Leading British actors including Mark Rylance, Olivia Colman, and Benedict Cumberbatch have called on the chancellor to increase investment in clean energy by reforming pensions.
Members of the performing arts union Equity have written an open letter to Rachel Reeves before her Mansion House speech on Thursday asking her to make “smart, strategic reforms” that could unlock £1.2tn from the pensions sector for growing clean energy and infrastructure in the UK.
Other notable signatories include Stephen Fry, Jodie Whittaker, Paapa Essiedu, Alex Lawther, Freddie Fox, Ritu Arya, Will Attenborough, Leila Mimmack and Tom Burke.
The letter celebrates Equity moving its £130m pension scheme to a fund with extensive fossil fuel exclusions.
“This progress isn’t just good for our planets and our pockets – it’s hugely popular, too,” the signatories say. “Research, by Make My Money Matter, shows that just one in five people in the UK believe their retirement savings should invest in fossil fuel developers. By contrast, two-thirds of all British pension holders want their scheme to invest in clean energy.
“The appetite is clearly there to put our money into companies offering solutions to the climate and nature crises we face. Now we need to harness the extraordinary, untapped potential of our pensions to build a safer world.”
Reeves is expected on Thursday to propose an overhaul of the UK’s pension funds in order to unlock billions of pounds of investment.
The letter encourages the Labour government to follow through on a key manifesto pledge of requiring financial institutions to adopt science-based plans for limiting global heating. Equity says this means pension funds, banks and insurers could no longer do business with companies expanding fossil fuels.
The letter also asks the government to update fiduciary duty law, so that acting in savers’ “best interests” means taking the impacts of climate change and damage to nature into account.
Rylance said: “When we change, the whole world changes. Divesting from businesses and practices which are not harmonious with life on Earth is, I believe, an essential step for all of us to consider.”
“Pensions are a powerful driver in society. I do not want this time of enormous challenge for all life on our planet to become a story of force, dictatorship, fear and war. Let us change the story by changing ourselves as a union of artists and choosing life over profit.”
Equity’s move marks the culmination of a campaign first launched in 2017 by Attenborough and Mimmack to ensure union members’ savings were aligned to sustainability, which was backed by a number of British film and television stars including David Harewood and Maxine Peake.
Equity said an estimated £88bn of UK pension savers’ money was invested in fossil fuel companies – about £3,000 for each pension holder.
It said the union’s new default fund would not invest in companies involved in thermal coal, or those making more than 10% of their revenue from oil and gas. The process of moving artists’ money away from fossil fuels took several years because funds that exclude oil, gas and coal have in the past been considered higher risk, it added.
Attenborough and Mimmack said they were “now looking to our political leaders to back us up”.
Equity’s general secretary, Paul W Fleming, said: “Equity’s members have power because they act together as a collective. The climate crisis is a problem built by capitalism, and capitalism alone won’t fix it.”
“That’s why we need unions like Equity doing all they can to push for change, whether in negotiations with producers over Green Riders, or leveraging our members’ pension investments against fossil fuel extraction. We can push the bosses who made this crisis to play their part in the green Industrial Revolution we need.”
