This was reported in parliament last week:
Blake Stephenson
Conservative
Mid Bedfordshire
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what individual investments have been made by the National Wealth Fund since July 2024; and how many jobs each investment is expected to support.
James Murray
Labour
Ealing North
Answered on 15 May 2025
The National Wealth Fund and its predecessor the UK Infrastructure Bank have announced 19 deals since July 2024, committing nearly £3bn, and estimate creating or supporting over 12,400 jobs. The National Wealth Fund sets out details of the investments which it makes, including estimate jobs created, on its website at https://www.nationalwealthfund.org.uk/(opens in a new tab).
The following list provides the project client, the amount committed by the National Wealth Fund and the estimated number of jobs created or supported by those commitments at the time of their announcement.
Scottish Power/Iberdrola - £600m - 57 jobs
AESC - £272m - 176 jobs
NatWest plc - £400m - 2,207 jobs
The Housing Finance Corp Ltd - £150m - 1,226 jobs
Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council - £10m - 3 jobs
Pulpex - £42m - 29 jobs
Cornish Metals - £29m - 35 jobs
Connected Kerb - £55m – 48 jobs
Denbighshire County Council - £92m - 76 jobs
Netomnia - £25m - 61 jobs
Lloyds Social Housing - £400m - 3,489 jobs
Barclays - £350m - 3,053 jobs
XLCC Ltd - £20m - 10 jobs
Fibrus - £55m - 129 jobs
Ceredigion County Council - £25m - 20 jobs
West Suffolk Council - £17m - 54 jobs
Quickline - £225m - 121 jobs
Wildanet - £35m – 171 jobs
Hyperoptic - £150m - 1,445 jobs
I have provided links to some of the organisations that have been funded. Others are glaringly obvious, but what strikes me is how absurd those chosen to be funded are.
By type, they can be summarised as follows:
- 44% goes to banks or finance organisations to supposedly fund social housing when these entities have absolutely no problem wth accessing capital in other ways. They have absolutely no requirement for funds raised in this way.
- 32% is for green energy projects, but why Scottish Power need £500 million of this when they should have easy access to capital is very hard to imagine.
- Nearly 17% of the funding is for broadband: a proven business model with very limited risk within it that should have been easy to fund elsewhere.
- 5% funds council projects that the Treasury would have provided funding for anyway under prudential lending schemes. The National Wealth Fund need not have funded these councils.
- That leaves about 2% (Pulpex and Cornish Metals) that might justify the use of this fund.
To pretend that this fund is creating wealth when so much is going to projects that could easily be funded in other ways is absurd. A National Wealth Fund should fund what might otherwise not be possible. The managers of this arrangement clearly do not share that view. I suggest they should be changed.
Thanks to David Lowry for sending this to me.
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The National Wealth Fund appears to mirror the failure of the UK financial sector to invest in true wealth creation in productive parts of the economy. This has been a problem for many years. I remember the early 1980s TV series Whatever Happened to Britain? by John ( now lord) Eatwell. The failure of proud finance to ‘get it’s hands dirty ‘ by investment in manufacturing was a main point. Something that has only got worse.
Thank you, both.
@ Richard: Was this idea ever considered anything other than a joke? Like GB Energy, for example?
Martin: “The failure of proud finance to ‘get it’s hands dirty ‘ by investment in manufacturing was a main point.” My only quibble with that statement is that few, if any, finance types that I have worked with would know how to get their hands dirty. Why would a financier know more than, say, Mike Parr or Richard, not that this prevents the likes of Sturmer, Reeves, Streeting and McFadden from thinking so.
It’s hard not to laugh — or maybe cry — when you see what the National Wealth Fund’s been spending its billions on. You’d think with a name like that, we were launching moon bases, building tidal-powered hover buses, or, dare I say, funding things that actually need funding. But no — apparently, the route to national prosperity runs through Barclays. Again.
Let’s be honest: when a “wealth fund” gives hundreds of millions to NatWest and Barclays — two institutions that could probably raise that money by shaking the sofa cushions in their executive suites — it feels less like bold investment and more like your gran giving Jeff Bezos a tenner because he “looked a bit peaky.” If the goal was to take risks on projects that can’t get funding, it seems someone misread the assignment.
And then there’s Scottish Power — £600 million for 57 jobs. That’s over £10 million per job. I’m assuming each worker gets a golden shovel and a company Tesla just for showing up on time. Meanwhile, local green startups can’t even get a grant for a new kettle. What exactly is the strategy here — “Trickle-down economics, but make it renewable”?
Of course, it’s not all baffling. A few projects do seem to hit the mark. The investment in Cornish Metals, for example, might actually help revive UK tin mining — and no, that’s not a plotline from an alternative-history BBC drama. But those are the exceptions, not the rule. Most of this “wealth” is being carefully handed to organisations who could’ve easily popped down the high street and borrowed it at 4.9% APR.
Let’s also spare a moment for the poor local councils on this list — some getting £10 million here or £25 million there. Honestly, it’s like they wandered into a casino and asked for change for the fruit machine, while Barclays is being handed the keys to the vault.
Look, the idea of a National Wealth Fund isn’t bad. In fact, it could be brilliant. It could fund things the private sector avoids: low-carbon heating in council estates, community-led broadband, green steel plants, or care jobs in towns that haven’t seen new investment since the ‘80s. But instead, it’s playing Dragon’s Den — and the dragons already own half the country.
If we’re going to call it a National Wealth Fund, then let’s actually make it national. Not just in geography, but in spirit — backing ordinary people, bold ideas, and places that the financial sector forgot long ago. Because right now, it feels a bit like someone gave a cheque book to a bored banker and said, “Try not to spend it all in Canary Wharf.”
In the case of broadband – the gov could have funded orgs such as :
https://b4rn.org.uk/
= community broadband for the community, by the community. What did they do – being LINO they funded privaet companies. I know for a fact that B4rn could have used the funding. LINO only interested in corporations & big people & banks. In the case of energy, gov auctions and CfDs provide all the guarantees that companies need. If you win a CfD auction – your project is, ipso facto – bankable. I thus conclude that LINO do not understand that. Why? because referring to the other blog this morning – they live in silos and think linearly. As for the banks – I thought that they received regular charitable donations from the BoE? Why do they need more?
One wonders which LINO imbecile made the decisions on funding. Given the stupidity of ministers & given the profile of “The Thick of It” in the Guardian yesterday, it was probably a 22 year old SPAD under McSweeney-tod.
In effect, 44% bungs to banks that are already raking in cash thanks to the BoEs policy, and the rest is to plug gaps generated by failures in market management (policy failure in terms of the energy and broadband markets (BTs privatisation was a massive mistake)) and the treasury’s tight purse strings.
In short, one might call it ‘sticking plaster politics’.
Unsurprising that Labour have nothing better.
Thank you and, in particular, thank you for using the word “bung”. This is what is. It’s exactly the description and explanation the left should use. The public understands. One should link the bungs offered to the City and highlight, without mentioning names, how many former politicians work in the City.
Here is the reason for that £600m to Scottish Power
“National Wealth Fund commits £600m to finance package for Scotland-to-England interconnectors” in https://www.osborneclarke.com/insights/energy-transition-ofgem-approves-code-modification-proposal-england-and-wales-grid-reforms
So it’s not many jobs, and it’s easy to sneer, but these HVDC links are essential to overcome capacity limitations at the B6 boundary between the Scottish and English electricity grids. But you have to be an engineer to understand why that matters.
I knwo why it matters
I ask why a supposedly privatised network needs public funds to deliver the supposed bemefit of privatisation.