Economic Activity of Public Bodies (Overseas Matters) Bill

Debate between Lord Wolfson of Tredegar and Baroness Kennedy of Shaws

2nd reading
Tuesday 20th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, even, or perhaps especially, when we disagree.

I want to focus on Clause 3(7), which provides in effect that a future Minister seeking to permit public bodies to boycott Israel would have to do so by way of primary legislation and not secondary legislation. The question has been asked: why is Israel treated differently by being singled out in the Bill? The short answer is that Israel is already treated differently and singled out—by international institutions and by too many public bodies here in the UK. That differential treatment and singling out has real effects, not only on the State of Israel but—and this is my focus—on civil society in the UK.

This Bill puts Israel into a special category because Israel is put by others, both internationally and nationally, into a special category. I will look first at this internationally. Last year, the United Nations General Assembly condemned Israel 14 times. The rest of the world put together: seven. Since 2015, the score stands at Israel 140, the whole of the rest of the world put together, 68. The UN Human Rights Council has a standing agenda item, item 7, which is focused on Israel —and only on Israel. This is the same UN Human Rights Council that, just two days after the 7 October massacre, held a minute’s silence to mourn, to quote from its own website,

“the loss of innocent lives in the occupied Palestinian territory and elsewhere”.

“Elsewhere”? For 2,000 years, the Jewish people had nowhere. Now, according to the United Nations Human Rights Council, they have an “elsewhere”. All of this is not because Israel is wicked, let alone uniquely wicked. It is because, internationally, Israel is treated differently and singled out.

Secondly, Israel is also treated differently and singled out by public bodies here in the UK. In 2020, the Welsh Government brought out a new national procurement note singling out Israel—and only Israel—for potential sanctions. A decade earlier, West Dunbartonshire Council adopted a policy of boycotting Israeli—and only Israeli—goods, including even books printed in Israel. So the sermons of Jesus printed in totalitarian China were permitted, but they were banned if they were printed in the place where he actually delivered them.

A number of English councils implemented BDS against Israeli—and only Israeli—products, including Leicester in 2014 and Lancaster in 2021. In 2014, Birmingham City Council threatened not to renew a contract with Veolia because of its activity in the West Bank. Perhaps the now insolvent Birmingham City Council should have focused rather less on the West Bank and more on its own bank.

My third point is that it is not only the fact that Israel is treated differently. Anti-Israel resolutions and boycotts have a different and dramatic effect on civil society. The correlation is clear and unambiguous. When Israel is targeted, it ends up with attacks on Jews. I am not saying that all anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism—although a lot of it is, especially when Israel, and only Israel, is singled out for condemnation and boycott. You can support Israel but oppose its present Government, as do many of my friends in Israel. The Opposition Benches in this House demonstrate that you can critique a Government but support the state.

But let us be clear: when you chant “From the river to the sea”, you are not critiquing the Israeli Government; you are calling for the destruction of Israel. We are increasingly seeing anti-Israel rhetoric blurring into demonising and attacking Jews. “Zionists” is being used as a code word for Jews.

It is a code word, because who are these Zionists? The overwhelming majority of Jews, both in the UK and around the world, are Zionists because of our history, ancient and modern. We have prayed for, and facing, the land of Israel for thousands of years. We know the cost in Jewish lives from not having a State of Israel and the price paid in lives for having that state. Many of us have family there, in what is now the world’s largest Jewish community. When Israel is singled out, the inevitable effect is that Jews, regardless of their passports or politics, are also singled out in commerce, culture and education.

In commerce, when Sainsbury’s removed kosher food from its shelves after giving in to anti-Israel protesters, it was Jews who could not buy food—a scene repeated in the Republic of Ireland only last week.

In culture, two weeks ago, a Jewish member of the audience at the Soho Theatre was sworn at by Paul Currie, an anti-Semite masquerading as a comic, because he would not stand in respect when a Palestinian flag was unveiled on stage. Much of the rest of the audience joined in the chanting against him. Another London theatre cancelled an event hosted by a UK Jewish charity raising money for Israeli students, because the staff refused to come into work.

