Economic Activity of Public Bodies (Overseas Matters) Bill

Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Lord Leigh of Hurley

Tuesday 7th May 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Lords, Lord Warner and Lord Oates, and others want to remove reference to Israel. The question has been raised as to why one country should be singled out. The noble Lord, Lord Warner, drew attention to the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton. He did not mention the noble Lord’s other remarks—that part of his deal to recognise Palestine as a state would be that Hamas was expelled and, of course, the release of all hostages, which is an integral part of the jigsaw.

Others have commented that the Bill, which I support, does nothing about anti-Semitism. That is a minority view within the Jewish community. Jews for Justice for Palestinians, which was referenced, has an extremely small minority view. The vast majority of the Jewish population in the UK is represented by the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Jewish Leadership Council, on which I serve as vice-president. They are both in favour of such a Bill. They would not be in favour of this Bill if they had any worries that it would lead to an increase in anti-Semitism.

Likewise, with reference to the impact on the West Bank, the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, was asked whether she goes to the West Bank much. I have been to the West Bank. I chair a charity called the Jerusalem Foundation. One of the projects we are doing is building a very large sports centre in east Jerusalem. It includes a swimming pool, and it will be run by the locals for the benefit of the local community. It would be a great shame if this sports centre could not be built by a British contractor in whole or part because of fear of sanctions and thus its inability to win local council contracts.

It is obvious why Israel has to be protected by this Bill: precisely because it is the one country singled out for unparalleled abuse, criticism, misinformation and, sadly, hate. Which other country has people on the streets of the UK calling for its complete destruction? A country controlled by autocrats, or denying the rights of women, gays, minorities or religious groups? No. In fact, it is only one country—the one that achieves the reverse of all that.

This pattern has happened since Israel’s creation, facilitated in 1948 by a body—the United Nations—that has subsequently done all it can to demonise it. So why should special protection be given to Israel as Clause 3(7) suggests? I can answer that if noble Lords can explain to me why, since 2003, the UN has issued 232 resolutions in respect of Israel. Some 40% of all resolutions issued by the UN in that period have been on Israel, six times that of the second-placed country, Sudan. In 2023 alone, the UN General Assembly brought 15 resolutions against Israel and only seven on the multitude of conflicts around the world. Furthermore, the UN Human Rights Council has a dedicated, permanent line item—item 7—on Israel, specifically and alone. It has not done this with any other member state.

I argue that special prejudice and discrimination deserve special protection. The UN has had nine meetings of the Security Council to discuss the situation in Gaza, but not one about the hostages. If such a once-distinguished—now, sadly, widely regarded as discredited—organisation can show such bias against Israel, and only Israel, we need to take steps to ensure that this cancer of thought does not spread to UK institutions. Many agitators have run out of causes to address with their ire and prejudice, so their polemics are focused on a country they believe they can, by means fair or foul, destroy by a series of lies and hate- filled allegations.

I take the noble Lord, Lord Collins, at his word and believe him to be keen to find a way to avoid BDS. He is an honourable person and he says what he means. So I am disappointed that those on the Labour Front Bench support this amendment. I thought that they, and indeed all noble Lords, would understand that stopping BDS is right, fair and just, as are steps to protect the State of Israel from abuse by organisations themselves funded by the fair-minded British taxpayer.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I rise to offer Green support for Amendment 20 while stressing our continued opposition to the entire Bill. The argument for Amendment 20—that Clause 3(7) not be in the Bill—has already been powerfully made, but I will make three brief points. The first is about international law. This point has been powerfully made by many noble Lords already, and you do not have to listen to me; you can listen to Alicia Kearns MP, chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, who pointed out that, as the Bill is written, it constitutes a departure from British foreign policy that

“puts the UK in breach of our commitments under UN Security Council resolution 2334”.—[Official Report, Commons, 3/7/23; col. 604.]

My second point picks up a point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Oates. We have seen changes, over the months, in the British Government’s rhetoric at least, if not in their policy, when it comes to arms sales to the Israeli state, which will become only more legally, diplomatically and politically pressing. But we are not here talking about policy. We are talking about law: something on the statute book that remains until the law is changed. The convention, of course, is that no Parliament binds its successors, but we know how time-consuming and energy-consuming it is to change past errors as circumstances change.

The third point I want to make is one that no one else has made, but I am afraid that I have to, which is to refer to what is happening as we speak. Hundreds of thousands of people are in desperate fear with nowhere left to run, nowhere to seek safety. The Israeli state has seized the Rafah border crossing. A couple of figures haunt me. One of them is, of course, the death toll, which is approaching 35,000 in Gaza, but another figure I saw last week is that 5% of people in Gaza have been killed or injured. That is a deeply shocking figure.

Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill

Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Lord Leigh of Hurley

Committee stage
Tuesday 18th April 2023 Grand Committee

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I have added my name to Amendment 54 and those of the noble Lord, Lord Vaux, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles. I will be fairly brief, as this is an extremely unusual situation in that I agree with everything that has been said from all sides of the Committee. I will simply set out a couple of extra points.

I pick up particularly the points from the noble Lord, Lord Vaux, that journalists, campaigners and groups such as Transparency International have frequently and very bravely—at considerable financial and other risk to themselves—helped to uncover the situation that we have with the London laundromat, the centre of global corruption or whatever you call it. Many labels have been applied. These amendments, particularly Amendment 54, open this up so that people such as those can see and examine what is happening. We can see that the regulators have failed utterly to provide the sorts of checks that they should, and transparency at least enables NGOs, campaigners and others to do what should be the regulators’ work for them.

I would like to see Companies House not relying on any independent certification practices but doing its own checks. However, I acknowledge that the practical reality of that would require an enormous institutional set-up. You might ask who would pay for that. I say that, if you are going to benefit from being a limited liability company, the costs should cover it fully—but I can see that that is not going to happen. As it is not, the best possible thing is at least to make sure that these authorised corporate service providers are open to scrutiny from others.

We must not forget that we are asking those that have been the enablers of corruption, fraud and sheer robbery to become the enforcers. That is what we are doing now—asking the poachers to become gamekeepers, in more traditional terms. That carries a high level of risk. Your Lordships’ Committee has a huge responsibility to do everything we can to make sure that we have full oversight of that.

I will comment briefly on Amendment 51A in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, and others. It takes a risk-based approach in looking at the many industries we have that have huge problems. Some are identified here; the situation with car washes is a clear one. A recent study by Nottingham Trent University showed that only 11% of workers in hand car washes were getting payslips, which is the most basic arrangement to enable you to see what is going on. Not even that is happening there.

We have a huge problem in many sectors of our society. Just a couple of weeks ago, Farmers Weekly exposed huge levels of fraud and, as a result, significant public health risks in our food sector. We know what has happened in the building sector, where local councils, without the resources, have stepped away as we move to self-certification. We have huge problems with standards in that sector. These problems are there and many of them go back to the financial sector. These amendments are crucial to deal with problems right across our economy.

Finally, it sometimes seems like this is all financial, that it is not really related to people’s lives and that it is somehow a victimless crime. The reality is that we are robbing poor people around the world by enabling London to be a centre in which corrupt money is placed. In our own society, we are enabling whole sectors of our economy to be consumed by businesses built on fraud, corruption and the exploitation of workers. I have forgotten which, but a noble Lord opposite said that that makes it difficult or impossible for honest businesspeople to set up, run and thrive.

[Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)]

My Lords, I will not join the complete love-in but I will focus on the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, in particular on his provision that covers the point about SIC codes and the requirement that those are accurate. I will echo and perhaps take further his remarks about the problems that exist with SIC codes.

I appreciate that it would not be in the Minister’s remit to answer on this during our debate, but perhaps he might take time to write to us afterwards to comment on SIC codes. As he knows, they came into operation in 1948, when there was a very different business environment. They have been refreshed since then but the last refresh was in 2007 and a huge amount has happened since then. The Ron Kalifa report commented that about 50% of fintech companies do not have an appropriate SIC code. Many companies fall into a number of SIC codes, but a company can choose only four. In fact, out of the 5.3 million companies at Companies House, 3.9 million have chosen only one code, which says to me that they are just not taking it seriously.

Companies are not taking it seriously because they do not see SIC codes as particularly relevant or helpful to them. They often just repeat the previous year’s one, or indeed the one of incorporation, which an accountant may have chosen almost at random. As a result, many companies are choosing the SIC codes starting with “Other”, such as 82990 for other business services. In some areas, one-third of companies are going just for “Other”.

The reason this is important is that a whole lot of government decisions are made on understanding what businesses do and how many are in a particular sector. During Covid, it was apparent from the events industry that large numbers of events companies had not properly registered their business within the SIC codes, so the Government were not able to assess the needs of those companies. Likewise, for searches helping businesses to market to other businesses, unless they know what those other businesses, particularly conglomerates, undertake it is difficult for such businesses to make progress.

Private enterprise has come up with its own version of SIC codes: rating agencies and others, such as The Data City, have created their own codes that they apply to businesses. I very much hope that this might be an area of focus in the near future, so that we can enhance the existing SIC codes and give effect to the amendment tabled the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell. Then we can see what businesses actually do here in the UK.