Economic Activity of Public Bodies (Overseas Matters) Bill

Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 3rd July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Ind)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (David Simmonds), with his very pleasant reference to the late Ray Davies, who was a wonderful campaigner all his life.

A truly appalling piece of legislation has been put before us. It fits into the bigger picture of anti-democratic legislation that this Government have put forward that reduces the rights of free speech and assembly, over-empowers the police, restricts trade unions and tries to criminalise people who seek a place of safety and asylum on our shores. We have to put it in that context; it is yet another attack on the civil liberties of people in this country.

Over 70 organisations have expressed deep misgivings and opposition to the Bill. Muslim organisations, Jewish organisations, trade unions, human rights organisations, libertarian organisations, religious groups and many others have said that the Bill is wrong and that it will damage the civil liberties of everyone in this country. It gives massive power to the Secretary of State effectively to decide what local authorities can say, think or do. If a local authority, for example, decided it wanted to speak up about human rights in a country when a significant number of people from that country were living in its community—for example, there is a very large Somali community in my constituency—would my local authority not be allowed to say anything about Somalia under the Bill? It would have to seek the permission of the Secretary of State before it could do anything, and so it goes on; there are so many other examples.

Having been in this House since the 1980s, I sat through many debates about South Africa. There were many Members over there on the Government Benches—many—who supported the apartheid regime. They openly supported the apartheid regime, called Mandela a terrorist and asked for the banning of the African National Congress in this country. The ANC had its offices in my borough, and the South West Africa People’s Organisation, which led to the liberation of Namibia, had its offices in my constituency. There were calls to ban them and, when local authorities such as Sheffield led the way on local authority action and opposition to apartheid, they faced sanctions from the Government. Why were they so concerned about it, other than to prevent any effective, peaceful show of loyalty and support to the people of South Africa who were facing the horrors of the apartheid regime?

Under this legislation, what we did over South Africa would be impossible or illegal, so we would end up suspending councillors, prosecuting local authorities and surcharging councillors. I am not sure where it would lead. Some of us supported the people of Chile after General Pinochet seized power, and called for a boycott of Chilean goods and a non-investment policy in Chile; again, that would be illegal. On a different basis, some of us called for a boycott of Californian grapes when Californian grape pickers were facing oppression from police forces in California; again, that would be illegal. All the issues around the world that we are faced with, such as Indonesia’s behaviour in West Papua, the failure of Morocco to allow a referendum on the future of Western Sahara, Saudi Arabia and its war against Yemen—any expression of that would be banned by the Bill. A terrifying Bill has been put forward here today.

Most of the Bill has been framed around Palestine and Israel. Many groups in Israel are frightened by the Bill and what goes with it and also believe that there should be justice for the people of Palestine. I spent Saturday evening talking to Mustafa Barghouti of the Palestinian National Initiative, who believes in non-violent resistance to the occupation. He pointed out to me—I noted the figures down as he was talking—that, at the moment on the west bank, there are 150 settlements, 70 more settlements are being planned or actually built at present, more than 400,000 Israeli people have been moved into those settlements and it is impossible for Palestinian people to move around their own area of land. The idea that the products made on those settlements that are sold outside should be seen as legitimate products—they are illegal within terms of international law and within terms of EU law. So I just ask that we understand the importance of the right of protest.

Today in Jenin, as an example of the occupation, 14,000 people are in a refugee camp that is less than 0.4 square kilometres—14,000 people in less than half a square kilometre of land. Israel Defense Forces says that it is not targeting civilians. It is impossible to use any kind of weaponry against the population there without targeting civilians. More have died. More bitterness, more hatred and more problems come down the road. Those people all around the world who want to support the Palestinian people are not antisemitic. They are not anti-Israeli groups, but what they do want is justice for the Palestinian people. That surely would be a much better and stronger message to send out from this House today, rather than the attempt to close down free speech in this country.

--- Later in debate ---

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

Reference has been made to Bob Kerslake consistently throughout today. Bob and I were friends. I go back longer than most, because I go back to 1981, when I was a young man and a GLC councillor and Bob was a young man and a GLC officer. I fully concur with all the tributes that have been paid, but I also want to say that he was a good man. He was a very good person and a good friend, and we will miss him.

Let me come on to this debate. I do not want to repeat some of the arguments, but I want to get on record for my constituents why I am voting the way I am this evening. I will vote in solidarity with the amendment, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) on her speech, but I will also be voting against the Bill, because I cannot do anything else.