In education, the Jewish chaplain at Leeds University is now in hiding with his family, because he has been targeted by protesters, who also daubed anti-Israel slogans on the Jewish society building. When students marched through Birmingham University with a banner reading “Zionists off our campus”, what they meant, in practice, was “No Jews here”. The vast majority of Jewish students, like the overwhelming majority of the Jewish community, believe in an independent Jewish state. That is what Zionism is. If, like His Majesty’s Government, you support a two-state solution, which calls for a safe and secure Israel alongside a Palestinian state, you are a Zionist too.

All this is a problem for Jews, but it is a tragedy for everyone else. A society that permits anti-Semitism is a society suffering from a terminal illness. That is an iron rule of history: anti-Semitism destroys any society that harbours it.

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab)]

I just want to read the noble Lord a quotation from the Israeli National Security Minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir. He says that to encourage the exodus of Gaza’s inhabitants and the influx of Israeli settlers to the Gaza Strip would be a “correct, just, moral … solution”. When it comes to people speaking in language that is exclusionary and discriminatory against the other side, I am afraid that some of it comes very strongly from extreme right-wing Jewish settlers.

[Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)]

I loathe Itamar Ben-Gvir and his rhetoric and want to see that sort of rhetoric out of Israel and out of everywhere. But let us be real: when people opposed apartheid, they were opposing a policy of the South African Government. What BDS wants is not to change the policy of Israel, but to change the existence of Israel by destroying it.

The Bill singles out Israel because Israel is always singled out. It is quite right, therefore, that, if a future Minister wants to change that policy to allow people to boycott Israel and give succour to the world’s oldest hatred, he or she should have to account for their actions at the Dispatch Box.

I have no doubt that improvements can be made to the Bill. I look forward to working with many others in doing so, especially on the international law point, but, for the reasons that I have given, I give the Bill my full support.

Nationality and Borders Bill

Debate between Lord Wolfson of Tredegar and Baroness Kennedy of Shaws

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Report stage
Wednesday 2nd March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab)]

Will the noble Lord give way?

[Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)]

I am not sure that one generally takes questions on Report. I am newer than the noble Baroness, and I do not want to be rude; equally, I want to maintain the approach of the House.

Domestic Abuse Bill

Debate between Lord Wolfson of Tredegar and Baroness Kennedy of Shaws

Wednesday 21st April 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)]

As I explained, the review’s terms of reference are being set out. The date will depend on how broad the review is, which will obviously affect the date by which it reports. Certainly, as soon as there is a date fixed or anticipated, I can perhaps write to the noble Baroness to inform her of it.

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I am of course disappointed that there has not been any movement—because the suggestion of there being a review in relation to the defences was posited last week, and I had hoped that, in the interim, we might have heard that some movement had taken place behind the scenes. Given that the terms of reference have not been finalised, I will write to the Lord Chancellor and seek to persuade him that the terms of reference might extend to a look at the defences as well as the sentencing in homicide cases where there is a background of domestic violence or abuse.

As I indicated, I will not press this Motion. I beg leave to withdraw it, but I ask that the good offices of the Lord Chancellor’s Department might be open to some reconsideration.

Domestic Abuse Bill

Debate between Lord Wolfson of Tredegar and Baroness Kennedy of Shaws

Committee stage & Committee: 4th sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 4th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 3rd February 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, for those various questions. On the issue of the person’s circumstances, I hope I set that position out in my reply. Perhaps it is the sort of point I could set out to her in writing in a couple of paragraphs, if she would not mind.

