Economic Activity of Public Bodies (Overseas Matters) Bill

Lord Oates Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 20th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Oates (LD)]

My Lords, like other Members of this House I feel a sense of profound shock at the rise in anti-Semitism since the appalling attacks of 7 October. As my noble friend Lord Palmer of Childs Hill said, the Jewish community feels increasingly and understandably beleaguered, and we must do all we can to support it. But, like my noble friend, I believe that this is a very bad Bill and I do not believe it will do anything to combat anti-Semitism. Indeed, I fear it will do the opposite.

If that were not bad enough, the Bill tramples on fundamental rights of free speech and peaceful protest, provides extraordinary powers to Ministers and enforcement authorities and, as my noble friend Lord Wallace of Saltaire points out, effectively introduces an offence of thought crime. Above all, it is an ill-considered mess of misjudgments, prejudices and confusions, all competing to contradict one another.

In 1988 I spent some time teaching in a rural school in Zimbabwe. When I was there, one of the students asked me to try to visit his father in South Africa. This was in the dying days of the apartheid regime, although that was not at all clear then. There was a state of emergency, and I saw at first hand the vile nature of that regime.

When I came back to the UK, my first engagement in campaigning was on the milk crates outside South Africa House and in the boycotts of the student Anti- Apartheid Movement, inspired very much by campaigners such as the noble Lords, Lord Hain and Lord Boateng, who spoke so powerfully. My decisions about boycotting South African goods were personal and were motivated by political and moral disapproval. They did not represent my individual foreign policy; they represented my moral and political disapproval. Thank goodness that local authorities, from Lambeth to Sheffield, Glasgow and all around the country, were prepared to stand up and make their voice heard.

Some years later, I had the privilege of working in the first democratic Parliament in South Africa. I can absolutely attest to what the noble Lord, Lord Boateng, said: the absolute saving grace of the UK was that local authorities and others had been prepared to take financial decisions on the basis of moral and political disapproval when, sadly, our Government were not prepared to do that and were seen as an aider and abetter of the apartheid regime.

Much was made, both in the Second Reading debate in the other place and repeated by the Minister today, about not having rival foreign policies, but Clause 3(7) conflates Israel and the Occupied Territories, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Southwark pointed out. This seems to represent the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities running an alternative foreign policy to the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, rather than local authorities doing the same. That has really grave implications. I hope that the Minister can tell us what representations have been received from British diplomatic posts across the globe about the impacts of this Bill, which goes absolutely contrary to Resolution 2334 and other international obligations, as other noble Lords have said.

When I picked up the Bill, I was concerned that it seemed pretty worrying, but when I looked through it and I read just some of the clause headings, as highlighted by the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, such as “Disapproval of foreign state conduct” and “Related prohibition on statements”, it brought to mind exactly that apartheid regime in South Africa. These are the sorts of clauses that you would find in the law and order amendments Acts, and of which John Vorster and Hendrik Verwoerd would have been proud.

We have to think very carefully about the precedents that we are setting in this Bill. As we have heard, not only would it prevent local authorities taking financial decisions of the form we have debated but it prohibits people stating that they would have acted in such a way if they had been able to, but they could not do so because it was not lawful. The Minister tried to make a distinction and claim that a local authority leader, for example, could state that they were in favour of a boycott or investment decisions about a particular territory if they did so in their personal capacity. But if somebody said, for example, “I don’t believe in investing in the Occupied Territories or Xinjiang”, their constituents asked, “Then why is your local authority not following that belief?”, and they said, “Because the law doesn’t allow me to”, they would commit an offence under the Bill, if I understand it rightly, subject to an unlimited fine. That is extraordinary. It is even worse than that, because it is not just if you say that—this is where the thought crime comes in—but if it is thought that you are likely to say something like that, and if you are thought likely to contravene the applicable provision of the Bill.

We will go through this in much greater detail in Committee, but this is a hugely flawed Bill. It is massively politically divisive at a time when there is no need for political division because, as the Liberal Democrat Front Bench and the Official Opposition Front Bench have made clear, people are happy to come together to try to address the actual issue without bringing about these draconian rules, which have absolutely no place in our democracy.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

That is my sense, but I will obviously check where we are. I would also make it clear that things such as conference centres and so on are obviously outside the remit. I will come back to the noble Lord on the exact definition, if I may, and we can perhaps discuss it in Committee in any event.

I will now address concerns that this Bill represents a change in the UK’s foreign policy. The noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, and others, will be pleased to know that the Government have been clear throughout the Bill’s passage that nothing in this Bill changes the UK’s position on Israeli settlements. They are illegal under international law, present an obstacle to peace and threaten the viability of a two-state solution. The Government continue to urge Israel to halt settlement expansion immediately.