The debate has largely focused on the specific BDS movement and Israel. Just to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds East (Richard Burgon), I want to talk about the right to boycott, to disinvest and to sanction as an issue. At the weekend I drafted an article, because I wanted to get clear in my own mind the whole issue around boycotts and the past history of the boycott, disinvestment and sanctions movement. To be frank, virtually all of my life I have been involved in some boycott, disinvestment or sanctions campaign, so it was almost like a flashback. Like my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), I was outside the South African embassy when the City of London anti-apartheid group was on a 24-hour permanent picket.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I was arrested there.

[John McDonnell]

He was arrested; I was not. I was there on Christmas day simply singing carols.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

You got off lightly.

[John McDonnell]

I got off lightly. All we were singing for was the release of Nelson Mandela.

For the other one, I plead guilty. I was one of the organisers of the demonstrations over a decade ago against the royal visit of the Saudi leaders. We were calling for no public contracts to be awarded to companies operating in Saudi Arabia, because at that time they were beheading gay people for being gay. That was later focused on military support from this country for the Saudi attacks on Yemen. The list of BDS campaigns that I have supported goes on and on. I campaigned against the Bahraini regime and its ongoing brutal repression of the country’s democratic movement, and the continued imprisonment of opposition political leaders. We have met some of them over the years, and they are still inside.

I have campaigned against the Sri Lankan Administration owing to their genocidal attack on the Tamils, with their continued abuse of human rights, their use of torture, the disappearances, and the colonisations of Tamil homelands. Again, I have lost constituents who have been disappeared when they have gone out there. I campaigned for sanctions against the military junta in Myanmar to halt the attacks on the Rohingyas and to demand the freedom of Aung San Suu Kyi.

Yes, I have supported the boycott of goods coming from the Palestinian territories occupied illegally by Israel. The campaign in my constituency was undertaken by young people when the bombings in Gaza were killing young people there. In solidarity, young people in my constituency went round the local shops asking them to check where their goods were coming from and urging them not to sell goods from the occupied territories.

There has been some reference to BDS campaigns being associated with antisemitism. That is not what I have witnessed in my constituency, but if there is evidence that individuals associated with these campaigns are antisemitic, we already have laws to deal with that, and I believe that the full force of the law against racist behaviour should therefore be deployed.

More recently, I have called for sanctions against the Chinese Government for the barbaric treatment of the Uyghurs, and also because they have imprisoned a group of my Unite trade union friends who worked with me on the British Airways campaigns. All they were demanding was adherence to democracy by the Chinese, and they have been inside for two and a half years, without any form of access to their families in many instances.

The common factor in all those campaigns is that they would not have been supported by Government policy. Therefore, they would have been rendered illegal in their demand for action by public authorities to boycott, disinvest and sanction. I agree with the hon. Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (David Simmonds) that there needs to be clarity about who is making foreign policy and what is being referred to, because actually the Bill makes the Secretary of State ex cathedra—infallible—and puts at his whim decisions about what is right and what is wrong across the globe, when Governments in this country have consistently got it significantly wrong. They have certainly not backed such campaigns and would have outlawed them overall.

All those campaigns have focused on pressing for action from Government, local councils, pension funds, private companies and investors. It is interesting that a few hon. Members have mentioned the focus on the local government pension fund. I declare an interest as a member of the local government pension fund, and I think it is up to members of the fund to determine its investment policies. I must say, as a constituency MP, that the campaigns have reflected the diversity of my constituency. There is not a campaign that has not involved a constituent or group of constituents or has not been asked for by my constituents. It is a matter of standing in solidarity.

The advice of every human rights lawyer I have spoken to so far, and all the briefings from human rights groups and trade unionists, have all made it clear that that range of activities will be outlawed and it will be made illegal for decision makers even to talk about the strategy. That is why I oppose the Bill. I am voting against it because we have heard today, right across the House, that not a single clause has stood up to scrutiny. Therefore, I do not believe it can be amended; it is fundamentally flawed and should be defeated.

Let me make one final point, as an aside. We should change the Standing Orders or look at “Erskine May”, because it would have been useful if the Secretary of State coming here to present the Bill had actually read it or addressed the same Bill that we are addressing in this debate. All we saw today was a diatribe of the lowest politics we have seen for a long time, which divides our community unnecessarily and, to be frank, appallingly.