDS REFUSING TO INVEST IN DEFENCE INDUSTRIES - 13 May 2025

Sir Julian Lewis: At a time when we have been commemorating a significant anniversary of VE Day, does the Minister share my concern that certain large pension firms are refusing to invest in profitable defence industries on spurious ethical grounds? Is that something that his pensions investment review might care to investigate?

[The Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury (Torsten Bell): I hear the point the right hon. Gentleman raises, and we have had those debates in this Chamber in recent months. The UK Government are doing what they need to do to invest in our security and defence and to support our defence industry more generally. We have made it very clear that private investment in those sectors is the right thing to do for our national security and our national economic growth. So far today, there have been calls for mandation and calls to oppose any mandation. There are choices available within pension funds for savers. The vast majority of funds – I think it is 99% within the National Employment Savings Trust, for example – invest in the broad defaults and do invest in the likes of defence companies.]