Economic Activity of Public Bodies (Overseas Matters) Bill

Margaret Hodge Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 3rd July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Dame Margaret Hodge (Barking) (Lab)]

I am afraid I completely disagree with the hon. Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy). The Bill reflects what is wrong in politics today.

The Government have put forward legislation that is flawed, poorly drafted, and will have damaging consequences both here and abroad. They have not done it to support Israel, to demonstrate solidarity with the Jewish community, or to show they really care about undermining the BDS movement. They simply want to set a political trap for Labour. By putting their crude party political interests above the public interest, they confirm what voters think about us: that politicians waste time on childish political games rather than trying to make the world a better place. It is that behaviour that leads to a loss of trust. The Bill is not a considered attempt to bring about peace, provide better security for Israel or respond to the threats posed by BDS. It is about using Jews as a pawn in the Government’s political game. To debate the Bill on the day that violence has flared up again in the west bank is a solemn reminder of why this really matters. I say to the Government: our voters have had enough of that sort of politics, and so have I.

Like many who oppose this legislation, I am a proud Zionist. I oppose the divisive and at times antisemitic BDS campaigns. I will always fight antisemitism, whenever and wherever it rears its ugly head. Action is needed, but the Bill will do more harm than good. So what is wrong with it? First, it singles out Israel. Many supporters of Israel rightly feel that hostile campaigners single out the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and that the same level of attack is not meted out to Myanmar, for example, or to China for its treatment of the Uyghurs. The Bill plays into the hands of antisemites by doing the one thing we should never, ever do: single out Israel as the one place that can never be boycotted. No other country is named. If the Bill is passed, I fear—and know from my own post box—that it will have the unintended consequence of increasing anti-Jew hatred in Britain. We have seen the letter to the Prime Minister from Uyghur exiles opposing the Bill, because it will affect them and make it impossible to boycott goods from China. What thought have the Government given to ethical concerns that public bodies may have about, for instance, the Ugandan Government and their treatment of the LGBT community? By singling out Israel, the Bill pits the mainstream Jewish community against every other valiant human rights campaign, and does so in a way and at a time that will make peace in the region more difficult.

I returned recently from Israel, where I saw the chaos being wrought by the extreme actions of the present Government. From undermining democracy with attacks on judicial independence to the untrammelled expansion of settlements in the occupied territories, Israel has never been more divided and Israeli politics has never felt more broken. The best thing Britain can do is to put diplomatic pressure on the Israeli Government to abandon the judicial reforms and de-escalate the violence. The Bill will deliver the complete opposite. It will be heralded by the Netanyahu Government as a ringing endorsement of their actions. It will send the wrong message at the wrong time.

Like others, I reject the approach of BDS to Israel. Its actions encourage hatred between communities and too often its supporters are antisemitic in what they say. Wrongdoing is never defeated by stifling free speech and open debate, and that is what the Bill does. It prohibits elected public officers from even making statements suggesting that they support boycotts in any state. Clause 4 is a gagging clause, and arguments are never won by suppressing democratic debate. I learnt that fighting the British National party in the 2010 general election. I did not beat Nick Griffin by refusing to engage with him. It was by engaging publicly, by his appearance on “Question Time”, and by allowing him free speech that we exposed what a vile, divisive, racist party he led. Unmasking him through debate helped us to smash him at the ballot box. The Government have just legislated to enshrine free speech in our universities, but are now cancelling the freedom of elected officials in this grubby little Bill. Were they really committed to tackling the BDS problem, they would support our reasoned amendment which would ensure that decisions public authorities took on procurement and investment would be consistently applied to all countries. Israel would not be singled out.

I spent years as a councillor. The idea that local politicians should not express views on either national or international issues is deeply arrogant. We stand for public office because of our political principles, and that is true whether one is a back-bench councillor or a Cabinet Minister. The idea that the two elected positions differ in their democratic status is plain wrong. It is a typical, hugely centralising move by the Government that puts yet another nail in the coffin of devolution. On those grounds alone, the Bill should be opposed. I was in local government when anti-apartheid was a strong movement. Our council joined many others to boycott South Africa. Margaret Thatcher opposed those boycotts in the name of economic liberalism and introduced legislation in 1988 similar to that proposed today. As we now know, that legislation proved ineffective, but the Government seem incapable of learning the lessons of history.

