REDBRIDGE Council continues to invest millions of pounds in controversial arms companies that supply repressive regimes around the world.

Latest figures available to the Guardian reveal the council's pension fund has £4,950,607 in firms that help produce land mines, fighter jets, tanks and missiles, despite public pressure to adopt an ethical investment policy.

Anne Williams, of Gordon Road, Wanstead, is an active member of the borough's Friends of the Earth group and told the Guardian it was important to know where taxpayer money was going.

She said: "Obviously we want to encourage as much ethical investment as we can and avoid companies that degrade the environment or support objectionable regimes.

"It's important where the council put their cash as it's not their cash but our cash."

More than £2million is invested in BAE systems which sold Scorpion tanks, Stormer personnel carriers and Hawk fighter jets to Indonesia which were used in many bloody assaults on East Timor.

This is despite ex-dictator Suharto initiating a six-month orgy of killing described by Amnesty International as "among the most massive violations of human rights since the Second World War".

Liberal Democrat Church End ward Cllr Richard Hoskins sits on the pension fund investment panel which met on Friday.

He said: "We don't direct investments but simply say the objectives that we want to fund to achieve. We simply hand the money over and the fund managers invest it how they see fit.

"The panel has a responsibility to the rate payers and council workers to make the best investment possible."

Redbridge Council's pension fund holds at total of £313.4million, of which around 1.5 per cent is invested in weapons manufacturers BAE, Raytheon, General Dynamics, Finmeccanica, Rolls-Royce, VT Cobham and Meggit.

Figures quoted were released to Campaign Against the Arms Trade (CAAT) in 2007 as Redbridge Council were unable to provide an up-to-date breakdown in time for publication.

The borough's Statement of Investment Principles says: "The view has been taken that non-financial factors should not drive the investment process at the cost of financial return on the council's pension fund."

Cabinet member for finance and resources Cllr Ronnie Barden said: "Our primary concern is the performance of the investment for our pensioners and also the council taxpayers as they are the ones who would need to top it up if necessary.

"Personally I cannot understand these arguments because as a nation we have an army and manufacture arms and our defence and that of our allies are paramount.

"From a practical point of view the sort of analysis needed to ensure that every investment meets such strict criteria would take so long as to be virtually impossible."