By John Wimperis, Local Democracy Reporter: A major consultation on whether a public sector pension fund in the West should continue investing in arms will begin in September.
The £6bn Avon Pension Fund administers the local government pension scheme for the former county of Avon and has 140,000 members from over 450 employers. But it has been under pressure to divest from companies involved in the arms trade after campaigners warned their pensions were being used to fund human rights abuses by Israeli forces in Palestine.
Campaigners had initially called for the fund to divest from companies specifically connected to Palestine but, after warnings that an investment strategy based on a particular conflict would be hard to defend legally, the Avon Pension Fund Committee debated divesting from all companies in the aerospace and defence sector. At the meeting in March, the committee voted 10-3 to keep the status quo — but the decision is only in principle until the scheme’s 140,000 members have been consulted on what they want to happen.
Now the fund has said that a procurement process for someone to run the consultation has been completed, and the survey will begin in September. Migration of administration systems, regulatory deadlines, the changes to investment pooling, and the summer holiday period are all understood to have factored in to the consultation not beginning until September.
In October or November, the committee will hold another public meeting where it will look at what people said and make a final decision on whether to divest from the aerospace and defence sector.
The £6bn fund has said it currently has £18m — 0.3% of its total assets — invested in aerospace and arms companies. Rather than having directly purchased shares in arms companies, the Avon Pension Fund’s investments are part of a passive equity pool, a financial product splitting money across thousands of companies, called the Brunel Fund which the pension fund chose to invest in because of its climate credentials.
The Avon Pension Fund has made major efforts to be green and the pool was chosen because it is aligned with the 2015 Paris agreement on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The Brunel fund already excludes businesses making controversial weapons such as cluster munitions and chemical weapons, or those which breach a UN principle on businesses making sure they are not complicit in human rights abuses. Lockheed Martin and RTX are already excluded from the fund’s portfolios on these grounds.
When campaigners first addressed the committee over the issue in December 2024, they were met with a “positive response.” Head of the fund Nick Dixon thanked them for their “moral compassion” and chair of the committee Paul Crossley (Southdown, Liberal Democrat) said: “From my own personal point of view, I have visited Palestine twice and have seen many of the issues that people have raised here.”
But campaigners said they then faced “a complete U-turn” from the tone and stance of that meeting. When the committee met in March, councillors warned that the companies also supplied weapons for Britain’s own defence and Ukraine’s against the Russian invasion. Papers before the meeting warned that excluding aerospace and defence companies could mean the Avon Pension Fund would have to create its own new financial product to invest in itself instead of the Brunel Fund.
Tony Mayo, a children’s social worker and Unison activist at Bath and North East Somerset Council who is a member of the Avon Pension Fund, told the meeting in March: “The money that I have earned by trying tirelessly, at grave personal cost, to keep children safe is being used to fund the weapons that kill my brothers’ and sisters’ children abroad. For every day I work, I’m unwillingly contributing to genocide and war.”
Both Bristol City Council and North Somerset Council have passed motions urging the pension fund to divest from weapons companies making weapons used by Israel in Gaza.
Bath Voice and Local Democracy Reporters
The journalists are funded by the BBC as part of its latest Charter commitment, but are employed by regional news organisations. A total of 165 reporters are allocated to news organisations in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland including Bath Voice. These organisations range from television and radio stations to online media companies and established regional newspaper groups. Local Democracy Reporters cover top-tier local authorities, second-tier local authorities and other public service organisations.
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