 at y moment. So, that's partly what this session is about. I am also the parliamentary candidate for labour in Gloucester, which I'm very excited about. But just to assure you and just to be clear today, or for the next hour and 15 minutes, I'm just working in my positive money capacity, which we have nonpartisan organisations. So, thank you all for coming to this event on how will labour pay for a just green transition? We've obviously many of you here for conference and there was a big labour for a Green New Deal rally yesterday and energy and enthusiasm is building that we can transition to a green sustainable economy that works for everyone, which is great. We need to think about how we shift our financial system to one that does that because it's currently fuelling climate change. British banks like Barclays and HSBC are some of the worst offenders lending over $85 billion and $57 billion respectively towards some of the most destructive fossil fuel industries since the Paris Agreement in 2015. We've also got a lot of fossil fuel companies dominating the FTSE 100 and Shell and BP have the first and third highest value companies listed. So, we're not going in the right direction on quite a few things when it comes to the city of London and climate change and we also obviously need to finance green industries, green technology and so how we're going to do that is what we're going to be talking about today. We've got a fantastic line up of speakers just to run through who we have on the panel. We have, we'll start at the far end, got Bevis Watts. Positive Money is co-hosting this event with Treados Bank and we're really happy to be doing that for the first time this year. He is the chief executive officer at Treados Bank UK and prior to this was the managing director at Treados and previously head of business banking. Prior to that he was the chief executive at Avon Wildlife Trust. We have Anlise Dodds, who's the shadow treasury minister who was elected as member for parliament of Oxford East in 2007, formerly MEP for the south east region. We have Chi Onwara, who's Labour's shadow minister for industrial strategy science and innovation. Please come in, there's lots more room and was elected in 2010 as a member of parliament for Newcastle upon Tyne Central. Before entering parliament she's head of telecoms technology at Ofcom. We are waiting but we'll be here soon is Anne Pettiford, the director of prime which is an economic think tank and research institute committed to highlighting glaring failure of mainstream economics and challenging the financial sector's role specifically. She has a forthcoming book, The Case for the Green New Deal and she has been one of the leading proponents of the green new deal and was part of the kind of original green new deal group that got set up directly after the crash 2008 and we're really pleased to be joined by Adrienne Buller, who's the co-director of Labour for a Green New Deal and she directs policy for the campaign and sorry for those that were looking forward to seeing Grace speak. She's unfortunately not able to join the panel Grace Blakely but she's on lots of other events so I'm sure you can catch her through the festival elsewhere. Another good spokesperson on why we need to transform our financial system. So I think we're going to start with Annalise if that's okay. I'm going to be a bit strict with speakers so you've got around five minutes if that's okay and I'll give you a bit of a warning. Okay thank you for dropping that bombshell on me just now but anyway I want to be fast anyhow because I'm really looking forward to hearing from the other speakers. I think this is going to be a great discussion and certainly positive money's fringe last year that I was on was one of the most interesting ones that I was able to attend so thank you very very much for holding this. Now I think we've got to start this discussion by saying that actually voluntary attempts to green banking and the finance industry have not worked and that's not to be little all of those who's been engaged with them but when I was writing this speech I was thinking about the fact this is before I knew that this gentleman was going to be sat next to me I was thinking about the fact that you know there's only one tree orders bank it's been growing which is great but as a proportion overall of retail banking sadly it's still not that that huge and if voluntary efforts have been enough then we wouldn't be in a situation like we're in currently where we still have a comparatively albeit growing share for an ethical bank like Tiodos and we have Barclays which you know as was just mentioned quite rightly by Fran invested 85 billion dollars into fossil fuel projects since 2015 and I'd like to really pay tribute to all of those who've been involved in campaigning around that. Currently only about 10% of UK banks are actually making long-term plans for managing climate risks even although 70% of them have explicitly acknowledged that climate change is a financial risk so there's an awareness there but there just isn't that action we've had the green finance strategy from the UK government but actually a lot of that still is based around voluntary actions um which are just not going far enough so we have commissioned a review into the finance sector John McDonald's set that review up and who actually was talking at the previous event that I was at so maybe she'll join us very soon Anne Pettiford she's one of the people who is sitting on that review and both looking at how we can improve the situation to further catalyze much more public investment in environmentally friendly areas but also how we can actually ensure divestment from brown areas and the brown economy um so that review is ongoing and it'd be really interesting to hear thoughts that people have about what kind of ideas we should be looking at as part of it. I think another key element of this discussion is also around shareholder and pensions activism as well and labour set out some plans around that obviously at last conference we're working with the trade union congress and others thinking well how can we really improve the situation where so often currently those of us who sat on pensions committees and who've been trustees are told by asset managers well actually we can't change anything because you're on this particular plan and if you shift away from it you won't be listening to my advice and that means that you won't be fulfilling your duties as a trustee um we need to have a change there and we're focused on ensuring that we would have that change under a labour government um I suppose just just one kind of indication of how far we are away from any acknowledgement of the need to change from government I think came when we were actually discussing this matter in the house of commons a few weeks ago when it was actually sitting I think a number of us would like to be sitting there for longer than we have been recently um but Liz Tross who's now the Secretary of State of course for trade back there she was in the treasury um and she said when I when I asked her about having much tougher measures around the environment in relation to financial services and banking and investment she said the fact is that we are going to make more progress not by supporting a bunch of anti-capitalists that glue themselves to public transport but by using market mechanisms instead helping the economy grow that is the way we improve the environment um and I think we we really see a contrast between that kind of um almost aspirational approach in this area um which is getting us literally nowhere near where we need to be and they absolutely determined