Scottish National Investment Bank consultation: analysis of responses

Appendix A Campaign Responses

This appendix provides further information about the email campaign response received from Friends of the Earth Scotland.

It should be noted that:

• Friends of the Earth Scotland submitted a formal response as an organisation separately to the email campaign. This has been analysed as an organisational response within section 5, and is not considered within this section.
• All campaign responses received in the consultation were checked to identify whether they were standard or non-standard. The standard response is provided below. There were 23 non-standard responses, which were analysed as individual responses within section 5 of the report, and are not considered within this section.
• There were 1383 responses submitted through the email campaign, of which, 1360 were identical to the standard format and these 1360 submissions are considered as one response within the analysis in section 5, and further discussed within this appendix.

The standard email campaign response written by Friends of the Earth Scotland is as follows:

“To the Scottish Government,

I am writing to officially respond to the consultation on the Scottish National Investment Bank Bill.

I welcome the Scottish Government’s proposals to create a new publicly-owned ethical investment Bank.

The vision of the Scottish National Investment Bank should be to provide finance and act to catalyse public and private investment for the move to a low carbon and inclusive economy.

The Bank’s lending should realise this vision by investing in projects which demonstrate significant cuts in carbon emissions, such as offshore wind, public transport, solar and renewable heat.

The Bank’s ethical lending criteria must rule out investing in poor employers and polluting projects. The Bank’s activities should align with plans for delivering the Scottish Climate Change Act’s targets and the Scottish Government should explicitly rule out lending to fossil fuel projects.

Yours sincerely,”

Response Analysis

As the response does not follow the prescribed question format, the content within the response was attributed to the relevant question within the consultation. The questions considered appropriate were 2, 4, 5 and 6.

Question 2: Do you have views on the statement of the Vision which has been set for the Bank, in paragraph 3.2?

Answer: “The vision of the Scottish National Investment Bank should be to provide finance and act to catalyse public and private investment for the move to a low carbon and inclusive economy”

This was captured under the theme “Carbon Reduction, which can be seen in figure 3 within section 5.1.

Question 4: Do you have any views and suggestions on the example of missions, outlined in paragraph 4.7 and what are these?

Answer: “The Bank’s lending should realise this vision by investing in projects which demonstrate significant cuts in carbon emissions, such as offshore wind, public transport, solar and renewable heat.”

This was captured under the theme “Carbon Reduction”, which can be seen in figure 6 within section 5.1.

Question 5: Do you agree that the Bank should identify and implement an Investment Strategy, which is along the lines suggested?

Answer: The Bank’s activities should align with plans for delivering the Scottish Climate Change Act’s targets and the Scottish Government should explicitly rule out lending to fossil fuel projects.

This was captured under the theme “Carbon Reduction”, which can be seen in figure 8 within section 5.1.

Question 6: Are there any arrangements or requirements not already considered that would inform the Equalities Impact Assessment and strengthen and enhance the Bank’s ethical approach to investment, and what are these?

Answer: The Bank’s ethical lending criteria must rule out investing in poor employers and polluting projects.

This was captured under the theme “Ethical Investment”, which can be seen in figure 9 within section 5.1.