Economic Activity of Public Bodies (Overseas Matters) Bill

Miriam Cates Excerpts

3rd reading
Wednesday 10th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Miriam Cates (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Con)]

I support this legislation, but I find it very sad that we need it. When I first heard about the holocaust as a child at school, I was shocked. I was shocked at the scale of the evil, the horror of what happened to the Jews and the fact that it could have been allowed to happen. As an adult, I have visited Yad Vashem, Auschwitz and the forests in Poland where thousands upon thousands of Jews, including children, were murdered in cold blood by Nazi soldiers because they were Jews.

No one walks away from those sites in any doubt about the potential consequences of antisemitism, but one thing I was sure of before 7 October was that that would never happen again. Surely the world—this country, at least—is alive to the consequences of anti-Jewish attitudes, to the importance of not tolerating antisemitism and to the need for Israel, an Israel that has the same right to exist and to defend itself as any other sovereign nation. But now I am not so convinced that we have learned the lessons of antisemitism. Polling shows shocking levels of support for Hamas among young people here and in the United States. That is being driven by social media, but it is also being fostered—

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

Order. With the leave of the House, I call the Secretary of State.