"MPs call for own pension fund to drop Chinese investments", 19 October 2021

More than 100 British MPs have called for their parliamentary pension fund to divest from Chinese firms accused of complicity in the repression of the Uighur minority and of having close links to the ruling Communist Party.

The call from cross-party MPs follows revelations from Hong Kong Watch (HKW), a pressure group, over the scale of parliamentary pension investment in Chinese banks and technology companies closely connected to the abuse of the Uighurs in Xinjiang, which parliament earlier this year unanimously voted to declare as genocide.

In a report last month HKW found that the Parliamentary Contributory Pension Fund, managed in part by BlackRock, had £2.9 million invested in Alibaba and £900,000 in Tencent…

It also found that Legal & General, which runs a pension scheme for MPs’ staff, had investments in Chinese companies sanctioned by the US government...

“The Labour Party strongly supports the two letters from parliamentarians and staff which call for the leadership at the Parliamentary Contributory Pension Fund and Legal & General respectively to urgently investigate the findings of the recent Hong Kong Watch report.”

Sam Goodman, HKW’s senior policy adviser and the co-author of the report, said: “It is a sorry state of affairs when even MPs’ pensions are being invested in Chinese companies closely affiliated with egregious rights abuses in Xinjiang and in Chinese state-run banks, with little to no regard about the national security and human rights implications.