Survey polling pension funds’ investment in arms now live

Thousands of randomly selected people across the region are being asked to decide if a multi-million pound investment in arms companies should continue.

20,000 people who have pensions in the Avon Pension Fund are being asked to have their say on whether it should continue to invest £18m in the defence and aerospace sector after a campaign by some fund members.

The £6b scheme administers the Local Government Pension Scheme and has about 100,000 unique members who have worked for 450 employers in areas such as local government, education, and charity work across the former county of Avon.

Members of Palestine Solidarity Campaign Bristol campaigned outside City Hall on September 3, to raise awareness before the survey’s launch

Now the scheme is aiming to survey a statistically representative sample of its members about its defence investments.

Anyone who may have a pension in the fund is being urged to check their emails and spam folders for whether they are one of 20,000 randomly selected members of the fund being asked to respond to the survey. Emails are being sent out between September 1–16 and the survey is open until September 22.

Pro-Palestine protestors first urged the Avon Pension Fund in December 2024 to divest from companies producing weapons being used by Israel in Gaza and companies profiting from illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

But, after warnings that an investment strategy based on a particular conflict would be hard to defend legally, the committee resolved in March to consult its members on ending all investments in the aerospace and defence sector.

Addressing the meeting in March, children’s social worker Toni Mayo — who is among the 100,000 people whose pensions are part of the fund — said: “The money that I have earned by trying tirelessly, at grave personal cost, to keep children safe is being used to fund the weapons that kill my brothers’ and sisters’ children abroad. For every day I work, I’m unwillingly contributing to genocide and war.”

Bristol City Council and North Somerset Council — staff at both of which are members of the fund — have passed motions urging the pension fund to divest from weapons companies making weapons used by Israel in Gaza. The £6b fund has said it currently has £18m — 0.3% of its total assets — invested in aerospace and arms companies. Rather than having directly purchased shares in arms companies, the Avon Pension Fund’s investments are part of a passive equity pool, a financial product splitting money across thousands of companies, called the Brunel Fund.

The Avon Pension Fund has made major efforts to be green and invested in the Brunel Fund because it is aligned with the 2015 Paris agreement on reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

It already excludes businesses making controversial weapons such as cluster munitions and chemical weapons, or those which breach a UN principle on businesses making sure they are not complicit in human rights abuses. Lockheed Martin and RTX are already excluded from the fund’s portfolios on these grounds.

The survey is set to cost the fund about £25,000 to undertake. Only people selected to receive the email can respond to the survey, and pension fund staff and committee and board members are excluded.

The Avon Pension Fund is surveying 20,000 randomly selected members about the proposal because, even if there is only a 5% response rate,  1,000 completed surveys is expected to produce a “statistically robust sample.” More than 1,000 responses is not expected to increase statistical confidence, but surveying all 100,000 members would have required also sending letters by post and have cost about £75,000.

The Avon Pension Fund said: “To ensure the research is conducted to the highest standards, the fund has commissioned an independent agency, Prevision Research, to design the survey, analyse the data, and present findings. Prevision has deep expertise assessing challenging public policy issues and belongs to the Market Research Society, ensuring that all research is anonymous and confidential.

“Prevision will ensure that responses are representative of the total fund membership by age and gender, in particular ensuring that smaller groups (at each end of the age range) are fairly represented. Survey findings will be weighted to ensure that members responding have the same demographic profile as the actual membership.”

The results of the survey will be published later this year when the Avon Pension Fund Committee makes its decision about the defence and aerospace investments, taking the survey and legal and financial considerations into account. Emails are being sent out in waves.

The fund said: “We thank all our members who’ve already taken the time to complete the survey.”

All photos: Karen Johnson

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