Economic Activity of Public Bodies (Overseas Matters) Bill

David Jones Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 25th October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham). I, too, wish to speak in particular about amendment 7, tabled by the hon. Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse).

It is with a heavy heart that I am taking part in this debate. I was half minded not to do so, because now is not the time. The impact of the awful violence in Israel and Palestine on communities across the world cannot be underestimated, but the answer is not to debate the Bill right now. By all means let us have some space, some time: there have only been statements, and we have not had a chance to talk about it. By all means let us do that, but not this. It was unwise even to table the debate for this week, and on Monday I urged the Prime Minister to change his mind. In his response, he spoke about the importance of not undermining “community cohesion”. I politely suggest that if a Government do not want to undermine community cohesion, the last thing they should do is introduce a Bill such as this.

May I associate myself with the arguments advanced by the right hon. Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge)? What she said was exactly what members of my Jewish community have said to me. They are appalled that the Government are choosing to play politics at this time. The Bill was divisive at the best of times, and the fact is that this is the worst of times. That holds true regardless of what we may think of the Bill’s contents. The Liberal Democrats are on the record as registering our opposition to specific clauses on Second Reading, but I am here primarily to talk about the timing.

Amendment 7 cuts to the chase. It addresses the fact that on the face of the Bill, in clause 3, is a reference to the conflict in Israel and Palestine—a conflict that has cost thousands of innocent lives over the past three weeks, and a conflict in respect of which intense diplomacy is required. I am shocked that the Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister, having toured the middle east and having understood the strength of feeling but also the sensitivities, have decided that this in any way helps them to do their very important jobs. Make no mistake: those leaders in the Arab world are watching what is happening here today, and I do not think that it shows us in the best light. If the Prime Minister backs two states and wants to take any sort of lead, he needs to mean it.

I am sorry to say that arranging for this Bill to be debated this week is not the mark of a statesman. It is a disgrace. It is a disgrace because this conflict is affecting families across the UK as well as those abroad. Maybe they are fearful of becoming the victims of hate crime. We have seen a dreadful rise in antisemitism and Islamophobia over the last three weeks. The Community Security Trust has recorded the highest ever number of antisemitic incidents across this 17-day period. Or maybe they are fearful for their family in the region. I have spoken many times already about my fears for my extended family in Gaza. Or maybe they are fearful for their loved ones who are being held hostage by Hamas. If we are going to engage in this conflict, we should speak about how to get those hostages freed.

Earlier this week, I and my party leader met some of those families, including the aunt of Ariel and Kfir, who are four years old and nine months old. I was disgusted to see a picture of four-year-old Ariel defaced with horns and Hitler imagery at a bus stop in Finchley this morning—an utterly grotesque act. I hope the perpetrators are caught and the full force of the law is applied. This hateful antisemitism has no place in our society, and that is not up for debate.

On Palestinians, we should be speaking about the situation on the ground in Gaza and how we can get aid in. Children in Gaza are writing their names on their hands so that if they are killed, they can be buried with their families. I attended a vigil yesterday where we mourned those innocent children whose lives have been needlessly lost. It is not right that innocent Palestinians are being held accountable for Hamas’s atrocities.

I have heard arguments, primarily from the Government Benches, that Hamas are purportedly telling people not to move and find safety, but that is not what I am hearing—certainly not from my own family. I find it deeply offensive for people to suggest that Hamas are giving my family orders. The reason people are not moving is that they are frail and cannot move, but even if they do, the south is being bombed too. The conversation has changed in Gaza. No longer do they ask, “Where do I go to be safe?”. The question now is, “Where do I go to die?”. So how are we to facilitate releasing those hostages? How are we to safeguard innocent civilian lives? It is through a humanitarian ceasefire. That is a position backed by the Pope, the Archbishop of Canterbury, United States Secretary of State Blinken and—finally, it seems—the Government this morning.

What the House should be doing at this time is digging deep into our humanity and our compassion. It is a time for leadership, for soothing words and for calm to bring people together—all people, directly affected or not—and to demonstrate, by what we do here, how to let the light pierce into the darkness and despair. So I support amendment 7 wholeheartedly and I believe that this place can and should offer more than division.

