Source · Select Committees · Treasury Committee
Recommendation 5
5
Deferred
Mitigate early privatisation risks of the National Wealth Fund by measuring its societal benefits.
Conclusion
The current Government should try and find ways to mitigate the risk of future governments privatising the NWF too early, by ensuring its societal benefits are measured and acknowledged. (Recommendation, Paragraph 32)
Government response summary AI-generated
The government strongly agrees the NWF must remain operationally independent and details its governance structure and relationship with HM Treasury, but does not commit to specific actions for measuring and acknowledging societal benefits to mitigate future privatisation risk.
Summary of the government's response below — read the verbatim text to verify.
Government Response
Deferred
HM Government · verbatim extract
Deferred
The NWF is the government’s principal investor and policy bank, with a clear mandate to catalyse investment into growth and clean energy projects. This government is committed to the NWF being a long-lasting, publicly owned institution embedded in the UK public financial institution landscape. To ensure this, the government capitalised the NWF with an additional £5.8 billion to mobilise investment for growth and clean energy—taking its total capitalisation to £27.8 billion—which it can deploy through a range of products, including equity, debt and guarantees. The NWF retains the flexibility to sell its portfolio assets where appropriate. The NWF also operates on a statutory footing through the UK Infrastructure Bank Act 2023 (UKIB Act), which means its mandate, governance and longevity rests with Parliament and not solely with the government of the day. As set out in the UKIB Act, there will be an independent review within seven years of Royal Assent to assess the effectiveness of the NWF in delivering its objectives, and its impact on climate change, regional development and economic growth. The findings of this report will be laid before Parliament. The NWF delivers societal benefits primarily through the outcomes its investments help deliver, but it must operate in a fiscally prudent manner, as set out in the Financial Transactions Control Framework. The government agrees with the Committee on the importance of demonstrating the benefits of the NWF’s work and ensuring these are understood by markets and the public. The NWF recently published its inaugural Impact Report, highlighting what its investments have delivered for people, communities and businesses, such as the number of jobs created. The NWF is stepping up efforts to communicate these benefits more widely; in Q1 to Q3 2025 it measured a near fivefold increase in coverage compared with the same period last year. The ARA sets out the expected impact of the NWF’s deals from that financial year in terms of the (i) amount of private investment mobilised, (ii) number of jobs supported or created, and (iii) relative greenhouse gas emissions expected to be created or saved (tCO2e).
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