attempts from labour to ensure that we yes improve reporting mechanisms around much of this but also that we do regulate where that's necessary um and where we see the gap I think another important element of this is ensuring that we create new institutions where they're needed um so actually if we look overall at where the banking sector has invested particularly since the financial crisis it's intensified since then there's a real bias towards investment in real estate um much reduced at least since the 1980s focus on investment in technology um innovation and small businesses as an overall proportion of lending we think that has to change we believe one way that we could do that is by requiring the Bank of England to be much more muscular in that regard when it interacts with the rest of the banking sector but we also think that we need to crowd in some of that money as well so we set out plans for a national investment bank um and series of regional development banks really drawing on the best of what's occurred in other countries around this if you look at the operations of the kfw in germany for example you can see how for many decades actually it's been investing in energy saving infrastructure in decent quality housing really in the the gaps that we have in our current um system for investments um we think we need to have a more strategic approach to this so um we set out plans to um create a sustainable investment board on which the chancellor and the governor of the bank of england would sit um ensuring that the bank of england is doing its bit to stop money flowing to environmentally destructive product uh projects and promoting productivity as well um across the piece so that isn't as regionally unbalanced as we see currently um and i think actually in this regard there's there's quite a bit that the the bank itself has done to improve an awareness and acknowledgement of some of the finance risks in our economy but unfortunately many of the banks and other aspects of the financial sector just haven't been listening closely enough that has got to change um so it'll be really good to hear from what everybody else has got to see around this i suppose i just wanted to end um on the fact that you know very often when i talk to um people um involved in finance not all because there are a number of really impressive innovators in this space people are really working hard to change things um but when i talk to people often they'll say well we really can't have any more regulation around any of these issues because now is the time when we've got to focus on growth but we all know what choked off growth before it was a global financial crisis that was created by a lack of regulation and we also know what will be preventing growth and threatening all of our livelihoods in the future and that is the climate crisis so unless we grasp that nettle um and i'm very pleased that my my uh sustainable coffee covers arrived just on time now that i'm finishing speaking unless we grasp that nettle um all of our futures will be in trouble so thank you very much thank you Annalise thanks Annalise we're going to pass on to Chino hi great um it's great to be here so we're many people in the audience so i'm as fans i'm the mp for Newcastle who's been to Newcastle here excellent you know um so if you've been to Newcastle and had the privilege of walking through our fine Georgian streets um you will see if you just there that we are still living off the returns from investment in the first carbon based industrial revolution which Newcastle led and you ask yourself you know why do we not see that kind of investment now in this industrial this green industrial revolution because the returns from that could be as well could be even greater not just a planet to continue to live on not only a planet to continue to live on but actually it's an economic opportunity of the sort of first order why are we not seeing that kind of investment why aren't we seeing that kind of investment in green technologies you know in part of the reason for that you know some of the things that Annalise talked about and perhaps that also Annal talk about it's it's it's it's some of the things which drive our industrial strategy and speaking as the shadow minister for industrial strategy and that's um you know it's part but it's based partially on the work of the economist another great woman economist Mariana Mazzucato who points out that um you know one of the challenges we face as progressive is that finance has stopped financing the real economy finance is financing finance it's not only the real estate what Annalise talked about but there is much more money to be gained much more easily in financing you know pay derivatives and collateral um financial instruments rather than the risks that come to investing money in a wind farm or in a manufacturing plant to manufacture new battery technologies and so labour you know a labour government would change that would change that around and we would invest in all the green technologies and decarbonisation which can deliver not only a you know a net zero economy and at the same time fantastic jobs for people because I want this I mean the key thing for me here is that you know climate change is an existential spec to all of us you know to all of us wherever we sit in the sort of the economic chain you know but if we don't have a just transition you know if we don't have climate justice then we will find ourselves in a situation where those who lose out will be voting and I would say to you that part of the Brexit vote was already a um a vote on the the deindustrialisation the way in which deindustrialisation has happened so we have to make it absolutely a critical part of of addressing you know climate justice cannot be something that's done to working people working people have to be part of moving to this new a sustainable economy and that's where that is where our um our policies are focused so we our our policies are mission based because we want to address the great challenges of our age and our first mission is to decarbonise our economy you know and to create net zero economy now the dates for that are currently at 2050 for a net zero economy 2030 for decarbonising our energy production but we think that as part of the climate emergency that has to be accelerated but so to achieve that i'm going to invest 2.25 billion in green technologies like carbon capture and storage affordable electric vehicles such as the announcement that john mcdonnell made yesterday low carbon chemical processing investing in green technologies and creating green jobs and we also need to mobilise a public and private investment so annalee's talked about our 250 billion pound national transformation fund but as part of our second mission to create an innovation nation we will be raising the proportion of our GDP that goes on r and d to three percent so from the current 1.8 percent which is like way behind most of the OECD and what that will do is be will will create a not only create greater skills for the green economy but it will it will help bringing in attract private companies to move away from investing in carbon based technologies and move into green technologies and we will we will we will through the public ownership of major infrastructures like railway and through providing public and private sectors support for commitment to decarbonisation through construction so that we will support modern methods of building into construction to decarbonise the construction sector you know every sector will be supported into moving into a a sustainable economic environment just to to finish with you know as I said as I started