Economic Activity of Public Bodies (Overseas Matters) Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 20th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi. In 2019, she told the BBC that she aimed to be challenging, authentic and brave. Your Lordships’ House often sees her living up to that.

I begin with a statement of the obvious. The Green Party, as a party that believes in democracy, in empowering local communities, in encouraging people to get involved in politics at all levels—to make politics what they do, not have done to them—and in defending the rule of law, is opposed to this Bill. My noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb will focus on the attack on local democracy that the Bill represents, but I have a specific question about local government for the Minister. What happens if a city, town or village is twinned with another and decides for moral or political reasons that it wants to “untwin”? Is divorce to be banned under this Bill? Will a city, town or village be forced to arrange exchanges, even if it does not want to?

The noble Lord, Lord Willetts, made a point that deserves repeating. The first clause of this Bill is entitled:

“Disapproval of foreign state conduct prohibited”.


In George Orwell’s Oceania, that would surely be a banned phrase—far too blunt and obvious in its repression —yet this is what the Government want to make law.

In her introduction, the Minister said that this Bill went through the other place without amendment, as if that were an argument for a light touch in your Lordships’ House. We know that it is instead a glaring red-light signal that we will have a great deal of work to do, not even necessarily in addressing issues that could be described as ideological but in simply tidying up the mess. This mess was noted in the other place—the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, reflected on the many comments across the Chamber about how poorly drafted it was—but no action was taken there. Our archaic, historically assembled and undemocratic constitution is not working at even the most basic level.

The Minister also said that foreign nations might be or are confused about UK foreign policy because of the actions that local councils or nations in these islands choose to take. That reminds me of the heat of the Brexit debate, when some politicians, particularly on the pro-Brexit side, seemed to think that other nations’ diplomats and leaders did not read Twitter or view television. They made pronouncements for local consumption in the UK and were then surprised when they had international impacts.

Please, let us not underestimate the capacity of the peoples of the world to deal with complexity, and to understand that, for example, when Sheffield City Council’s Green Lord Mayor Magid Magid once “banned” Donald Trump from visiting—and good on him—that is not Westminster and that is not UK policy.

However, I now want to turn deadly serious and take us to Gaza, as the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, did, where my latest briefing from Oxfam says that Israel’s attack on the Gaza Strip has killed more than 29,000 people, including well over 12,000 children. Nearly 70,000 people are injured and at least 7,000 are missing, presumably still underneath the rubble. Some 1.5 million people, including half a million children, are sheltering in less than 20% of the Strip without access to shelter, water, food and medical facilities.

The Government are saying, in response to all of that, that local communities, as represented democratically by councils, cannot take peaceful, non-violent action—the kind of action that, as the noble Lord, Lord Hain, so powerfully set out, once helped to change the world in the right direction in the context of apartheid South Africa.

Much has been said about the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement. This is something that the Green Party supports and has done since our democratic conference of members agreed in 2014 to call on

“individuals, organisations, councils and governments to refuse to deal with companies and institutions identified as facilitating Israel’s military capacity, human rights abuses or illegal settlement activity”.

The motion referred to this being how the Green Party could best act on its commitments as an anti-racist party committed to upholding human rights.

Looking over the history of the Green Party, you see that we have long been a leader—going back decades —in defending the rights of the people of Tibet, back when we were a much smaller party than we are now. We continue to speak for the Uighurs under genocidal repression from the same capital, as I have spoken as co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Hong Kong. We have spoken for the victims of the massive human rights abuses of Saudi Arabia, to which we absolutely oppose arms sales, as we oppose arms sales to Israel.

Finally, I want to pick up the issues about the nations of the UK, as a number of other noble Lords have, including the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd. I will use a specific point to make a general one. The Government have claimed that there is no interaction with devolved matters, but how does the Minister explain the interaction with the Well-being of Future Generations Act in Wales?

The well-being of future generations is clearly dependent on a stable, secure, environmentally balanced world—shorthand for the delivery of the sustainable development goals. Even looking at the exemptions in Part 2 of the Schedule to the Bill, there are a lot of potential activities that the Senedd might choose to work with the Government to act against that are not covered under the Schedule.

I am interested in the definition of environmental misconduct in Clause 10(3) of the Bill. The Government have, in other instances, been firmly attached to the view that we can only consider illegal deforestation, for example, yet here we have a clause that refers to any kind of negative environmental impact. Some very interesting things might be done with that.

I have a final, quick question for the Minister. Does the Bill prevent public bodies calling on the Government to change their foreign policy—not taking actions but doing politics? Is that really to be banned, as the Government seem to suggest, as the Government have again and again sought to ban peaceful protest? What fate democracy?