UK's biggest pension fund begins fossil fuels divestment

National Employment Savings Trust to shun firms involved in coal, tar sands or arctic drilling

The UK's biggest pension fund, the government-backed National Employment Savings Trust (Nest) scheme with nine million members, is to begin divesting from fossil fuels in what climate campaigners have hailed as a landmark move for the industry.

The fund will ban investments in any companies involved in coal mining, oil from tar sands and arctic drilling. But the move puts Nest - a public corporation of the Department for Work and Pensions - potentially at odds with the current pensions minister, Guy Opperman, who earlier this month condemned divestment as counter productive".