this is the fourth industrial revolution when we had the first industrial revolution we didn't have democracy we didn't have unions we didn't have a labour movement and those who those who suffered from the first industrial revolution were mainly significantly working people whilst the profits went to the the the the richest what we will do is a labour movement is to harness technology advances to protect our planet and also make a fairer society so to bring about global justice our climate justice on a global scale thank you very much thanks so much chi and just to say there's a few of you standing at the back I can see about five spare seats from where I am now so if you would like to come and sit down if you're sat on the floor you don't have to but there are seats so maybe you could wave if there's a seat next to you be friendly um I've introduced you already Anne um thank you for joining us she's there one of the leading proponents of the original greenie deal and bringing it back now with her forthcoming book so really excited to hear from you to speak and wave my arms around so first of all can I say that how are we going to finance the greenie deal the first thing we're going to have to do is we're going to have to transform the international financial system the globalised financial system right you may think that's hard but it's absolutely essential if we want to do something with our domestic economy if we want to invest on the scale that Annalisa is talking about now you may think it's crazy and impossible but let me tell you that I am I am quite confident that quite soon our economy is going to face three shuddering shocks right the first is is going to be the possibility of a massive climate crisis a big city on the edge of the sea somewhere someone that's very close a city that's exposed to the rising waters caused by the melting of the Arctic could go underwater now I'm not sure it won't be New York New York's had its sandy crisis and when an awful lot of New York was flooded and went underwater and for a very long time but it's more likely to be in a poor country but it'll be a big city and it'll be catastrophic and that's what wake up the world's leaders to the real crisis that we face so that could happen secondly it's not impossible that we wouldn't have a war we know from history that trade wars lead to real wars now you know I don't want to be too cheerful here this afternoon but but but let me just say that I think trade wars the trade wars that have been fought at the moment are getting pretty ugly right and we're now dominated by authoritarian leaders in the united states bolton arrow in brazil modi in india putin in russia or ban in hungary in europe fascism is coming right right to the system but the final thing is we could have another global financial crisis now last week there was a flutter in the dove quits in new yw York when the big investors couldn't get their hands on enough cash in the repo markets don't worry what they are they just couldn't get enough cash they were having to flood their assets and they couldn't get enough cash for it so the federal reserve had to pump out 75 billion dollars to help out these guys right unexpectedly now that itself is not the crisis what's an indication of is the volatility in the system it's going up and down and even more terrifying julien tet had an interesting article in financial types about this she wrote that neither the federal reserve with all the clever people who have worked there nor the investors themselves understand the cogs that are making the financial machine go around they don't understand what that nobody really understands what happened last week to cause interest rates to rise and to force the fed to churn out 75 billion so the possibility of another big financial crisis is not remote right and in those circumstances the left must finally be ready to and prepared for what has to happen next 2007 nine the whole global financial system falls down and we stand there with our mouths our mouths open saying oh what just happened right and we didn't have very much to say to the delight of the financiers right because what has happened since the crisis is they've got bigger than they were before you know so they are too big to fail and their bosses are too big to jail right so they can't believe their luck why because we didn't have anything to say about what the alternative was or what we wanted to see happen so I just think that's terribly important now the thing is that a labour government has to do three things it has to mobilise the finance which is going to be hard without control of the financial system and an an an agreement deal has to be based in my view on three principles three principles that we should be advocating and be proud of first of all that society will prioritise human needs and not human wants right we will make sure that people get roofs over their head that they get food that they get supporters that they get sustained in their lives and they get health and they get education all of the things that we need which are real human needs our wants to go shopping every day and to go on to ebay or wherever and or amazon and just you know the flick of a switch consume more to have different fashion outfits that we wear once not even for a season but for one day and then then throw away that's going to end our wants are going to have to be limited and we're going to focus on secondly a green ideal economy is going to be a labour intensive economy we're going to have to substitute carbon labour for carbon we're going to have to grow our own green beans we won't be able to fly them over from Kenya to put it crudely we're going to have to move ourselves around we're not going to be able to rely on petrol in cars to move us around we're going to have to learn to cycle to walk but also to have public transport which moves a great number of us at the same time and a green ideal economy is going to be localised not globalised we're going to be concentrating on serving the interests of your community here at home not on serving the interests of the international financial system out there in the stratosphere that's the essence of a green new deal but first of all we have to transform the financial system thank you thank you so much and um and now we're going to hear about how a sustainable bank works operates from bevis the start of that well not too much of the bank i'll stand up to uh some of the people at the back can see as well um so hello everybody my name is bevis and i i run a bank um the bank is called triados bank for those of you that aren't familiar with it i'll let you google it but to surprise to say um triados have been pioneers in sustainable finance for nearly 40 years only financing things that demonstrate positive environmental social benefit it's important i give you just a sense of size so we operate in six european countries and have a global footprint through an investment banking arm but we're primarily a retail bank that has a balance sheet of 17 billion euros and about 700 000 customers that makes us the smaller end of medium-sized banking it's quite important for what i want to tell you about why i really see the importance of retail banks changing uh in a moment you'll get an idea of that context and scale so i for 24 years worked for a range of different environmental organizations and i've been passionate about the role of money and the power it has to change society and i'd really love to see changing retail banks because they are the ones that are most closely connected to the retail economy and the ones that have the greatest potential to have widespread disparate impact on the many