London 19th June 2026 - New Capital Consensus yesterday hosted a panel event and discussion at Chatham House involving our Investment Systems Council of the Rt Hon John Glen MP (former City Minister), Kirsty Blackman MP (SNP Treasury Spokesperson) and John Grady MP (Member of the Treasury Select Committee), alongside Lib Dem Treasury Spokesperson Sarah Olney and Chaired by Barclays' Group Head of Policy Development and former City Minister, Kitty Ussher. 

The event was opened by David Gunn of Chatham House who outlined the urgency required in unlocking capital for sustainable investment in the just transition, before James Palmer of the NCC Advisory Panel and Herbert Smith Freehills laid out the investment landscape and the scale of the crisis in both the pension space and the lack of capital flowing to innovative growth companies in the UK. 

Ashok Gupta, NCC's Director, then made a presentation which touched on the four issues currently interrupting or redirecting capital away from productive areas of the UK economy - lack of incentives to generate returns, fragmentation, the flow of capital to the US, and the primacy of secondary trading over primary investment. 

Ashok's final point was focused on the fundamental need to address risk and reward. Specifically: the way our regulatory and accounting systems define, measure and penalize long-term risk - forcing naturally patient capital to become impatient capital.

You can watch the full speech below.

You can read a full transcript of Ashok's speech HERE.

The panel of MPs were then invited to give 3-5 min opening speeches, during which a genuine consensus was found on the need to unlock capital for productive investment, the urgent need for action and the levers with which we might direct government to pull in order to do so. 

Specific mention was given to tax as a potential incentive to rebalance domestic investment - rewarding pension schemes who invest in places their members retire in. The panel also discussed the importance of regional investment, and enabling vehicles of the right scale to invest in left behind places of the UK. 

Questions came from the audience on a variety of topics, with a particular focus on the risk to the individual of divesting from popular indexes such as the MSCI Global. The panel then considered the importance of risk-pooling and the potential backstops offered by both government and the private sector to protect individuals, before Ashok pointed to the need to re-invigorate risk-sharing vehicles such as CDC (Collective Defined Contribution) and Superfunds.

The full video of the session will be available on YouTube soon and we warmly thank our attendees, panellists and Chatham House for an excellent and thought-provoking discussion.