Economic Activity of Public Bodies (Overseas Matters) Bill (Second sitting)

Nicola Richards Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 5th September 2023 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

This will have to be the last question as we need to conclude at 4.30 pm.

[Nicola Richards (West Bromwich East) (Con)]

Q We heard in earlier evidence that when one BDS campaign against SodaStream was successful, about 500 Palestinians lost their jobs. I was just wondering whether that was the sort of outcome that you would count as positive. What proportion of your members see that as a priority from their union?

Mark Beacon: When it comes to workers’ rights or the situation of workers within the illegal settlements, it is an area we have done substantial work on. We support and provide funding for a trade union called Ma’an, an Israeli trade union, to help them organise workers within the illegal industrial zones. It highlights phenomenal challenges there. Workers are paying extraordinary fees to labour brokers. They are being paid beneath the Israeli minimum wage. They are consistently not getting their labour rights under Israeli law. Health and safety is appalling and so forth.

We also support Kav LaOved, the workers hotline—again, an Israeli NGO—to support and educate workers and campaign for them in the illegal agricultural areas in the occupied west bank. Again, we see the same labour problems there, major health and safety problems, particularly involving people picking dates and the injuries they face, being dumped at checkpoints with injuries and so forth, and major problems with child labour.

The quality of that work is not amazing by any means, and there are major problems, but the other issue is the impact that those settlements have on the prospects of a viable—

[The Chair]

Order. I am sorry to cut you off mid-flow, but that brings us to the end of the allotted time for the Committee to ask questions. On the Committee’s behalf, I thank all our witnesses today, particularly the last two, for all their evidence.

Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned. —(Jacob Young.)