challenges we face particularly around decarbonisation and climate so coming back to sort of the scale of the challenge every year there is a global league table published called the clean energy pipeline and that looks at the performance of banks in financing renewable energy etc etc so in the last four years when we've provided our data to that pipeline we have topped the table in terms of the number of renewable energy deals finance worldwide so no other bank in the world finances more transactions it was 78 transactions in 2018 totaling 800 million dollars now if you're a big bank you can question that and say well you know that's my number of transactions you help a lot of cooperatives and community owned renewable energy organizations where the real scale impact will come from is from volume true so in the volume terms we still make the top 20 banks worldwide despite being a small medium sized bank so we're in at 19 and there's only one uk bank in the top 20 that's just ahead of us and that's nat west that financed 832 million us dollars worth of transactions only six transactions in 2018 so that gives you a real sort of sense of the scale of the challenge i find that quite depressing that we've only got one uk bank in the top 20 worldwide that's really engaged with that challenge so we're talking billions invested in fossil fuels 150 billion since the paris climate a green was signed by the top four banks in this country versus hundreds of millions going into renewable energy so that's the sort of scale of the challenge we have we also have to remember it's not just about carbon and climate change fossil fuels it's much broader so three just thoughts to leave with you as to things that might want to be relevant to a green new deal the first is today in new york the un principles for responsible banking are launched formally they're formally adopted by the un and there's 130 banks signing up to those we were one of the founder banks when they were launched for consultation and colleagues of mine have been key authors of of those principles um i understand three of the big four banks in this country are going to sign up to them one of the things they will require is transparency so for decades we've published a list of all of the loans that we make worldwide and i think one of the things we have is great inertia people do not know what their money does and we could really wake things up and create much greater competition if people really understood how their savings and their current accounts were being used um so that's the un principles and i'd love parliament and there's an all party parliamentary group on fair business banking who i'd love to hold banks to account on how they adopt those principles secondly tomorrow in new york um something called the platform for carbon accounting financials will be unveiled this has been something fostered by a group of financial organizations including ourselves and in may we became the first bank in the world to publish the carbon footprint of our loan book this is much more holistic than just fossil fuels this is about the carbon footprint of your housing portfolio of your agricultural portfolio et cetera et cetera and that's what we need and again we need parliament and we need banks held to account on what they're doing in that regard and the very last point um because i'm out of time is uh i would also like to see um the the role of central banks rethought if you believe in a sort of donor economics type uh concept then we need to change the role of central banks and it's great the bank of england have been front runners and uh really led the way in recognizing the climate risks that banks are exposed to but we are still sort of answering um last year's exam question in that we need to have banks that recognize um they are creating these societal systemic risks uh and we need to have mechanisms which i'll happily talk about in the q&a that um the bank of england can be meant to address that so more ideas later thank you for this that was fantastic and we're gonna um finish with agn from the green new deal hi um so one of the things that we've tried to do with labour for a green new deal is to sort of reframe uh the debate of what we think is possible when it comes to ambition for tackling climate change so i guess i'll try and keep my remarks short and sweet and along that theme of sort of reframing how we think about paying for you know avoiding climate breakdown so the first was sort of to draw on what was just said which is that um when mark Carney announced you know in the spring of this year that they bank of england will be doing a review of uh the climate risk that they have um it again failed to recognize as you said uh their role in directly creating that risk um so you know after the financial crisis the central bank uh the bank of england engaged in a massive quantitative easing scheme um which as we know in addition to sort of increasing inequality um went disproportionately to uh corporate bonds that are engaged in fossil fuel intensive and very carbon intensive parts of the economy so they are directly a player in in driving the sort of systemic risk that they then pertain to uh to have to minimise um and another kind of framing that i think we need to get over um is the idea of um reasonable costs so um when the ccc published their report um on net zero 2050 um they said that the cost of achieving this would be one to two percent of GDP um and they also said uh that this was the same cost that was predicted for achieving an 80 percent reduction in emissions by 2050 the preceding target um now rather than say you know this is phenomenal and recognizing that this means that what we expect the costs to be are constantly falling and therefore we should raise the ambition of our plans for decarbonisation they said great this falls within the same envelope of costs and that is therefore reasonable and they described it as cost effective um now to me that is just the opposite of the mindset that we should be taking um and so the focus should be rather than on you know the minute costing what we're trying to do um moving out of that space because what we're costing ultimately is is the world thank you for that um this is a big topic how do we change the finance system so that actually doesn't fuel crime it changed but actually tackles it and we've had some really good insights from all of our speakers we want to get you all involved but there's a lot of you so before I open up the floor we'd really love you just to turn to either someone you came with or someone you don't know and we're just gonna give you like two to three minutes so not very long but just to kind of reflect on what you've heard and anything you want to bring into the mix in terms of how we should think about funding a green transition you've got two minutes um okay we're gonna wrap up there because we want to hear from you and we don't have that much time um but maybe if people have concise comments or questions it would be great to see a couple of hands in the air um looking for some uh this is this one on as well so we'll go to the first hand was with grey t-shirt uh then the flurry shirt and then looking for uh woman is there any female who wants to say anything um oh yeah and then at the back so we're gonna go gray yeah we're gonna take all of them at the same time so if you can keep them nice and concise okay thank you my name is Steve from Southampton um uh council in Southampton cabinet member for Green City we have formed a Green City portfolio a year ago um so what you're talking about um I really appreciate that it's quite a macro level um so as a council we have to do