We are concerned when defences may be being misused; I made it clear that there are some concerns with the victims of slavery defence in that context. On the last point, which I think the noble Baroness accepted was somewhat rhetorical, she is certainly right that we always seek a balance. The point she makes that the law must keep up with the expectations of civil society is a profound one; it is, indeed, one of the big advantages of the common law. I am sure, therefore, that the issues raised by these amendments will continue to be discussed. The question before the Committee this evening is whether the legislature should provide for explicit statutory defences in these terms. For the reasons I have sought to set out, in my opinion, it should not.

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I should tell the Committee that I turned a page too soon in my opening address on these amendments. I did not have the chance to really lay out the second of the statutory defences I am promoting, in Amendment 140.

I regret that I used the term “read-across,” because there are always lawyers who will use language literally. Of course, I did not mean it is an absolute read-across to talk about a householder as distinct from a victim of abuse, but the gravamen is the same. The core of it is about somebody put in fear in the place they want to feel safe: their home. I cannot think of any domestic homicide where I have represented a woman who has killed her partner or ex-partner that did not happen within a household—a place where she was hoping to feel safe but did not, and where experience had taught her to feel fear and terror.

I am afraid I have to say to the Minister that some time, I will take him by the hand into a women’s prison and have him sit down and listen to the accounts of women, by asking them to look him in the eye and tell him their stories. They are so often there because of childhood abuse, having been brought up in abusive households and with direct experience of partner abuse. We could almost empty our prisons without them having women who are there because of their mental health. They are not mentally ill for no reason; almost invariably, it is because of the kind of abuse we have heard about in the debates on this Bill.

I say this respectfully, but the Government are again falling into the trap of saying there are nice victims and bad victims, or of saying: “We will change the law for the good, conforming victims but not for the victims who somehow transgress”. These are the victims who, in the end, defend themselves because they are so in terror for their lives, who are so in fear of a partner that they commit a crime—carrying the drugs from A to B or hiding them in their sock drawer, for example. All I am saying is that there is a double standard in this debate: as soon as you move to that which involves crime and a woman, or anybody who is abused, is in the dock, then suddenly your compassion for the issue of domestic abuse somehow dissipates.

I am very concerned that there is not enough real consideration of the toll of abuse: we are moving into the field where somebody ends up transgressing the law but it is really because of what they are experiencing. If a psychiatrist were to speak to this Committee, they would tell noble Lords that when somebody has experienced fear for their life—we have heard about it in relation to strangulation—and thought “I am going to die at the hands of this person”, and then suddenly smells that level of fear again, in the air, in those circumstances they might take a knife and defend themselves, or take a heavy weapon and hit somebody fatally on the head. The test of “reasonableness” or whether the force was “disproportionate” has to be read in the context. That is why I am saying that it would have to be “grossly disproportionate” for it not to afford a defence of self-defence for somebody who has experienced long-term and serious abuse.

What we are seeing here are the very double standards that are so often experienced by victims of abuse and by women. It goes back to the nature of law and its patriarchal roots. It is about saying that, yes, women who are abused deserve all our compassion but if they overstep the mark, they do not.

Our prisons are full of women who have had these experiences—indeed, I have acted for women who have ended up killing a partner. They do not do it because they suddenly want to wreak vengeance; they do it in exactly the circumstances of the householder who feels in absolute terror for their life.

The failure to make those links and to understand this may be because one has not spent enough time sitting in a cell with people who are coming up for trial. I can tell the Committee that that is the circumstance, and if you can afford, because the Daily Mail demands it of you, to lower the standard of reasonableness and be more flexible for a householder—as indeed you should—then that kind of flexibility should be available to those who have been experiencing long-term abuse.

I ask that the noble Lord look again at the double standard that is operating here. It is partly, of course, because Governments always want to play the law-and-order card and do not want to be seen to be soft on people who commit crime. But very many of the women who end up in prison did what they did because they were under the coercion and control of somebody else, and were absolutely in fear of that person. I really regret the response I have received from my friend, the noble Lord. I ask him to take his great lawyer’s skills and go back to the drawing board again, because he is missing something very important here, which is about justice for women. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment, with great regret, and I am really disappointed in the ministerial response.