Economic Activity of Public Bodies (Overseas Matters) Bill

Imran Hussain Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 3rd July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)]

Let me be absolutely clear that the Bill before this House, which should be rejected, is not just bad and unworkable but fundamentally flawed and dangerous. Hon. Members across the House have rightly stated that it does not just prevent public bodies such as local councils involving themselves in foreign policy—as the Government innocently declare—but meddles in the autonomy of local government pension schemes to make the best investment decisions, and swings a wrecking ball through the UK’s obligation to respect international law and countless United Nations resolutions.

The Bill undermines the ability of public bodies and civic society to divest from those who are harming our environment and driving climate change. It provides the Government with unprecedented and deeply alarming powers of enforcement that curtail freedom of expression and democracy by gagging public bodies that have the audacity to speak and act on their conscience. It forces public bodies and civic society to kneel, against their own moral convictions, to the Secretary of State’s foreign policy.

Most alarmingly, by preventing public bodies from adopting positions that deviate from this Government’s foreign policy of turning a blind eye to persecution, oppression and injustice in other countries, the Bill quashes the ability of those individuals, public bodies and members of civic society with any sense of humanity to take a stand against human rights abuses, at a time of rapid increase in those abuses right across the world.

Each of those reasons alone is enough to bin the Bill but, taken together, they make it not only one of the most far-reaching and dangerous pieces of legislation this Government have ever sought to make law, but one of the most repressive. That is why it must be struck down today.

As pointed out by hon. Members across the House, the Bill directly contradicts decades of established UK foreign policy on illegal Israeli settlements built on occupied land. It is astounding that it has to be repeated in this Chamber time and again that settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories are illegal under international law. Why does the Bill not recognise that international position?

Instead of introducing legislation to Parliament that provides cover to the Netanyahu Government’s illegal annexation of Palestinian territory, Ministers must decide whether they agree with the established position of the rest of the international community that the settlements and the Israeli Government’s repeated disregard for international law are illegal. As hon. Members have stated, the Bill as it currently stands is in direct contravention of not just international law but United Nations resolutions.

Many of us fear the anti-democratic precedent the Bill will set. Effectively, if a human rights campaign does not enjoy the support of the Government, it will be criminalised for attempting to bring abuses to light. The Uyghurs in Xinjiang, the Rohingya in Burma, the Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and the Kashmiris in Indian-occupied Kashmir—members of those communities, many of whom are resident in my constituency, have now had their fear doubled. Not only are they witnessing numerous human rights abuses in their countries of origin, they are now being silenced here, too. Indeed, until just recently the UK Government refused to approve sanctions against the Burmese military despite the horrific genocidal campaign it waged against the Rohingya, with Ministers declaring that they did not want to unbalance what existed of Burma’s democratic Government. Instead, it was left to other organisations and groups to lead the resistance against a genocide taking place while the UK Government looked on. The Government are in a better place on that issue today, but we are still left with the question of what happens if there is a return to the same form of democratic Government in Burma that existed before and which allowed the Rohingya genocide to take place. It is clear that Ministers will lift sanctions and force local authorities to do the same through the Bill, leaving the perpetrators of genocide able to escape justice and accountability for their grave crimes against humanity.

The impact the Bill will have on human rights in Indian-occupied Kashmir, where Kashmiris continue to face persecution, oppression and injustice is even more alarming, because it is in this region that UK foreign policy under this Tory Government is not only most unreliable but most spineless. Even as the Indian Government blatantly engage in violent, physical and psychological suppression of any resistance to the military occupation, however peaceful it may be, and seek to deter further opposition to their brutal rule by making an example of campaigners such as Yasin Malik, whose execution Indian prosecutors are now seeking, all the UK Government remain focused on is securing a trade deal with the right-wing Modi Government before the next general election. They could not even bring themselves to object to and boycott, as other countries did, the shameful decision to hold the G20 culture working group summit last month in Srinagar. In the absence of the UK Government stepping up to fulfil their historic, moral and international obligations to the region, it is once again left to local councils and public bodies to do what they can to protect human rights in Indian-occupied Kashmir by refusing to engage with those whose hands are stained with the blood of Kashmiris. Yet under the Bill the Government will put a stop to that and force public bodies to be party to human rights abuses because they think it is in the UK’s best foreign policy interests.

This rotten, unworkable and dangerous Bill is an alarming overreach of Government powers that breaks the UK’s international obligations and undermines efforts to protect our environment and fight climate change. It protects human rights abusers in countless nations and gags democratically elected local representatives. We cannot pick and choose which human rights abuses to act on and which to turn a blind eye to. Let me be clear: human rights are a universal obligation and a universal right. It is time the UK Government accepted that. I will therefore be standing up, as I always have done, for democracy, for our environment and for human rights by voting for today’s amendment that will reject the Bill.