Economic Activity of Public Bodies (Overseas Matters) Bill

Lord Wood of Anfield Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 20th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wood of Anfield (Lab)]

My Lords, it is rare that a Bill with such a prosaic and innocuous title contains within it such varied threats to foundational democratic principles and practices. This is a Bill that, in the name of defending the rights of a particular minority, infringes those rights and the rights of us all, while establishing multiple dangerous precedents.

I start with the logic of the Bill, which involves a sequence of inferences that, frankly, do not make sense to me. It starts with a desire we all share: to counter anti-Semitism. From this, it deduces the wisdom of banning the practice of boycotts of Israel by UK public authorities and associated bodies on the grounds that these practices often promote anti-Semitism. It then executes this ambition, however, by proposing a blanket ban on such bodies taking any moral or political considerations into account in procurement and investment decisions with regard to all states. Then it backtracks and exempts Russia and Belarus from this ban, and then it provides the possibility of exception for other countries to be decided at the discretion of Ministers—but it rules out Israel and the post-1967 Occupied Territories from being included in further exemptions. This is taking legislative convolution to a new level: a multi-tiered sledgehammer that does not even crack the nut. Sadly, however, the Bill’s clunky complexity is its least objectionable feature, because with each clunky step of justification it tramples on more and more rights and freedoms.

First, the Bill straightforwardly erodes precious civil rights to freedom of expression, freedom to campaign and freedom to boycott, which are almost universally recognised by NGOs—including, by the way, by leaders of four Jewish youth groups, the Union of Jewish Students and other Jewish groups. The first tier of this restriction is restricting the right to boycott. This right is not only important in the history of British political campaigns, as the noble Lord, Lord Hain, eloquently remembered and as the noble Lord, Lord Boateng, testified to. It is a protected form of speech and protest in international law, protected by the ECHR in the Baldassi ruling, and it is protected speech under Article 19(2) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

However, the cavalier approach to international law does not stop there because, extraordinarily, the Bill aims to prohibit decision-makers in public bodies from telling us what they would have done if these restrictions were not in force. As the former Conservative Minister Kit Malthouse said in another place during the Bill’s progress there:

“I have never before seen legislation that outlaws disagreement with the law”.—[Official Report, Commons, 3/7/23; col. 619.]


If the Bill ever becomes law, I have no doubt that the compatibility of this principle with Article 10 of the ECHR will be tested very early in the courts—that is, if time can be found to hear the case alongside the litany of other litigation which the Bill will generate.

However, the trampling of rights does not even stop there. As many commented during the passage of the Bill in another place, it undermines the expression of solidarity with groups which are experiencing systematic abuse, persecution and even torture elsewhere, as the noble Lord, Lord Hain, observed; for example, in the case of China with regard to the Uighurs, or Myanmar with regard to the Rohingya.

Further, the partial exemption of certain types of foreign state activity from the list of banned considerations in investment decisions has the effect of generating a new and totally bizarre two-tiered categorisation of human rights. Exception is provided to allow labour rights to be taken into consideration but not torture; bribery, yes, but not genocide. This bizarre legislative edifice is constructing almost by accident a new UK stance on different kinds of human rights abuses that it is appropriate to react to in different ways. It will undermine our credibility, our consistency and our international standing.

What of the principle of a list of countries excluded by law from ministerial discretion to be designated as exempt from these restrictions? The list consists, as other noble Lords have said, only of Israel, the Occupied Palestinian Territories and the occupied Golan Heights. This contradicts not only UN Resolution 2334 but the Government’s own policy towards occupied territories. Its logic is also self-defeating because, prompted by an objection to singling out Israel, it takes steps to single out Israel. As the Guardian’s Jonathan Freedland remarked:

“What is a favourite refrain of the antisemites? That Israel is the one country you’re not ‘allowed’ to criticise. This bill takes a canard and, in the case of boycotts, turns it into the law of the land”.


More generally, our foreign policy will suffer if we embrace the principle in the Bill that the acceptability of actions by other states is not a function of the content of the actions but of whether a state is on a Minister’s list.

On top of these principled concerns, I have a host of more detailed concerns that I hope will be explored in Committee. First, the enforceability of this regime must be seriously in doubt. It relies fundamentally on clarity about, and between, different types of motivation for investment decisions. But distinguishing between these motivations is often far from easy. Areas of the world that are politically volatile also bring with them commercial volatility, disrupted supply chains and nervous investors. In those circumstances, what counts as proper fiduciary responsibility in decision-making and what counts as undue political motivation?

Secondly, I have a set of concerns about education. I will not repeat them because my noble friend Lady Chapman and the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, eloquently described them. However, we will need clarity about whether or not research partnerships, scholarships and other form of financial relationships that UK universities are involved in with institutions abroad are covered by the term “investment”.

Thirdly, the application of the Bill to the Local Government Pension Scheme is a minefield, as my noble friend Lady Young mentioned earlier—in particular in giving the Pensions Regulator a role in supervising good governance, which it has never had previously, with regard to investment decisions. I would like to hear more from the Minister about the steps to ensure that that new competence will be adequately delivered.

In sum, the Bill creates precedents that undermine freedom of expression and the freedom to campaign. It unintentionally creates a new hierarchy within human rights, undermines the integrity of our foreign policy, and shows a cavalier disregard for rights at home and for international law. It is quite a list. It should never see the light of day, but I am a realist and I realise that what will happen is that it will need profound revision so as not to damage the very freedoms it wrongly claims to protect.