Economic Activity of Public Bodies (Overseas Matters) Bill

Baroness Deech Excerpts

Wednesday 17th April 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I rise to support these amendments and simply emphasise that the whole issue of climate change and environmental degradation is now a very major one, which divides generations. My children care about it much more passionately than my generation does. In the United States on the hard right, there is still a very powerful climate change denial lobby pushing against the inclusion of environmental sustainability and development goals in company statements and so on. So I think it would be wise to widen this part of the schedule, not just to deal with environmental misconduct but to accept some of the language in the various amendments that we have seen. Again, this goes back to the Government. They are thinking of the long term and about long-term planning and public opinion. It would be wise to see what can be done to adjust the language to accommodate the very real concerns which have been expressed.

[Baroness Deech (CB)]

My Lords, environmental matters are of course very serious, but the question is whether boycotts work. The speech by the noble Lord, Lord Hain, shows the determination on the part of some in this House to boycott Israel come what may. However, if you look at the list of the most polluting and environmentally damaged countries in the world, Israel does not feature, and the degradation in Gaza, which is true, started long before the current invasion—it goes back to when Israel quit Gaza in 2005. Now, the issue is boycotts. People are looking for ways to boycott Israel. I have not noticed any suggestion of boycotting, say, China, for its polluting activities.

[Lord Hain (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness. I did not advocate a boycott; that was not my purpose. I was talking about the destruction of the environment in Gaza and the West Bank, and that is not disputable.

[Baroness Deech (CB)]

The environment is bad in Gaza, but this Bill is about boycotts.

Now, no less a moral authority than Helen Suzman said that boycotts do not work. In 1987, she said:

“If there were any chance that sanctions would dismantle apartheid, I would be the first to support them. But reducing South Africa to a wasteland would lead not to a nonracial democracy but to more oppression and misery”.


A boycott, in particular a boycott of the so-called Occupied Territories, would not actually change the international scene as far as a two-state solution goes. The only people who would be hurt are the impoverished Palestinians working in the businesses in the Occupied Territories. This was proven by the SodaStream case. SodaStream closed down because it was thought unacceptable to deal with it because it worked in the Occupied Territories. Hundreds of Palestinians lost their jobs; SodaStream moved to Israel. We have to drop the illusion that a boycott of Israel, or indeed any other country, will achieve anything meaningful, let alone when it is carried out by a local authority as opposed to the Government. Environmental damage is indeed a problem, but I am not sure this Bill is the way to tackle it.

[Lord Pickles (Con)]

My Lords, I shall speak on Amendment 15, moved by the noble Lord, Lord Hain. I take a slightly different view from what has just been said. I think the Committee owes the noble Lord, Lord Hain, some thanks; he has managed to put together what it is like in extremis—how this Bill will be dealt with when it is faced with war. Now, I cannot recall a single war in the history of our planet that did not harm the environment.

I suppose that when we put this thing together, on the facts that the noble Lord, Lord Hain, gave, we are probably going to have to think about how much of the damage was caused by the Gazans. How much of a discount should there be for the amount of damage the Gazans caused? In particular, one of Hamas’s first acts after murdering children was to cut off the electricity and the water supply, and it continued to ensure that anybody that came to try to put back the electricity or restore the water supply faced violence. The pipes that would have been used to improve sanitation and have the flow of clean water were stolen and used to fire rockets into Israel. Some 25% of those rockets fell short, killing Gazans, leaving ordnance around Gaza, particularly in the north.

All the concrete that was there to build roads, hotels and social facilities was stolen by Hamas to build the tunnels. The tunnels in themselves were a great environmental risk, because they were not built to building regulations. They were quite close to the surface; they were beneath and beside houses; they affected the foundations, which meant that any disturbance, whether it be earthquakes or the dropping of bombs, made those houses so much more unsafe and susceptible to collapse.

There is the use of flying incendiary bombs, released by supporters of Hamas across into Israel, designed to burn crops. Burning crops causes all kinds of problems. It seems illogical that Hamas should have done that, but it did it in order to make life difficult for Gazans. That is why it is sitting on so much of the food supply; that is why there are lorries waiting to deliver aid into Gaza, but Hamas will not allow it.

I take exception to the quote relating to the Red Cross; if the Red Cross can go in to make that kind of assessment, it should be able to see the hostages. The Red Cross has made no attempt to meet with the hostages.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hain (Lab)]

My Lords, in responding to the debate I invite everybody who heard what I said, and those who did not hear what I said, to read it in Hansard tomorrow. Did anybody hear me advocate the BDS cause? Did anybody hear me advocate a boycott of the State of Israel? I did not and I never have in any speech in this House or elsewhere. If there is criticism to be made of what I said, I invite noble Lords and Baronesses to focus on what I said rather than what they think I might have said, or what others have said. I think that is fair, frankly, in terms of debate in this House.

I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Deech—many in this House have considerable respect for the role that she plays—that I think she spoiled her argument by bringing in the South African comparison. She quoted Helen Suzman, who played a valiant role in the anti-apartheid struggle—a lone white role in many respects. At the time the noble Baroness quoted her, it was illegal to advocate a boycott or any kind of sanctions against the apartheid state. Indeed, she opposed boycott campaigns against all-white sports tours I organised, but if she had supported them and advocated sanctions, she could have been imprisoned under apartheid law. I would prefer to quote Nelson Mandela, who said that sanctions were very effective in bringing apartheid to its knees, along with other factors, so the noble Baroness spoiled her argument by quoting that.

[Baroness Deech (CB)]

I will be brief because the night is late, and I am provincial and have to get a train. I have done a lot of research into what allegedly changed South Africa, and the majority of the writings were that it was not sanctions. What changed life there was having two leaders of moral stature who were prepared to talk to each other, which we do not have in the Middle East. As far as the noble Lord’s advocacy of boycott goes, I cannot recall when—I think it was way back in March when we started to talk about this Bill—but the noble Lord himself raised the issue of South Africa, and how things had changed there because of a boycott. The inevitable conclusion to be drawn, though I resist the parallel, is that something like that would work in the case of Israel. I do not think it would, as they are not at all similar, but the night is late, and this Bill is not supposed to be about it.

[Lord Hain (Lab)]

I agree that they are not that similar, and I have never suggested that they are. The reason I brought in the South Africa comparison, and majored on it, is that legal opinion says that this Bill would have made the anti-apartheid campaigns of the late 1960s, 1970s and 1980s illegal. That is why I brought the argument into play. It is not to advocate a boycott, disinvestment or sanctions policy against Israel, which I have never done in this House or elsewhere. If noble Lords are going to disagree with me, as they are entitled to do, then they should make the case on the arguments as they stand.

Since the noble Baroness has intervened again on this, I am sure she has read widely on it, and I am not going to disagree with that, but Nelson Mandela did not agree with her. He said that sanctions were critical. They were not the only thing, and I did not say that they were. The internal contradictions of the system, the fact that the economy was almost on the point of collapse by the time that President de Klerk released Nelson Mandela, that the country was on the brink of civil war and facing the abyss in that respect, was why the people who had imprisoned him for 27 years and oppressed his people were forced to negotiate with him, both for his freedom and for that of his people. It was an accumulation of factors, but sanctions were certainly very effective. The noble Baroness spoils her case about Israel by seeking to deny that.

The noble Lord, Lord Pickles, made a strong point that there are others culpable for the environmental destruction, and I have never denied that. He made some important points about the culpability of Hamas as well.