I urge Members to support the amendment moved by my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy). It provides a fair and pragmatic response to the potential damage that BDS could bring to Israel. The Minister may claim to be promoting the Bill in the name of our community, but it fails to protect or advance the interests of the Jewish community: it promotes community discord rather than encouraging community cohesion; it encourages conflict rather than inspiring peace; it cancels free speech rather than promoting democratic debate; it is another centralising move at the expense of localism; and it provides support for the extremist actions of the present Israeli Government, rather than using our influence to express our concerns and calm things down in the middle east. It is a bad, bad Bill. As one of the few Jews on the Opposition Benches, as a committed Zionist and as someone who stands with my community in desperately wanting a peace in the region that brings security to Israel, I ask the Government: please think again.

Economic Activity of Public Bodies (Overseas Matters) Bill

Margaret Hodge Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 25th October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Dame Margaret Hodge (Barking) (Lab)]

This was a dreadful piece of legislation when we debated it on Second Reading, and it returns to us on Report in an equally dreadful state. In July, on Second Reading, I said that the Bill was being introduced at the wrong time, given the violence and unrest taking place in the region. Never in my worst nightmares did I think that we would experience the brutal, inhumane and indiscriminate massacre that was unleashed on innocent Israeli civilians on 7 October, and the subsequent humanitarian catastrophe that we are now witnessing in Gaza. To bring this wrong-headed, poorly drafted and politically motivated Bill back to the House in the midst of these horrors—horrors that we are seeing every hour of the day and every hour of the night, on our television screens and on social media—is an act of complete irresponsibility and unbelievable foolishness.

I speak as a proud Jew; I speak as a strong supporter of Israel, a committed Zionist; and I speak as someone who opposes the BDS movement and believes that its intent is to try to destroy the state of Israel. But I do not speak on my own; I know that I speak in the name of thousands of Jews in Britain, who are not always represented in this House—particularly by some Jewish Members in the House—and for millions of Jews in Israel. I simply ask the Minister—and the Secretary of State, who is now in his place—to please withdraw this nasty Bill and come back in the autumn with a properly considered proposal that can be accepted by us all.

This is an emotional time to us all—it is for me—but I urge Ministers: we should all be working together at this time. Every MP in this House should be working to calm things down in the middle east, to contain conflict, to secure the release of hostages and to stop the humanitarian catastrophe we are seeing in Gaza. We should not be seeking to divide Members now.

I put it to Ministers that the Bill contains proposals that will only heighten tensions between communities. Work by the Community Security Trust shows us that there has been a 651% increase in antisemitic attacks from 7 to 20 October. My own family and my own grandchildren have been subject to such attacks, and I know what difficulty this brings to many, many families in this country. The Bill will only deepen the hostilities. It will not help our communities; it will only strengthen the polarisation that is already so evident. We see it in our schools, in our universities and in our workplaces.

The Bill will not help Israel as it seeks to defend itself against an existential threat. It will simply become just one more thing to enrage those people who oppose the state of Israel. It will not help Jews at all as we struggle to come to terms with the pogrom that took place in the kibbutzim and the music festival some two weeks ago. It will not help us as we all struggle to find a route to peace that allows Israel to defend itself without inflicting intolerable hardship on Palestinians, who have also become the victims of Hamas’s terrorist activity. I plead with the Government to withdraw this legislation and to help us to work together.

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

I appreciate the remarks that the right hon. Lady is making—she speaks with some authority because of her background—but I fail to see the logic of her point that a Bill that prevents local authorities deliberately highlighting their opposition to the existence of the state of Israel, and boycotting goods from it, is likely to lead to bad community relations. Surely stopping local authorities acting in such a partisan way will help to establish better community relations.

[Dame Margaret Hodge]

I beg to differ with what the right hon. Gentleman says, because the Bill in itself is so contentious that it will not actually stop activity, but encourage those who want to argue against the state of Israel and want to argue against what is currently happening in the Israeli-Palestinian war. It will give them added strength, so I simply disagree with him. At a time like this, the worst thing we can do is introduce contentious legislation.

[Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)]

I respect the right hon. Lady for her views, but just on that last point, the idea that we should not do something because the people who hate Israel will be even angrier about it does not seem to me to be a very credible argument. These people were out in front of the embassy in the immediate aftermath of the attacks demanding boycotts of Israel, before Israel even had time to respond. Is it really a credible argument that we should not do this because it might make the people who hate Israel even angrier?

