Buckinghamshire Council has been urged to cut ties with companies accused of backing Israel, which campaigners say, are ‘complicit’ in the Gaza ‘genocide’.
Via the Buckinghamshire Pension Fund, the unitary authority has more than £20m invested in firms assisting Israel, according to the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC).
The fund is for council employees, but also covers staff at several other organisations including Milton Keynes City Council, parish councils in Buckinghamshire and academy schools in the county, as well as civilian staff at Thames Valley Police and Buckinghamshire and Milton Keynes Fire Authority.
The council pools the assets of its fund with those of nine other local authorities under the Brunel Pension Partnership and has a committee which oversees how its fund is managed and invested.
Campaigners from the High Wycombe PSC have urged the council to ‘immediately divest its pension funds from all investments in Israel’ over what a UN rights expert has said are ‘reasonable grounds’ to believe that Israel is committing a ‘genocide’ against Palestinian people in Gaza.
Among those calling for divestment are Toni Brodelle, who has been a member of the House of Lords task group on human rights in the Middle East, specialising in war crimes, especially in relation to Syria and Palestine, and who stood as the Liberal Democrat candidate for Wycombe in the July 4 general election.
She told the Bucks Free Press: “I have contacted my councillors – Tony Green, Sarfaraz Raja and Arif Hussain – asking them to push for Bucks Council to divest its pension fund from companies complicit in the atrocities taking place.
“Other councils – such as Waltham Forest – have already done so. Buckinghamshire Council has stated that it doesn’t engage with international affairs, but by investing employees’ deferred wages in companies complicit in genocide, the council itself is complicit.”
A protest over the fund’s investments is planned ahead of the 2pm meeting of the Bucks pension fund committee on September 26 at the council’s offices in Aylesbury.
Researchers for the PSC compiled an online database of the 55 local authority pension funds that, through their investments, ‘aid Israel’s breaches of international law’ according to the group.
The campaign’s breakdown for Buckinghamshire Council’s lists several investments of its pensions fund in arms firms that have supplied Israel.
These include Northrop Grumman, which supplies aircraft parts, Safran, which offers sensor equipment and Lockheed Martin, which has provided F-35 fighter jets.
Tim Butcher, the chairman of the Buckinghamshire Pension Fund Committee said the council recognised the ‘understandably strong feeling’ about ‘the terrible situation in the Middle East’.
He said the committee regularly reviews its investment decisions against social, moral, and environmental considerations as well as financial and significant international events such as what he called ‘the war between Israel and Gaza’.
In a written statement, he said: “The Buckinghamshire Pension Fund is highly regulated and must act within its legal and fiduciary duty to ensure that members of the pension fund receive the pensions which are promised.
“Investment decisions are based on an assessment of the financial consequence of a number of matters, including investment returns, due diligence, prudent financial reasons and, as stated, environmental, social and governance factors too.”
He added: “We do believe engagement is more effective in achieving positive change than immediately selling investments, potentially to investors who do not operate under the same responsible investment principles.
“Selling our investments to another investor will not necessarily take money away from the company but will reduce our ability to influence that company.”
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