I reassure the House that the Government’s assessment is that the Bill distinguishes between Israel and the territories it has occupied since 1967. It is therefore compliant with UN Security Council Resolution 2334. The Government believe very strongly in the importance of complying with international obligations under the UN Charter.

[Lord Oates (LD)]

Could the Minister tell us how the Bill distinguishes this, because the clause applies to them all equally? Could she set that out?

UK-EU Trade and Co-operation Agreement

Lord Oates Excerpts

Thursday 29th April 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Frost (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness draws attention to an important issue that is central to how we operate the single market of the United Kingdom. We are in the middle of the process to which she refers but I will look into the matter and, if necessary, write to her.

[Lord Oates (LD)]

Does the Minister agree that the parliamentary partnership assembly provided for in the TCA could play a critical role in ensuring that parliamentarians at Westminster and Stormont can engage with the European Parliament, which remains a co-legislator in Northern Ireland on single market issues? Given their power of initiative in both Houses, will the Government take the lead in ensuring that this partnership assembly is established as a matter of urgency, as recommended by the House of Lords EU Committee?

[Lord Frost (Con)]

My Lords, we are of course very supportive of the dialogue between this Parliament and the European Parliament. We supported these provisions in the TCA. I am aware that discussions are taking place between parliamentarians here and Members of the European Parliament in Brussels. I look forward to briefing the House in due course on how those discussions will be taken forward; it is important that they now move forward quickly.

Budget Statement

Lord Oates Excerpts

Friday 12th March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Oates (LD)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lords, Lord Cruddas and Lord Khan, on their maiden speeches.

The Budget provided the Chancellor with the opportunity to set out a clear vision for building back better. It was a chance to take the bold steps necessary to unleash the much talked of “green industrial revolution”. Instead, it took comfort in timidity and greenwash. As a result it was a Budget of squandered opportunities in the face of unprecedented challenges.

One area entirely absent from the Budget was the long-term programme needed to upgrade the energy efficiency of 28 million homes in the UK, which account for 35% of UK energy use and 20% of carbon emissions. I acknowledge that designing such programmes is not easy. The coalition had the Green Deal, which failed for largely the same reasons that the Green Homes Grant scheme is failing—namely, the absence of any long-term vision at the Treasury.

The Federation of Master Builders has estimated that a long-term national retrofit strategy could create 100,000 new jobs over four years and half a million over 20 years—skilled jobs offering new opportunities in every part of the United Kingdom. But to be successful the Government must do two things. First, they must provide the long-term certainty to allow industry to invest in the skills required to deliver this massive programme and for private capital to have the confidence to come in behind government initiatives. Secondly, they must provide consumers with incentives to upgrade the energy efficiency of their homes, such as stamp duty reductions or council tax discounts. We are asking consumers to do a challenging thing and we need to make it worth while if we are to get the take-up needed.

A national refit programme may not have the glamour of moonshots to new technologies, but there is no path to net zero without one. The absence of any reference to it in the Chancellor’s Statement left a gaping hole in his Budget and threatens any hope of meeting our obligations under the Climate Change Act.

Financial Services Bill

Lord Oates Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 28th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Oates (LD)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Hammond of Runnymede, and the noble Baroness, Lady Shafik, on their excellent maiden speeches. I look forward to the important contributions they will both undoubtedly make to the House.

On Monday 9 November last, the Chancellor made a Statement to the House of Commons in which he set out the Government’s vision for financial services. He pledged, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, reminded us, to put

“the full weight of private sector innovation … behind the critical global effort to tackle climate change and protect the environment.”—[Official Report, Commons, 9/11/20; col. 621.]

Just two hours later, his colleague, the Economic Secretary to the Treasury, John Glen, got to his feet to introduce the Second Reading of this Bill. In his opening speech, which lasted over 25 minutes, he did not refer to the climate and ecological emergency once. He made no mention of green finance, climate risk disclosure or the critical role the financial services industry will have to play if we are seriously to tackle climate change.

The omission of any reference to climate change, replicated by the Minister this afternoon, was not the result of an oversight on the Economic Secretary’s part. Far from it; it was simply a logical consequence of the fact that the Bill does absolutely nothing to address the climate emergency we face. The Economic Secretary had a number of answers for this failure when he got around to the matter in Committee. First, he argued that these issues were not relevant for discussion, as they were not directly related to the Bill—a strange and circular argument, as their absence from the Bill was precisely the complaint he was addressing. Secondly, he argued that the regulators were making progress on climate-related issues and we should let them get on with it. Finally, he said:

“The Bill grants the Treasury a power to specify further matters in the accountability framework at a later date, which could be used to add a requirement to explicitly have regard to green issues in the prudential framework, if appropriate … I can assure the Committee that the Treasury will carefully consider a green ‘have regard’ in the future.”—[Official Report, Commons, 24/11/20; col. 157.]


