Did you mean esa?
Alexander Stafford: To ask the Secretary of State for International Trade, what assessment she has made of the importance of environmental, social and governance (ESG) standards to (a) international and (b) UK free trade.
Richard Fuller: ...the world. The Bill is proposing to add a flow of approximately $1 billion a year, or 1 in 30,000 of the assets that are already there. In terms of where moneys are flowing, this year’s flow of ESG in the private sector is about $130 billion to $140 billion. If we were to make the environment the core mission, we would essentially be tossing £800 million on top of an enormous pile of...
Lord Patten: ..., and we value the co-operation there has been in these voluntary schemes. However, I wonder whether more can be done to involve active consideration of dormant assets, using the framework of ESG—environmental, social and governance practices of all sorts—in the financial services world and its institutions. In other words, consideration of what we will do about dormant assets this...
Alexander Stafford: ...in environmental, social and governance, as I chair the all-party parliamentary group on the matter. How will her Department ensure that the Government’s sixth carbon budget is delivered with ESG at its heart, and what are the plans for engagement with Government Departments and corporations to ensure that all targets set out in the carbon budget are viewed through an ESG lens?
James Duddridge: ...development impact using an internationally recognised methodology. In addition to this, through its Code of Responsible Investing, CDC applies rigorous environmental, social and governance (ESG) standards to each investment. As part of its commitment to Helios Investors IV, CDC has in place legal agreements to ensure that the fund cannot invest in a range of fossil fuel activities,...
Baroness Altmann: ...has been so powerful. I congratulate the new chief executive of the FCA, Nikhil Rathi, on the latest announcement that he is recruiting a senior role focused specifically on environmental and other ESG matters, so I suspect that this amendment may no longer be required.
Ivan McKee: ...sector that is based in Scotland, which already manages £590 billion of assets. Scotland is already in a strong position to pivot towards impact, ethical or environmental, social and governance—ESG—investment. Scotland-based investment funds manage 11 per cent of the UK’s responsible investing market, compared with a 7 per cent share of the conventional market, and that has formed a...
Alexander Stafford: ...up agenda, upskilling the local population and supporting our green programme. The more steps in the chain located in the UK, the more we control environmental standards, labour standards and ESG matters. A circular economy underpinned by the expansion of industries such as recycling, repair and remanufacturing could also create over half a million jobs across the UK. Most of these would...
Lord Sharpe of Epsom: ...tax that makes us globally competitive. Meanwhile, I hope that the Minister can reassure me that the Treasury is in active discussions with those “new economy” corporations that score highly on ESG metrics but are adept at blurring their tax borders, which I believe is known in the jargon as base erosion and profit shifting. “Shifting” should not be the S in their ESG. Time is...
Baroness Stedman-Scott: The Government has taken action to ensure that environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors are taken into account by institutional investors. 2018 changes to the Occupational Pension Schemes (Investment) Regulations require occupational pension schemes to have policies on financially material ESG factors and on stewardship of their investments. Trustees are also required to report...
Baroness Sheehan: ...dated 2021 must acknowledge somewhere within its makeup that we recognise the importance of our actions today for the generations that will follow us. Environmental, social and governance—ESG— considerations must be pervasive through all Bills, especially the one that underpins our economic and financial well-being and stability and which will define the big future investment...
Guy Opperman: ...years the DWP has taken action to ensure that sustainable investment by pension funds is both possible and encouraged. This has been in several different ways. In 2018 we brought forward the ESG Regulations. These require trustees of schemes with 100 or more members to publish a policy on environmental considerations including climate change, and defined contribution schemes are required...
Pat McFadden: ...the record—we have had three or four of them. The Government do not want anything added to the Bill on environmental sustainability or anything like that. I have also said several times that the ESG agenda is really important for the UK, and the Government have said, at least in rhetorical terms, that they believe the same thing, so exactly how would it be advanced if not in the ways...
Pat McFadden: At this stage in our proceedings we begin to recognise the debates that we are having, because we have had them more than once. I find the Minister’s answers on the subject of ESG slightly circular. He says—and I believe him—that he has great sympathy with the intent, but now is not the time or this is not the quite the way to do it, and so on. The reason I find that unconvincing is...
Therese Coffey: ...the UK is the first major economy to put climate risk and disclosure into statute for pension schemes, leading the way on this issue, having already legislated for net zero by 2050 and introduced ESG—environment, social and governance—legislation through 2018 amendments to the occupational pension schemes investment regulations. I genuinely look forward to when we manage to complete...
John Glen: ..., including Catherine Howarth, whose responsible investment charity ShareAction has done some significant work on stewardship and how we can get better transparency across the whole of the ESG agenda. Indeed, I believe that our report on that will be produced imminently. There is no doubt that the regulators are committed to the highest levels of equality, transparency and corporate...
Abena Oppong-Asare: ...would help the Prime Minister achieve his ambitious 10-point plan—it is certainly ambitious—for the green industrial revolution. It is important to know that there is a drive towards greater ESG integration across the financial sector, which investors are pushing for as well. This is an opportunity for the Bill to be shaped more robustly, and it sends a really strong message that the...
Pat McFadden: ...set out an ambitious environmental agenda for our financial services industries in his statement about 10 days ago. Do you think that the Bill is an opportunity to put regulatory weight behind the ESG agenda?
Liz Kendall: ...responsibility for the companies that they own, and fund managers should be held to account for their promises to champion responsible investing and environmental, social and governance—so-called ESG—issues. Following publication of the Levitt review, I wrote to all of Boohoo’s major shareholders to ask what action they were taking as a result of what I think is one of the worst ESG...
Jonathan Reynolds: ...they have investments in. This is not a divestment amendment, nor does it limit the choices available to fund managers. The hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Gareth Davies) said that the ESG data is patchy, and he is right, but he will appreciate that asset managers demanding better data have been a fundamentally important driver in making that better, and the E—environmental—is...