things every day so we've introduced lots of measures so there's lots of things that we can do from bottom up for example we launched our own energy company last year um not for profit um 100% green renewable in the last 12 months it's equivalent to 1600 tons of carbon coming out the atmosphere and we've done that ourselves one last point um invest to save I think that's really important so we are about to commence a three-year programme to switch all the lamps in Southampton to LED which reduces the consumption by 85% it costs £3 million um it takes three years and it's a 5.6 year payback thank you um I actually have a question to the panel about the flow of finance to make sure that finance goes towards the things we need to make sure happen and it's really about how do we break the status quo of this existing banking system so the question is quite simply do you agree that the combination of micro finance and fintech is probably the way to set up a system with the right registry framework that could reset the banking system in favour of the things we need to do now great and at the back with the glasses there was a hand thank you Charlotte Morgan I'm the chair of the carbon capture and storage task force and produced the report last year so delighted to hear that you're committed to carbon capture and storage um and just really a question so um how many clusters you would see financing and going forward I know that the um that the ccc has suggested that five clusters for storage should go ahead um and that the base selectivity suggested three and I just wondered what the labour party policy was on that great thank you very three pretty specific questions around council micro finance fintech and ccs task force so we'll start with Annalise and then Chi and then um maybe Bevis sure brilliant I mean first of all it's really terrific to hear oops sorry it's terrific to hear about what what you're doing in Southampton I'd already followed some of the developments closely it's really fantastic but we do need to get to a situation where it's easier for local authorities and indeed central government as well to have longer term perspectives for investments and not to have that bundled up with consumption spending as so often it has been in the past um we're getting to a slightly better position on housing for example but we're still very far away from where we should be and actually it's very difficult for local authorities a lot of the time to borrow I mean there are some alternative kind of models for for financing that are around um but one thing that we've been working on as a shadow treasury team is saying well how can we open up that long term perspective because you are absolutely right in this area if we invest we will save um and yet we've got a situation where for example you know this is about the planning system as well but when it comes to new housing developments for example a local authority can be really ambitious and determined about putting in lots of energy efficient measures and renewables etc on that housing but if the developer just turns around and says well actually you can't have as many social homes as a result of this um and you can't get the investment from anywhere else to put it in then you're completely scuppered so we've got to change that um around microfinance and fintech I'm sure that is part of what we need to talk about and it's certainly the case you know if you look at again that balance of lending and indeed this was talked about before that you know we really have seen a shift away from the kind of relational banking as well that that would have existed in the past that could have helped to catalyze some of the smaller scale developments that we need um but I think we also do need to have additional large scale finance being put in for some of the the larger projects that need to occur and again I think that goes back to the the previous question we need to have that longer term perspective on that investment it's not sensible bundling in spending on these measures which will reduce costs and deal with the climate crisis in the future with current consumption spending it really doesn't make sense I think I'm going to leave the carbon capture and storage question to Chi. Thank you very much for that and um so I mean I I don't think my understanding is that we haven't come we haven't set out how many carbon capture and storage clusters that are optimal um but I will get if you get give me your details or send me your details I will get back to you on that specifically um um and if you have if you have concerns or if you have particular insight that you want us to share then be very happy to hear from that my colleague Alan Whitehead is the sharing minister for energy uh but I would I would say that the the importance you know of of investing in you know in carbon and carbon capture storage and other technologies which can effectively transform our carbon based energy production are something that we absolutely recognize and we've committed the funds to to and it's something but it's really you know sad that the conservative government for so many years has just refused to invest in them and so that effectively we are we are behind um I wanted to say on the city's thing that the that's absolutely I think you know one of the I didn't talk as much as I should probably would have liked to have done about regionalism and climate change because I think that cities are somewhere particularly where some of the ways that we address climate change can be tested given the right investment in regulatory conditions and so for example you know also modal shift in terms of transport and again just you know the fact that in Newcastle it costs more to go four steps four stops on a bus than it does in London to go across the entire city you know that is something which is a barrier to effective effective change in regions and cities particularly need to have both the funds as well as the powers to change that so you know devolving austerity does not help significantly in addressing climate change devolving both the funds and the powers to really make a difference should help and finally on because I'm the vice chair of the um or party parliamentary group for fintech and you know I think like fintech I was glad that you added the thing about regulation because I think fintech is you know can be can be transformative and microphones can be transformative but I think the way is driven now you know it's it's driven by the big banks really you know make putting most of the you've all got fintech subsidiaries or fintech projects or startups and it is not it is not for me fintech should be delivering on greater financial inclusion and greater investment for small businesses for startups and for a new sustainable economy but I don't see that happening significantly yet and I think that a government which knew a bit more about technology as well as wanting social progress could achieve that great and I think Bevis wanted to come in on that one as well and I just saw some of my mouth and what is fintech so can you explain that too yeah I'm not sure I can I suppose in the on your first question is micro finance part of the solution is the getting more money into economically challenged areas is definitely part of the solution and ourselves and big society capital recently announced a 40 million joint sort of investment to better capitalize the cdfi is the community development finance initiative so that's definitely part of getting to where money hasn't been getting um our fintechs that the solution um no and I'll explain why partly because the fintech is a term that captures everything it can mean sort