Essentially, he was telling Parliament, “It’s not for you to worry your little heads about these things, and to ensure that you don’t have to, the Bill will take the powers away from Parliament in this regard and vest them in the Treasury and the regulators, who know best.”

We on the Liberal Democrat Benches do not think that they know best. History does not cause us to put much faith in the willingness of the Treasury, or of unaccountable regulators, to act. Nor does it give us any faith in their ability to determine the appropriateness, or otherwise, of action on such critical matters for our planet. We agree with the Chancellor that financial services have a key role to play in tackling climate change, but we believe that it is for Parliament to determine that role. Accordingly, we will bring amendments forward in Committee to ensure that the Bill does exactly that. They will do this, first, by requiring the Prudential Regulation Authority to have regard to climate-related financial risk when setting capital adequacy requirements and, secondly, by ensuring that credit-rating agencies have to take climate risk into account in setting credit ratings. Thirdly, they would bring forward the date when the recommendations of the task force on climate-related disclosure will be mandatory from 2025 to 2023.

We will also seek amendments to ensure that, in setting general rules, the FCA has regard to the climate-related financial risks to which FCA investment firms are exposed and that the FCA, in setting Part 9C rules, and the PRA, in setting capital requirement regulation rules, have regard to the UK’s domestic and international climate obligations. I look forward to working on these issues with the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, and other members of Peers for the Planet, the excellent organisation which she chairs.

I welcome the lead that the Government have taken in setting the net-zero target. I applaud the Treasury for moving on the TCFD recommendations, so far as they have gone, and for their positive words on green finance. However, the awful truth is that action in every respect of our response to the climate emergency is glacially and catastrophically slow. We are way off line to meet the Climate Change Act’s original 80% reduction target, let alone the revised net-zero one. There is a time when the talk of distant targets for which none of us will be held accountable has to end and the activity and action to meet them has to start. That time is now. The climate crisis is not something that might happen in some distant future if we do not get our act together. It is happening right now. Just ask those on the front line of the crisis; ask the people of the small island states who live with the prospect of being literally wiped off the map. Ask the farmers facing ever more erratic weather patterns and deteriorating soil conditions in Africa or South Asia. Ask householders in the UK who are becoming ever more susceptible to flood risk; ask the firefighters in California or New South Wales.

As we speak, the world is on course for three degrees of warming. The devastation that would cause is beyond contemplation. We know the threat that we face, and what we have to do to mitigate it, but that does not guarantee that we will do it. A global pandemic was number one on the Cabinet Office’s risk register. We knew it would happen one day, yet it seemed so far off that, when it suddenly arrived, we met it almost completely unprepared. We cannot afford to do the same with climate change. So I urge the Government to use this Bill to start, however modestly, to match their fine rhetoric with action and to ensure that the financial services industry is able to play its full part in combating climate change.

G7 Summit

Lord Oates Excerpts

Thursday 21st January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, it would be slightly impertinent of me on President Biden’s first day in office to set out an agenda for him. I think we all look forward to hearing that. I say again that we look forward to the COP 26 conference in Scotland. Within the G7 period and leading up to it, we will keep tackling climate change and preserving biodiversity will be at the heart of our efforts.

[Lord Oates (LD) [V]]

Does the Minister believe that the Government’s decision to refuse full diplomatic status to the EU ambassador to the UK will help or hinder our ability to build the consensus needed for a successful G7 summit? While he is at it, will he explain why the UK, uniquely in the world, would take such a staggeringly petty, pointless and self-harming decision?

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, we have slightly moved away from the rather positive and optimistic approach of this discussion so far. The G7 will embrace the presence of the EU, as always, and of major democracies in the European Union.

EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement

Lord Oates Excerpts

Friday 8th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Oates (LD) [V]]

My Lords, the Minister’s suggestion in his opening remarks that the people of this country were not free when we were members of the European Union is deeply offensive, and I ask that he withdraws it.

Last week, we had three minutes to speak on an 85-page Bill to give domestic effect to this agreement. Today, we are given two minutes to debate the detail of the most important trade agreement we are ever likely to sign. To call this a farce is an understatement. It is a mockery of parliamentary accountability and scrutiny. The Government have repeatedly heard representations from across this House expressing deep opposition to the continuation of farcical procedures such as this. When will they listen?

