Industry and Parliament Trust

In September 2014, we collaborated with the Industry and Parliament Trust (IPT), an independent, non-lobbying, non-partisan charity that provides a trusted platform of engagement between Parliament and UK business, to launch the Sustainability Commission.

parliament-600xCo-chaired by Birmingham’s Professor Steve Brammer and MP Caroline Spelman, the aim of the Commission was to explore how businesses across the UK were approaching the challenges of creating a sustainable business model.

The Commission’s report, published in February 2015, found that leading businesses were ‘benefiting hugely’ from their engagement with sustainability, while also concluding that:

  • Business has an absolutely central role to play in achieving a prosperous, socially just, and environmentally sustainable future.
  • Government should play a central role in supporting broader and deeper engagement with sustainability through creating an improved enabling infrastructure.
  • Greater collaboration across industry, and between business, government and civil society organisations is essential to advancing sustainability.
  • Companies can and should encourage sustainability and co-operation across their supply chain.
  • Capital markets must be reformed to encourage sustainable behaviour.
  • In particular, Governments can encourage integrating sustainability reporting by…players in the financial market supply chain that ensure environmental and social costs are internalised into profit and loss statements.

Made up of a collection of parliamentarians and representatives from industry and academia, the Sustainability Commission is a notable example of our engagement with policy makers at the highest level.