Members of the Avon Pension Fund are to have their say on how the £5.8bn local authority pension scheme invests in aerospace and defence companies.
It follows months of pressure on the Local Government Pension Scheme fund to make changes to its investment policy, with members lobbying the pensions committee at several meetings since December.
The pension scheme will survey 20,000 of its members next month to ask them whether they believe Avon should continue to invest in aerospace and defence companies such as BAE Systems, General Dynamics, Boeing and Northrop Grumman.
Avon has commissioned Prevision Research to conduct the survey and subsequent analysis. It will seek to ensure that the members asked to complete the survey are representative of the fund’s 100,000 members.
The results will be published “later this year”, Avon said in a press release. The pensions committee “make its decision on investments in aerospace and defence based on the survey results along with legal and financial considerations”, the press release stated.
The pension fund currently has approximately £18m invested in defence companies, equivalent to roughly 0.3% of its portfolio. These assets are currently managed by the Brunel Pension Partnership.
A long-running divestment campaign
Several members of the Avon Pension Fund have attended pensions committee meetings in person since December last year to argue for divestment from aerospace and defence companies.
Many have cited the Israel-Gaza war as a key reason for divestment, as well as other conflicts in Ukraine, Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
In addition, some – including members of the Unison trade union at the University of the West of England, one of Avon’s employers – have argued that the environmental impact of conflicts and the defence industry should also be taken into account.
At a meeting in March this year, the committee opted not to divest from the aerospace and defence sector following a vote, but committed to surveying its members.
The Avon Pension Fund’s data indicated that enacting a divestment policy would incur costs of approximately £1.5m from setting up new mandates and making changes to existing investments.
The committee also highlighted that some companies identified by campaigners were supplying materials to help Ukraine’s defence against Russia. In addition, one of the cited companies, BAE Systems, is a major employer in Bristol, part of the pension fund’s local area.
“We remain committed to ensuring our investments address a broad range of environmental, social and human rights issues, and to engaging with our many stakeholders.”
Councillor Paul Crossley, Avon Pension Fund
Following the committee meeting in March, Councillor Paul Crossley, chair of the Avon Pension Fund committee, said: “We will focus on ensuring our existing exclusion policy, introduced in 2024 to protect human rights, continues to be robustly implemented by our fund managers, who will continue to engage aerospace and defence companies.
“We remain committed to ensuring our investments address a broad range of environmental, social and human rights issues, and to engaging with our many stakeholders.”