Let me make my final point very clearly. I do not want something like this to drive a wedge between any Members in this House and our Jewish community. I stood with members of my Jewish community in Oxford in the first week of the attack and I grieved with them. We shed tears together. I stand shoulder to shoulder with them now. We all stand shoulder to shoulder with them now. I say to those Members who suggest that I should pick a side or, even worse, that by not voting with the Government today I am against peace: how dare they? I will tell them what I am on the side of. I am on the side of basic humanity. I am on the side of those who want to bring consensus. I am on the side of the Israeli community, the Palestinian community and the Jewish, Muslim and Christian communities. This is a tragedy that affects the whole world, and I say to this Government: do better.

[Mr David Jones (Clwyd West) (Con)]

I support the amendments in the name of my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse) and wish to speak specifically to amendments 7 and 3.

This Bill was introduced pursuant to a Conservative manifesto commitment at the last general election,

“to ban public bodies from imposing their own direct or indirect boycotts, disinvestment or sanctions campaigns against foreign countries.”

It is important to note that the wording of that commitment is not country-specific. It is agnostic. But it is very clear from the debate thus far, most particularly on Second Reading but also today, that the measures contained in the Bill are aimed primarily at the BDS campaign that has for some two decades targeted the state of Israel. This is quite proper. Foreign policy in this country, as other hon. Members have said, should be determined by the Government of this country, not by local authorities or other public bodies.

The Bill is broadly drawn, except in one respect, which paradoxically robs it of its breadth. It contains a specific measure to prevent any attempt at a later date to modify its provisions in respect of the conduct of the Government of Israel in relation to the territory of Israel, the Occupied Palestinian Territories and the occupied Golan Heights. It is clear from the Secretary of State’s remarks on Second Reading that the principal mischief that the Government intend to target is the undoubted evil of antisemitism and antisemitic behaviour, which have been among the most regrettable—in fact, deplorable—consequences of the BDS campaign. Clamping down on antisemitism is obviously important. Indeed, it is essential. No one would dispute that it is a good thing. In fact, given current events in and close to Gaza—and, indeed, on the streets of London—doing everything possible to prevent it is very much a priority.

It is more than arguable that in the case of public bodies, there is a legislative vehicle for doing that already, in the shape of the Equality Act 2010, most particularly section 149, which imposes a “public sector equality duty” on such bodies, requiring them to pay

“due regard to the need to foster good relations between persons”

of different religions, ethnicities and nationalities. However, the Government have decided that the Equality Act is insufficient and have decided to go further by effectively outlawing the activities of the BDS movement in relation to Israel only, using this Bill as the vehicle. That is not a country-agnostic ambition of the sort envisaged in the manifesto commitment.

This is a broad Bill with one particularly anomalous element. As such, it throws up problems, which the amendments seek to rectify. Amendment 7 addresses the problem that arises under clause 3(5), which provides that

“The Secretary of State or the Minister for the Cabinet Office may, by regulations, specify a country or territory as one in relation to which section 1 does not apply.”—

in other words, permitting a public body to make a procurement or investment decision in such a way as to express political or moral disapproval of the conduct of a foreign state. Clause 3(7), however, goes on to provide that such regulations may not specify Israel, the Occupied Palestinian Territories or the occupied Golan Heights. The effect of clause 3(7), therefore, is to make it absolutely clear that the sole purpose of this Bill is to give total and unique protection to Israel from BDS activity.

I do not believe that it should be necessary to state that in the Bill. There may well be future circumstances in which it would be appropriate and desirable for public bodies to seek to express disapproval of the conduct of a foreign state. If any regulations were made permitting such conduct, they would self-evidently be done in circumstances in which they were approved of by the Government. However, excepting Israel, the Occupied Palestinian Territories and the occupied Golan Heights from the ministerial power to make such regulations is a very strange approach. In the first place, it is not, as I have said, country neutral, which it should be. The absence of neutrality may indeed cause offence to people from other countries around the world, not least those moderate Islamic states that are doing their very best at the moment to try to defuse the tension that has arisen in the middle east. Moreover, it creates an unacceptable equivalence between the status of the Occupied Palestinian Territories and the Golan Heights, both of which are arguably illegally occupied and are certainly in the view of the Government in the case of the OPTs illegally settled, and that of the sovereign territory of Israel itself. That is a matter, I am afraid, that is likely to attract significant international criticism as it may well put the United Kingdom in breach of its obligations under UN Security Council resolution 2334. Being found to be in breach of that resolution is not something that the Government should be happy to risk.