of new digital app based bank it can mean something that I might work with or buy or partner with as a bank that it changes my customer experience and screens them for money laundering purposes so the fintech arena is huge and you saw a first generation of people claiming they would be disruptors and challenge the main banks and now you see banks buying those fintechs and plugging them into their infrastructure etc etc and and so firstly I think you've got to know what you mean down by the fintech and I think it can play a role I agree with Chi and dealing with accessibility and inclusion and so on but it won't deal with everything it's not going to deal with the fact that branches have disappeared and that there's a sort of new form of financial inclusion through that but so we need to address but um ultimately we need to change banks great thanks beavis definitely uh and just a shout out for an organisation that we work with a lot called the finance innovation lab and they really focus on how a lot of fintech has no social purpose but it could do if it had a social environmental purpose so we're going to go back to the audience whilst you're putting your hands up I'm going to bring in one question uh which might be directed to this side of the panel from some of our supporters so we we like to think of ourselves as a people powered organisation and we've got some positive money to supporters to submit questions. Lynn from Hexham says we all know now that we have climate emergency but we keep pushing for economic growth how will we actually adjust the way we behave the way we go around every day in time to halt the burning how would we sell a new measure of success that is in GDP um to the nation but also you know people we all have pensions we expect our pensions to grow I think that's a great question I'd like to take two more before I come back to the panel there's a there's a hand here and then we'll take that one over there hello yep um it seems to me stark absolutely yep they agree and the room as well absolutely stark but currently the committee for climate change is not fit for purpose labor will replace it yes in the second row Chris from Hammersmith I'd like to ask a try this manager here um about setting up an account because it seems I've known for a long time that what a good bank you are and it's a question I have money in two separate small accounts I mean is it worth me just putting a small amount and setting up a try-dos account and moving stuff across or is there an easier way to make the transition because I literally is there a way of trying of getting a bank account moved over to try-dos thanks great we've had two very specific questions so I'm going to take one more there's somebody sitting on the floor down there um and we'll have four questions in this round all comments okay first of all pardon my English because I'm I'm french but I've tried something uh I'm maybe you you uh spoke about that before because um I arrived late but my question is about free exchange and afro business and uh did you um point uh how to manage the free exchange uh the free exchange type of relationships we've got with the US or with South Latin South America um for because this is a big part of global warming of the transition we have to do is change the way we eat change the way we do that and it's all connected with the free exchange type of trade yes thank you and how do you manage to fight this free exchange kind of trade in order to finance uh um more reason reason to be sustainable sustainable um uh economic um way of thinking sorry for that's great thank you okay can we start with Anne with the growth question and maybe a bit on free trade if you want to chip in sure um I mean the growth the term growth economists use it instead of talking about the economy expanding right the problem with the term is that it has inherent in it it's very interesting it has inherent in it the idea of limitless of exponential growth and that's what it's meant to have right economists don't talk about death they don't talk about aging and death you know we if anything grows it's born it's you know it develops it grows and then it falters and dies you know economists don't want to have that happen they want exponential growth so I'm banding ban the term and I ban the term degrowth as well because it reinforces just by negating the concept you reinforce the concept for me the really important thing is levels what is the level of economic activity what is the level of employment is it too high is it too low the level of prices inflation too high or too low at the moment it's far too low secondly output are we turning out too much stuff within our ecological boundaries or have we turned out enough so when you talk about levels we're talking about what we manage in terms of the limits that we face which are mainly ecological limits so ban the term we can't have growth we can't have the concept of growth any longer we only must think about how we build an ecological budget a financial budget and an economic budget within our limited ecological budget this wonderful physicist at the tindall centre in Manchester who's given the mayor of Manchester an ecological budget and said this is as much dirty stuff that Manchester can emit what are you now going to do to bring that down and manage it to ensure that life on earth and life in Manchester continues so we have to understand we've got two two budgets and we have to live within them so I'm on the question of free trade this comes back to my point that I've made earlier and I think this person is absolutely right to say that the committee for climate change is not fit for purpose I don't want us to use the word climate change you know it's a sort of nice sounding term you know it's getting warmer we have to talk about climate breakdown but even worse we have to talk about earth systems breakdown the systems that provide life support for you and me right those insects biomass insect biomass is collapsing those bees first of all pollinate the the grains the foods that we eat secondly they clear up our mess right insects are the creatures that you know recycle and deal with put it plainly shit okay cow pets where do you think cow pets go you know do they just evaporate and drift into the sky no they're broken down by insects now what's happening is our insect population is collapsing so we're not facing here climate change we're facing climate breakdown and earth systems breakdown and part of the problem is our commitment to not just the free movement of money across the world depending where the hell it wants to go but also free trade that it should be unlimited it should go on forever and before you came in I said for example we're going to have to grow our own green beans we're going to have to localize our economy in the way in which Southampton is talking about it we're going to have to not have a globalized economy and finally on the question yeah I think that's really the important point is that we're going to have to limit all those things and live within our limits and be more sustainable in in our consumption above all and to do that we have to do something about growth thank you very much just stick up on the growth question as well and particularly the last point which is how do you sort of sell changing that mindset to people um and I think what we're learning in our sort of community organizing is that people are really ready for that change they recognize that the metrics aren't working so there's you know the famous story um the king's college London professor in Newcastle um who invited the audience to imagine a plunge in the UK's GDP and one particularly uh