Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask Her Majesty's Government how much was invested by (1) the Principal Civil Service Pension Scheme, (2) the NHS Pension Scheme, (3) the Teachers’ Pension Scheme, (4) the Local Government Pension Scheme, (5) the Firefighters’ Pension Scheme, and (6) the Armed Forces Pension Scheme, into (a) Alibaba, (b) Tencent, (c) China Construction Bank, (d) China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation, and (e) China National Offshore Oil Corporation, between 2014 and 2020.

The main unfunded public service pension schemes have not invested in any of the mentioned companies.

Most Public Service Pension schemes are unfunded Defined Benefit pension schemes, with the exception of the Local Government Pension Scheme. Members’ pension benefits are set out in statute and there is no fund of assets from which pension benefits are paid. Employer and employee contributions are paid to the relevant public service pension scheme, but these contributions are not invested. Instead, the public service pension scheme uses the contributions to meet the cost of pensions in payment. Where there is a difference between pensions in payment and total contributions, the difference is made up by HMT through Annually Managed Expenditure (AME).

The Local Government Pension Scheme is a funded scheme in which all the assets are owned by the administering authorities, which are responsible for the management of their investments. The data requested is not held centrally.