Member

I turn to Amendment 218E from the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey. I fully agree with the importance of ensuring that biodiversity risks are properly considered in investment decision-making. Trustees already have extensive legal duties to take into account all financially material considerations, including ESG factors such as nature and biodiversity, within their investment duties. Due to the close link with climate change, nature risk is gaining increasing focus, especially for the most well-resourced and larger schemes. Some trustee boards have already identified nature as a key area of focus for either training, investment manager engagement or the trustees’ agenda; a few have gone further and started to include nature metrics in their reports. For that reason, it is clear that additional primary legislation is not necessary to permit trustees to act.