Economic Activity of Public Bodies (Overseas Matters) Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Wednesday 17th April 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I support all the amendments in this grouping. I think we still have to hear one of them being set out.

The climate emergency is surely the most important issue facing our planet. We should not be responsible for tying the hands of any body, such as a local authority, that might be able to use its position to oppose actions that contribute to environmental degradation. At Second Reading, the Minister, moving onto climate change, said:

“I would like to clarify that the Bill will ban only considerations that are country-specific. It will therefore not prevent public local authorities divesting from fossil fuels or other campaigns that are not country-specific”.—[Official Report, 20/2/24; col. 593.]


But she did not mention the question of legality, because paragraph 10(3) of the schedule makes clear that environmental misconduct means conduct that

“amounts to an offence, whether under the law of a part of the United Kingdom or any other country or territory”.

Yet many of the actions driving the climate emergency are perfectly lawful. Indeed, as Friends of the Earth points out in its briefing, the fact that destructive environmental activity is allowed to continue legally could even be the rationale for a boycott or disinvestment campaign.

So I invite the Minister to reconsider what she said at Second Reading, or, better still, amend the Bill’s schedule so as to remove the reference to an offence under the law and work with other noble Lords whose amendments are in this group to see how we can take on board the concerns that they have raised in those amendments.

[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.

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[Lord Warner (CB)]

Absolutely—I thoroughly agree with the noble Lord, and this comes to my question as to whether the Government have thought this through. I do not know what the penalties will be for breaches of this law, but I can foresee that, on some issues, people will feel so strongly that they will be prepared to pay—you might say it is the cost of trade—the penalties so that they can demonstrate to the Government what they feel about a particular action in a particular country by a particular Government. Have the Minister and the Government thought through what happens if there is a willingness among groups of people to take a stand against this Bill, accepting that they may get some financial penalties and being prepared to pay those penalties because they feel so strongly about a particular issue?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I will try to be brief at this late hour. I spent my entire career studying and writing about foreign policy. The noble Lord, Lord Moylan, was kind enough when he made his speech some months ago to say that, when he joined the Foreign Office, he was told, “You’ve got to read William Wallace’s The Foreign Policy Process in Britain”, before he started work—so I know a little about it.

I emphasise there has always been, and remains, a difference between the approach to foreign policy in the security sense and defence sense—in which it is quite clear one has to have command, central control and therefore real concern about sovereignty—and to trade policy, international investment and procurement, which are usually controlled by a different department, often in competition with the Foreign Office, and in which subordinate entities of government, in most states, also have degrees of latitude. The German Länder pursue different international investment policies. I remarked earlier that the British Government are negotiating trade deals with Washington state, Texas and others within the United States. The idea that all foreign policy in the broadest sense, from immigration through to defence, has to be undertaken by central government is an extreme sovereigntist and unionist case, which I think should not hold.

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

My Lords, I will be very brief. I do not want to repeat some of the excellent points made, but I do have an amendment in this group about requiring a legislative consent Motion. For us, this is primarily an issue of respect. It saddens us: from the internal market Act, relationships between the UK Government and the devolved Governments started to go really badly wrong. It seems to happen again and again. I remember a couple of weeks ago, in this Chamber, the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, referred to the Welsh Government’s desire to work to support the Welsh language as a fascist attitude. That has played on my mind ever since. Things have really deteriorated to such an extent that, in the personal relationships between politicians in the UK Government and the devolved Governments, which politicians used to take pride in putting some effort and work into, nobody seems to even try anymore. Bills such as this one come along where the Government do not seem to care whether it has any legislative consent and do not even try to persuade their colleagues in the devolved Administrations to see the benefits of a particular piece of legislation. That is very sad. I regret that deeply, and the Government really ought to do better.

This is primarily about freedom of expression for people who have been elected in their own right to represent their communities. It is wrong that Clause 4 prohibits statements. We will come on to that later, but they are to be gagged by the Bill, and that is to be regretted. It is a backwards step. We will debate that another day. I hope that noble Lords will understand just how offensive the restrictions in that clause are to elected Governments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

As others have said, the Bill is disproportionate and unnecessary. The Minister and I have had exchanges about things raised by the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, about the Scottish Government having offices in other nations, and he says that this is wrong because foreign policy is the UK Government’s domain, He is right about that—he does not speak for the Labour Party on these issues and is not right in the complete sense on the points that he makes on this. The Government agree and say that this is a terrible problem, that it is confusing for our partners overseas and that something should be done, but they are doing nothing about it. Instead, they feel that this is causing confusion in foreign policy. I just do not believe it. I do not believe that any other Government anywhere in the world is confused about our foreign policy because of some statement that the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, says has been put in a drawer somewhere in Edinburgh, was passed 10 years ago, and is somehow causing such diplomatic confusion. I do not see any evidence of that whatsoever.

It is sad that the Government no longer even try to pretend that they want to work in partnership with devolved Governments. We can do so much better. The UK Government already have sanctions powers, and they are now seeking unnecessarily to fetter and gag devolved Governments. This shows a terrible lack of respect and I regret it very much.