In the time available, I will focus on two issues: the collaboration between the UK and the EU on energy issues and scrutiny of EU energy measures; and the decision to withdraw from the Erasmus scheme. As the Minister will be aware, the energy sector is concerned about the impact that our withdrawal from the single energy market will have on formal collaboration with the EU on research projects. This is particularly important as the UK and the EU seek to decarbonise their energy supplies. What reassurance can the Minister give the House on this point?

Secondly, Northern Ireland will continue to be governed by the rules of the single energy market. What provisions do the Government intend to put in place for the Northern Ireland Assembly and this Parliament to scrutinise EU legislative measures governing that market, and how will the people of Northern Ireland and their representatives be able to influence the rules that now apply to them?

Lastly, will the Government reconsider their position on Erasmus? The Minister just told the House that we are not walking away from Europe, so why leave the Erasmus scheme, which includes many non-EU countries? The Turing scheme proposed as a replacement is not only vaguely defined; more importantly, it is a unilateral scheme, meaning that we will not gain from an exchange of students, which is what makes Erasmus such a rich experience for students and countries taking part. I appeal to the Government to rethink this.

European Union (Future Relationship) Bill

Lord Oates Excerpts

3rd reading & 2nd reading & Committee negatived & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & 3rd reading (Hansard) & 3rd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & Committee negatived (Hansard) & Committee negatived (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 30th December 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Oates (LD)]

My Lords, we are directed to debate this 85-page Bill, which hands extraordinary executive powers to Ministers and gives effect to a trade agreement running to over 1,000 pages, in three-minute speeches, without hesitation, scrutiny or amendment, and to pass it in less than a day.

I, for one, have no intention of supporting a Bill representing such an unprecedented and indefensible contempt of Parliament and the public. The European Parliament, by contrast with ours, will have the opportunity to properly scrutinise the deal during the period of its provisional application, which runs until 28 February. It was open to the Government to arrange matters to provide a similar opportunity to our Parliament. They chose not to—so much for parliamentary sovereignty.

Who can blame the Government for hiding from scrutiny? Far from being a triumph, this trade deal betrays our young people, abandons Gibraltar and undermines our businesses, our farmers and our fishing industry. It provides tariff-free access to the UK market for trade in goods, in which the European Union has the overwhelming advantage, and no comparative access to the EU market for services, in which the UK excels. It is inherently unstable because tariff-free access is dependent on maintaining alignment with the EU and, should we diverge, it explicitly provides for the imposition of tariffs.

The deal provides a 25% reduction in fishing quotas for EU boats in UK waters instead of the 80% which was promised and allows tariffs to be imposed if we go further than that. It ties us in to an abundance of new UK-EU governance structures wholly unaccountable to this Parliament. So much, again, for parliamentary sovereignty.

It is a deal which compromises our prosperity and our security and for which the British people will pay a heavy price in lost jobs and lost opportunities. It is not even the end of Brexit, just an inherently unstable prelude to the neverending negotiations that will follow.

So, four and a half years on, the Brexit illusion ends, not with the easiest trade deal in history, but with the first that constrains trade rather than liberalises it. It is a deal with instability woven throughout and red tape wrapped all around it. To get even this threadbare deal, there was nothing the Government were not willing to sacrifice. First, they sold out Northern Ireland, subjecting it to EU law over which its people will have no say. They then sold out our service industries, the most important sector of our economy. Next, they sold out our young people by breaking their pledge on Erasmus and finally, after all the bluster and baloney, they sold out the fishing industry too.

In the end, they sold out the British people by promising things that were never possible and proving it by failing to deliver them. So much for having our cake and eating it. With this deal we discover that we have not eaten it and we have not got it either.

Spending Review 2020

Lord Oates Excerpts

Thursday 3rd December 2020 Grand Committee

[Lord Oates (LD)]

My Lords, on 23 October 1984 I, like millions of others, watched Michael Buerk’s harrowing report on the Ethiopian famine. The words and images still reverberate with me today, these in particular:

“This three year-old girl was beyond any help: unable to take food, attached to a drip but too late; the drip was taken away. Only minutes later, while we were filming, she died. Her mother had lost all her four children and her husband.”


I was 14 at the time and there was something about that simple statement that overwhelmed me. It was so relatable and so devastating. That is where my politics began.

This spending review takes us back to those days, because then, just like now, the Government were cutting the share of our wealth that we spend on the poorest of the world—from 0.5% of GNI in 1979 to 0.33% in 1984 and just 0.27% in 1990. The lesson is that, once they start cutting the aid budget, they do not stop.

