Public Service Pensions and Judicial Offices Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Polak and Baroness Janke

Consideration of Commons amendments
Wednesday 9th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Polak (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my noble friend. I will be brief. The UK is Israel’s third largest trading partner, with £2.7 billion-worth of British exports and an overall trade relationship worth £4.8 billion. With improved and growing relations in the Middle East between the Arab world and Israel—the Abraham accords were referred to—and the UK’s very strong connection with Israel, I must say that the BDS campaign is a relic of a past war which is no longer being fought in the region, but rather by a small and divisive minority here in the UK.

Amendment 54, which has passed in the other place, will put an end to the politicisation of public sector pension funds. The main goal of local authorities—in my view as someone who is not a pensions expert—is to improve community cohesion, create local jobs and increase economic growth opportunities in their area. Supporting this amendment will allow the Government to send a clear message that global cohesion on an international scale—and the enhancement of economic growth and opportunity on a local level—should not be jeopardised by the divisive politics of a very small minority.

[Baroness Janke (LD)]

My Lords, I too thank the Minister for his presentation and the noble Lord, Lord Davies, for bringing forward these amendments. I also declare my interest as set out in the register.

As my noble friend Lady Kramer said, Amendment 54 is a crude and oppressive attempt to fetter the discretion of local government pension schemes. It was introduced late and with minimum scrutiny. The Government should not be in the business of directing how local government pension schemes should invest their funds. These funds are set up under strict legal requirements, as we have seen. Their members are very often vocal about wishing to have ethical considerations considered as part of their investments. As far as I can see, schemes do not appear to have been damaged in any way by investments of local government pension schemes.

The job of pension scheme managers should not be to look at UK foreign policy when setting their investment strategy. That really is not their job. Foreign policy changes, and Governments change, so are we really expecting local government pension scheme fund managers to change their long-term investment strategy every time the UK’s foreign policy changes?

As I said, local government pension schemes aspire to invest ethically, with the members of such pension schemes having the right to express their ethical views and to have them taken into account. Why should these people not require ethical considerations? As my noble friend Lady Kramer mentioned, a clear example in the 1980s was disinvestment from South Africa. The then UK Government were obdurate and determined to defend South Africa from financial sanctions despite the violence, discrimination and widespread human rights abuses of apartheid. I, for one, cannot see why pension schemes should not reflect the views of their members when they want to protest against human rights being abused, as was happening in South Africa.

In the mid-1980s one in four Britons were boycotting South African goods. Many local councils followed their local communities and measures were taken to disinvest from South Africa, including pension schemes, and there were boycotts of South African goods and the boycott of Barclays Bank, which pulled out of South Africa. It was certainly said at the time that foreign banks calling in South African loans was one of the reasons given by the South African President that enabled him to agree with his party the release of Nelson Mandela. So I do not accept that pension schemes should not be used for these purposes.

I feel that this is a measure introduced by a Government with an authoritarian record who wish to take more and more powers to themselves and using the whole idea of BDS to justify that. The amendment is also so loosely worded—as my noble friend Lady Kramer has said, it is directions, not advice, that is being given— that it could easily prevent local government pension schemes making prudent investment decisions based on environmental, social and governance considerations, as is part of their code of conduct. For example, the local authority pension scheme of my former authority, Bristol, sought to disinvest from the tobacco industry as a result of the campaign by Smokefree Bristol. I know of local authorities that wish to disinvest from Saudi Arabia on the grounds of arms sales, and others are looking at boycotting investment in China on the basis of its treatment of the Uighurs and its conduct of the affairs of Hong Kong. As my noble friend Lady Sheehan has said, carbon-neutral boycott is now a common principle, and many local authority pension schemes wish to disinvest from further investment in local gas and coal.

We have experienced in other legislation the relentless expansion of government powers. There is an opportunity in this amendment for the Government to interfere in pension scheme investment when it is not in line with their own views—and I have to say that Governments are notoriously slow in catching up with public opinion.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Leigh, for clarifying that criticism of the Government of Israel is not at all anti-Semitic. I would also like to thank the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, for her contribution—although she seemed to imply that if we support this Motion then we are somehow being anti-Semitic. I disagree with the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, with whom I have had the pleasure of working on many pension schemes issues: I do not believe that there is any anti-Semitic intention behind this. I do not see why, if people object to the Israeli Government’s treatment of the human rights of Palestinians, they should not demonstrate that and campaign for disinvestment from Israel if that is part of their beliefs.

The amendment is ill thought-out, badly worded, hastily constructed and has been introduced with no scrutiny, and I do not believe we should support it. If the noble Lord, Lord Davies, moves his amendment and tests the opinion of the House, we will support him.