To put questions, if any, to the designated Members on the discharge of functions of the South Yorkshire Police and Crime Panel, South Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Authority, South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority and South Yorkshire Pensions Authority, in accordance with Council Procedure Rule 11(5).
Minutes:
There were three questions:
1.
Councillor Currie: Please could you tell me who I report broken or
damaged hydrant location posts to in respect to public fire
safety? I have been emailing them to
Councillor Knight however there does not seem to be any repairs or
new location signs on lampposts.
Councillor Taylor, the Rotherham spokesperson on South Yorkshire
Fire and Rescue Authority was not present at the meeting and as
such a written response would be provided.
2.
Councillor Currie: Please could you ask the Mayor to look at the
self-regulation placed on wholesalers to only sell boxes of
N2O (Nitrous Oxide) bottles to legitimate users and
ensure the wholesalers stop selling boxes of N2O to
anyone as they are doing now?
Councillor Harper, the Rotherham spokesperson on South Yorkshire
Police and Crime Panel confirmed that he would pass on Councillor
Currie’s request to the Deputy Mayor for Policing via email
and would copy Councillor Currie in to that email.
3.
Councillor Yasseen: Do you agree that it is a fundamental
responsibility of this Council to ensure our pension investments
are not, directly or indirectly, complicit in the harm or genocide
of innocent civilians, especially children?
Councillor Sutton explained that, whilst she understood the
concerns about the use of pension investments, the ability of the
Council/Pensions Authority to influence that was severely limited
by law. In 2020, the Supreme Court in the Palestine Solidarity
Campaign case made clear that funds invested in the Pension Fund
whether by employers or scheme members should not be considered
public money, but rather funds effectively held in trust to pay
pensions. Additionally, the Supreme
Court held in its judgement on the Palestine Solidarity Campaign
case that it was not appropriate for political preferences, whether
local or national, to take precedence over what was required under
this fiduciary duty.
The power of SYPA to invest Pension
Fund assets was therefore one which had to be exercised for
investment purposes and not for other purposes. Although within clear limitations it was possible
to consider non-financial factors (generally described as
Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) issues) when making investment decisions. It
was also important to recognise that SYPA did not directly own the shares and bonds of
individual companies (or government entities). Rather, it invested
through pooled funds managed by fund managers. In most cases the
fund manager was the Border to Coast Pensions Partnership, one of 8
local government investment pools. Any companies invested in who
supplied arms would be doing so under the explicit terms of
licences from the relevant government and it would be unreasonable
(in terms of the legal principle known as Wednesbury
reasonableness) to disinvest from a company acting with specific
legal sanction. There was therefore little room to manoeuvre.
In her supplementary question, Councillor Yasseen stated that she
disagreed with the response. All Pensions Funds across the Country
have the ESG, Environmental, Social and
Governance policies and this showed that pensions funds could care
about ethics. Councillor Yasseen stated that the pension fund had
invested £2million in Israeli companies and bonds and over
£117million in arms firms. She asked if this was morally
justified. As Councillor Yasseen had exceeded the one minute limit
for asking a supplementary question, Councillor Sutton asked her to
send her the question outside of the meeting and she would provide
a response.