In later years I worked in a number of countries in Africa and saw the impact of our aid: the suffering it alleviated, the huge progress in raising people out of poverty, and the stunning success in tackling disease. So I was immensely proud to be in the Cabinet meeting when it was confirmed that the coalition had met the Liberal Democrat manifesto commitment to spend 0.7% of GNI on development. However, despite that success, we still had not met the Conservative manifesto pledge, which was to put that commitment into law. So, in 2014, my friend Mike Moore and my noble friend Lord Purvis moved decisively to rescue the Conservatives from this failure by introducing a Private Member’s Bill which became the International Development Act 2015, narrowly saving the Tories from betraying their own manifesto commitment.

My noble friends and I intend to provide that service to the Conservative Party once again, by ensuring that the December 2019 Conservative manifesto commitment is upheld, and the shameful policy of penalising the poorest in the world in their hour of greatest need is rejected.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Garden of Frognal) (LD)]

The noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, has withdrawn, so I call the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood.

G7 Summit

Lord Oates Excerpts

Thursday 26th November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, as I have said, the Prime Minister will be announcing details in due course. I understand that my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary will make a Statement in another place later; I cannot anticipate that. But I agree with the noble Lord opposite that the G7 does have a track record of delivering meaningful outcomes under successive leaderships. Indeed, it has taken action to save 27 million lives from AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.

[Lord Oates (LD)]

Does the Minister recognise that a key priority for the G7 must be how it supports developing economies, which have suffered the severest economic impacts from Covid? Is it not therefore disgraceful that the Government have chosen this exact moment to betray our commitment to the poorest in the world in order, shamefully, to spend the money on weapons instead?

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Lord’s intervention was strong on adverbs and adjectives. I will give your Lordships a fact: 0.5%, or £10,000 million, whatever noble Lords say, is more than all 29 members of the OECD development committee contribute. Their average is 0.38%. I repeat that we are the second-highest donor in the G7 and will remain so.

Parliamentary Constituencies Bill

Lord Oates Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 27th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Oates (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I have three areas of particular concern about the Bill: first, the failure to give equal value to every vote; secondly, the risk that the new directions to the Boundary Commission will further exacerbate the overrepresentation of the most affluent areas at the expense of the most deprived; and, thirdly, the need to view the system for determining representation in the House of Commons in the context of the lack of democratic accountability of this Chamber.

I will not dwell for too long on the disparity in the value of one person’s vote against another’s, which has distorted our politics for so long and which is maintained in this Bill; nor in decrying the Government’s obdurate attachment to first past the post, a system that leaves millions of voters feeling that their votes count for nothing while aiding and abetting the forces of nationalism and disunity—giving the SNP, for example, 48 times the number of MPs of the Green Party with just a 1.2% greater share of the vote. I will just note that the Bill certainly does not meet the Conservative manifesto commitment, already alluded to by my noble friend Lord Tyler, to

“making sure that every vote counts the same”.

The lack of proportionality is by no means the only flaw in the Bill. The constraints that it places on the tolerance that the Boundary Commissions can allow makes the number of registered electors an even more dominant factor than before. This risks natural communities being split in two but it also raises the question of whether eligible electors rather than registered ones would not be a better base for determining constituency boundaries. Given the millions of eligible voters not on the register, it is surely time to look at automatic voter registration so we can ensure that deprived areas, where registration tends to be lower, are not disenfranchised.

Lastly, we cannot view the arrangements for the election of Members of the House of Commons without reflecting on the lack of election to this House. The noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, in opening for the Labour Party, astonishingly asked Liberal Democrats to explain why this House continued to grow during the coalition while the original coalition proposal was that the number of Members of the Commons should reduce. I am not sure whether the noble Baroness has had a fit of amnesia, but let me help her and her party out: the proposal to reduce the number of constituencies in the Commons was part of the coalition agreement, which included the establishment of an elected House of Lords. If it had been honoured, we would have increased the number of elected representatives in Parliament as a whole and immeasurably improved the legitimacy of this House.

The establishment of an elected House of Lords, which had a massive majority at Second Reading in the Commons, was in the end torpedoed by the Labour and Conservative parties colluding to prevent it. It was a result of the Conservative Party reneging on its coalition agreement, with the assistance of the Labour Party, that led the Liberal Democrats in turn to reject the reduction in the size of the Commons, which was predicated on having elected representatives here. So if the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, wants to know why we continue to sit in a bloated and unelected second Chamber, she need look no further than her own party.

Having said that, my noble friend Lord Greaves is surely wise in his counsel that we should put these matters behind us and seek to work together to improve the Bill.