emotive audience member stood up and yelled that's your bloody GDP not ours and so people recognize that the metrics that we use to assess how well we are doing as a society and as an economy um are no longer fit for purpose and so I think we don't really need to worry to speak to her point about selling that to people um we need to like Ann said um reconceive of of what uh we prioritize as economic metrics so levels of employment and and well-being like they've done in New Zealand for example great and get growth in well-being I guess that's an area we do want growth um so in we have the specific questions now as something out there well treat us bank first should we go to you well I'll say I'm delighted to be asked how do I open an account with Treados honestly didn't plant the question but I will you know thank you later I can talk to you later about that if I may I just want to make a generic point off the back of it which is that there is something in this country called the current account switching service which allows people to switch within seven days it is fantastic it works very well um the issue is we only have 900,000 people a year switching and there are only six banks including us that are seeing net growth in their overall number of customers that are switching so the market has complete inertia and that's why I'd really like to see the sort of transparency that the UN principles I referenced earlier could bring about because if people really understood what their money was doing I think you would get a very different reaction but um I'm very happy to talk about your account later so and I'd like to just comment on the fair trade thing as well because we're often referred to as the organic bank we financed the soil association and 300 odd organic farms in this country I am terrified about the idea of a trade deal with the US that has lower food standards GM crops and our bank you know our borders just opened up to what that really means so I do want to say something also on the sort of free trade point because I think that the issue that you're raising effectively is that free trade is rarely free and what we actually see often is wage dumping for example you know we see sort of human rights shifting I mean Newcastle you know the phrase um that'd be like taking taking sending call to Newcastle was a problem we grew up with because Newcastle had so much coal why would you ever send to that we import coal from China and Russia in the port of time now I mean you know where you have some of the high as well as the environmental we have some of the lowest standards of um health and safety you know so so what we need to do in what you know is to look at global supply chains and say and this comes to a point I think Adrianne touched on what are the real costs here because actually what we're doing is we're accounting for some of the obvious costs you know what you know what what it's been sold at but all the other costs such as the environmental costs the costs the the costs to the the environment not only of the like growing the before whatever but also of chipping it all that needs to be properly accounted for and that and when you look at that when you when you put that as part of your trade agreements then the sustainable advantages of of having local produce and good unionized working practices here you know become much more obvious and I think you know we have to do we have to change how we how we account for things so that fracking is no longer is not seen as economically viable because it's not paying the cost the real costs which are associated with it and on you know on on sort of the GDP and the committee for climate change we there are many organized there are many measures actually I spent a really depressing evening with the Royal Society looking at what it is that we measure when we talk about GDP and why we can't include well-being in there and so I was really pleased by what the Prime Minister for New Zealand did you know there are many bodies organizations and measures which are not fit for purpose a labour government will be making a difference with and without them nice so we're going to have one more round of questions and I'm just going to have one from invisible but present supporters positive and positive anyone first this is from Julia Bournemouth she says I can currently invest in a green bond to fund investment in green technology by the German government but not a UK government green bond to fund investment in green technology by the UK government to make our public sector more sustainable and in the long run save public money what do you propose to do about that or what are your thoughts and I'll take two more there's a hand here and then we'll take this one here at the front hi David Hillman from the Robin Hood tax campaign Simon I just wanted to um uh ask you about the principles for responsible banking I know that Triadus are one of the 30 founder members but essentially the banking sector are the greatest facilitators of the climate breakdown the climate emergency because they're funding the exploration and they're funding the further drilling and digging out so they are facilitators of the carbon footprint that we have to bring down so I know there's the launch of the principles tomorrow but organisations like bank track are extremely critical about that and so I really would like to ask you know what they're saying is this does not go anywhere near far enough so I really want to find out um what your thoughts are on that and what Triadus is one of the founders could do about it okay and there's one more here with the yep so right three points that I kind of gathered from everything is well the first two is that first of all financial system needs to change the banks need to change but there's I don't think there's been enough discussion around individual responsibility in terms because at the end of the day the financial system is driven by profit profit is seeked by individuals uh individuals by stuff to produce that profit uh so at the end of the day what it kind of falls down to is how much palm oil is on that table over there how much soil are we eating you know how much all of this stuff that contributes to so much deforestation you know I completely concur of all the regulation the need for regulation the need for a better system but also I think it falls down to the fundamental question is how can labour afford a green new deal and I think a massive part of that is down to individual responsibility so for example why can't there be things like in you go to a supermarket big red letters this product is sustainable this product is not sustainable etc and um I also concur of you know growing growing your own bees like the RSPB and stuff for for example we're saying if you grow these plants in your garden this is going to help the insect population especially in rural communities so that's that's basically where I'm at it's more of an opinion than a question but um thank you I felt like I needed to be said great we um thank you so we're roughly running out of time and I know Anne has to dash off to another event because she's very popular and doing lots across the conference so if you want to pick up quickly on a public point yeah so I'm green bonds you know I quite agree with your correspondent they're your member here that's our studio said we should have more green bonds we're already working and we're advising John McDonnell as part of the working group on the fact that the Bank of England provides QE which is a form of liquidity to organisations who swap it for collateral basically an asset and we're saying that unless that collateral that bond is a a green