[Dame Margaret Hodge]

I hope that as I develop my argument the hon. Member will listen, because it is the flaws in the Bill that I think actually damage its intention, which is to limit and deal with the evils of the BDS movement. I said a little earlier that I oppose the BDS movement. I recognise that the BDS movement probably has the intention of trying to destroy the state of Israel. I want to tackle that, but I think that doing so in the way that is proposed in this legislation will simply damage that intent, not meet it. I think maybe that is where he and I differ.

The Bill is flawed in so many ways. The main reason is that it is not designed to tackle a problem; it is designed to score a crude party political point, as I said on Second Reading. I am afraid that the Secretary of State himself gave the game away on that occasion, when he said:

“The question for every Member of this House is whether they stand with us against antisemitism or not.”—[Official Report, 3 July 2023; Vol. 735, c. 591.]

I respectfully say to him that that is not the question, but it does lay bare the truth about the Bill. The Government believe that they have set a trap for the Opposition: if we speak against the Bill, they will try to paint us as antisemites. But I say to the Government that if they pass the Bill in its current form, it is they who will be encouraging antisemitism by fuelling hatred. They will be encouraging antisemitism by specifying on the face of the Bill only one country where the boycott of goods would be illegal, simply confirming in people’s minds that Israel and the Israel-Palestine conflict is a special case, different from all the other cases around. That is a constant problem, a constant issue that is raised with me by people who are worried and concerned—over time, not particularly in relation to the war as it stands—about attitudes in the UK to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Everybody says, “Why pick on Israel?”

So why do the Government now select Israel? It is they who are encouraging antisemitism by gagging free speech in our universities and council chambers. It is they who are encouraging antisemitism by trampling on the democratic rights of local politicians. It is an incredible arrogance for us as MPs to sit here and think that somehow we are better than, or different from, locally elected councillors who also have political views and who also carry out important democratic jobs in their councils.

It is the Government who are encouraging antisemitism by ignoring our obligations under the UN Security Council. It is they who are encouraging antisemitism—and I say this on the basis of my experience of fighting the British National party in Barking from 2006 until the general election in 2010—by refusing to engage in an open debate. By closing the debate, they give added credibility to the idea that those who seek to destroy the state of Israel are somehow wronged.

[Stephen Crabb]

As the right hon. Lady knows, I have a huge amount of respect for her, and she speaks on these issues with an authority with which many of us cannot speak about them. She knows better than anyone that a tide of vile antisemitism has been unleashed in the country. Last week, some of us heard from Jewish students who were afraid to give their surnames because they were afraid of giving away their Jewish identity—afraid to admit that they were Jewish. One said that they felt as if Jews were being pushed out of British universities. If July was not a good time to introduce legislation to draw a line in the sand, and if now is an even worse time, when is a good time to make a stand on behalf of Jewish people who are at risk at this time?

[Dame Margaret Hodge]

Let me start by saying that the growth of antisemitism on the streets and in our communities is absolutely terrible. It is affecting some of the youngest people in my own family, and it is dreadful to observe the impact that it has on young children. So I am completely with the right hon. Gentleman on that. My point is that the legislation is so flawed that it does not meet its intent. I would love to work with Ministers, and with Members across the House, to produce a piece of legislation that would tackle the issue that we know exists in relation to BDS, but would do so in a way that was not contentious. It does not have to be like this; we could do it in another way, and doing that as soon possible would be a really good thing to do.

[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

Surely this is the point that my right hon. Friend is making. Surely the answer to the question asked by the right hon. Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Stephen Crabb) is that a good time would be a time when those of good will had had a sufficient opportunity to engage in the necessary discussions to find a consensus that would lead to an acceptable and sensible piece of legislation.

[Dame Margaret Hodge]

My hon. Friend makes a very valid point, and I am grateful to him for his intervention.

I do feel really emotional about today. It is, I think, an emotional day for many of us in the Chamber. Let me just say this to the Secretary of State. He is trying to put forward legislation in the name of the Jewish community, but he is not doing so in my name, or in the name of literally thousands of people I talk to here in the UK who are all good Jews, proud of their Jewish identity. I also know from my conversations with family, friends and colleagues in Israel that there are many there who also think that this is a poor piece of legislation. I plead with the Secretary of State please, please to withdraw the Bill, which I think would be more damaging than helpful, and to engage in the sort of debate that has been suggested by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe), which could bring us to a mutually agreed conclusion, reaching the objective that we all want.

[Several hon. Members rose—]