Pensions guarantee

• I WRITE as chair of Camden’s pension sub-committee to correct your article (Town Hall staff fear for pension money ploughed into Sky, July 14). 

I must allay the fears you seek to engender. Staff pensions are guaranteed by law. They must and will be paid at the set rates, whatever investment returns the pension fund makes. Any shortfalls have to be paid by the council’s general funds, and would be borne by council taxpayers not current or retired workers. 

In the last year the council has contributed nearly £38million to the fund as employer’s contributions, with employees contributing nearly £12million. Payments out to scheme members have been £44million. This is a healthy current cash flow, but forecast to worsen with greater longevity, hence the need for increased returns from our investment pot, currently standing ar over £900million.

The sub-committee does not itself deal daily with the hundreds or thousands of individual stocks, shares, bonds, properties, etc. These are delegated to carefully selected investment managers (six different firms) whose performance we regularly monitor. We scrutinise both financial performance and issues of corporate governance and social responsibility. 

The sub-committee is cross-party. The meetings are open to the press and public (sadly very little attendance), and are open to trade union (and retired members’) observers.

On BSkyB, one of our “active” managers holds £300,000 (a “passive”" manager also holds about £1.5million reflecting the weight of that stock in the FTSE All-Share Index).

We have a policy on investment principles, consulted upon and reviewed and agreed from time to time. We vote our shares via Pirc, a specialist in corporate governance and social responsibility. We are an affiliate of LAPFF, a forum of local authority pension funds, which engages in dialogue with companies we hold shares in, to improve ethical and socially responsible standards (a meeting with News Corp’s representatives is imminent). 

CLLR PETER BRAYSHAW
Labour, St Pancras and Somers Town ward 

Published: 21 July, 2011