bond and not a brown bond the Bank of England shouldn't play ball right so we can change the system we can make the sort of changes that we need by leveraging the power of the the Bank of England which is our bank by the way it's a nationalised bank the Labour government nationalised it in 1945 because it had messed up in the 1930s right so it is a public bank so what that's one of the things that we could do what was the other question if you don't have to pick up on them if you don't want to pick up on your point about individual change and individual behaviour you know the green movement has been promoting individual behaviour change for a very long time and it got us nowhere basically you know don't use plastic this don't do that it's not enough we need to provide society with a structural framework within which people can act so for example if I want to recycle I live in the middle of London I can't recycle very easily because my council doesn't provide me with the infrastructure that enables me to do that so this happens also in a broader perspective so I agree with you we have to tackle the whole question of individual wants and individual greed often and the demand for profits but we actually have to provide a structural framework in which people can behave differently and they do behave differently when you change the framework so I'm sorry I have to go thank you very much thank you so much for joining us and I'm going to pass over to Bebe's answer the second question yeah I mean I totally agree I mean the UN principles are a great foundation so the banks that sign up to those firstly need to be held to account that they follow them through but if you've got them having to publish the loans that they make they have to consult their stakeholders their customers on housing they're using their money they are the found the right foundations for change but at the minute today we're going to have 130 out of 25 000 banks globally sign up on day one so we need to hold those that do to account and we need more to sign up now that said when they sign up to all of those we also need to do more to drive change through those principles and the point I was going to make and run out of time or actually when I was talking was around the role of central banks so one of the things that I would like to see is um banks banks profits are driven by how much capital they have to hold that the money that is theirs that is at risk in the event of loan spailing etc etc so um that is then driven by a sort of formula that has things called risk weighted calculations so how much would you have to hold against that particular type of loan so to bring that to life we're a very large lender to social housing in this country it's seen as a very sort of low risk sector for banks because it's always going to be a societal need uh if a housing association have failed you could apply to sell the property on the open market etc etc so um basically you can hold 35% of the capital that you would hold against the normal just everyday business loan 35% makes it a lot more profitable for the bank it means you can drive down lower interest rates uh for those type of projects um so I would like to see the Bank of England thinking about how they apply risk weighted assets not just to the balance sheet risk of the bank but to the societal risks that that lending is creating in the longer term but ultimately does come back to those banks they're not disconnected from the environment or societal links so the EU have indicated that they're going to apply 75% 0.75 risk weightings to renewable energy which is okay but uh and I have invested interest I think it'd be great because we have a very large portfolio where renewable energy becomes instantly more profitable overnight allows us to do more investing more really for the scale of the challenge we face we need to put a higher risk weighting on brown assets and fossil fuel industries and high polluting industries so they automatically become less profitable overnight and banks move away from them very fast so that's just an example but I do think the UN principles are fantastic and they are the platform to then engineer a change in banking that we want to see and that's one example of how I think we've got to then address the central bank's role in regulation yeah thank you so much Reres um I'll move to Adrian if you want to pick up on any points no you're good okay well I'm going to be a bit cheeky and just not be a chair for a minute because positive money's done a lot of work on this as well uh I'm actually had a meeting with the Bank of England the other day and they said they're going to start looking into this as um I was alluded to it's much harder to get central banks to say they're going to have what we're calling like a brown penalising factor so you have to hold more capital if you're going to lend fossil fuels than a green supporting factor which essentially tries to allow banks to lend more um and I'm just going to plug our our report uh we did a couple of years ago on Green Bank of England which is essentially about hard wiring sustainability into the central bank we see it it's the most powerful economic institution we have and it's in public ownership as Anne talked about we can use it to help us drive the green transition so just as um we talked about risk waiting there's a lot of other tools we could be using green bonds we mentioned also just straightforward green QE where when the central bank creates money that goes directly into potentially government funded projects also credit guidance which is the idea where um the Bank of England kind of says to the banking sector where it wants to guide credit into the economy we see 80% of new lending from commercial banks uh going straight into what we call the fire sector finance insurance and real estate and that is very damaging for destabilising the economy and as Anne said we might be heading for another crash so there's a lot of work to do but there's a lot of different people doing different parts of it and the last point I just wanted to to draw on is also the importance of a diverse diverse banking sector in the UK we currently have four big banks that monopolise the market and basically are going to be the hardest to shift we talked a bit about barcos and HSBC earlier and I think what we need to replace that with is a a kind of diverse system of ownership so we can also have public banks a national investment bank but also thinking about more smaller scale banks others talked about retail banks um and how we also get them to have a purpose in terms of uh sustainable transition because it's certainly going to um need all institutions and every institutions if we're going to do it over the next few years um so I think I'll end I think we're we're going to finish two minutes early guys and I think there is some wine left because if Simon hasn't drank a little yet no okay great uh maybe a tiny bit of food I feel like this conversation has been fantastic to see not only how many people have turned up to show that we're passionate about green transition we understand big finances a barrier but also enabler of getting us to where we need to be um and we've had a really wide range of discussions from uh committee on climate change and the problems with it all the way to trade deals to the bank of England and more so hopefully you've got something out of it and you'll stay in touch with both positive money and trade us bank looks like you've already got one new customer today for us just want to thank you all for coming and thank all panellists a lot and I've obviously gone and they were great so we give ourselves a round of applause