Economic Activity of Public Bodies (Overseas Matters) Bill

Nigel Evans Excerpts

3rd reading
Wednesday 10th January 2024 Commons Chamber

King’s consent signified.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I must inform the House that the reasoned amendment in the name of Keir Starmer has been selected.

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[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. As everybody knows, the debate will come to a conclusion at 6.45 pm. A number of people are trying to catch my eye, so I am thinking that speeches should last not much longer than three minutes, to be frank, depending on the contributions of the Front Benchers.

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[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. There are eight Members standing, so let us start with a limit of four minutes.

[Kit Malthouse (North West Hampshire) (Con)]

Again, as I said on Second Reading and on Report, I speak with a heavy heart and in some dismay, but I tell those on my Front Bench that I will be voting against the Bill this evening.

This Bill obviously comes at a dreadful time, as we mourn the deaths of so many Israelis in heinous circumstances on 7 October and the deaths of so many Palestinians subsequently, many of whom still lie under the rubble. The fact that we in this House would seek to legislate against non-violent protest in such an illiberal and draconian way seems to me tragic at this particular point in time.

As the Secretary of State knows, there are broadly three areas in which I and other colleagues attempted to amend the Bill and have concerns. The first area is, as the shadow Secretary of State pointed out, the separate identification in the Bill of Israel, and its conflation with the occupied territories and the Golan Heights. We believe that contravenes our undertakings at the United Nations and, indeed, in international law, which of course means that the Bill will spend a lot of time in the courts, if it eventually sees the light of day. At the same time, that is a cause of great dismay to our allies in the Arab world, who of course we need at the moment more than ever to join us in seeking peace in the dreadful conflict taking place in the middle east. That we should undermine our own status as fair dealers, as it were, in that part of the world seems to me an unforced error.

The second area of serious concern is obviously the impact on free speech. Again as the shadow Secretary of State pointed out, it seems to me incredible that we are putting elected officials and others in a position where if they just stand up in certain circumstances and say they disagree with the law, they will be committing a criminal act. It seems to me an incredibly illiberal and backward step that we would strike a blow against pluralism in that way. The Bill could stand without those restrictions on free speech, and as the Secretary of State will know, we attempted to amend it to remove them, but that attempt was rebuffed.

The third area is the sheer scale of the Bill’s impact and the number of organisations that will be drawn into it. It is not just the local government pension fund, of which I am a member, but also every university in the land and private sector companies that perform a public service of some kind and are contractors to the Government that will be drawn in. That is important because, as the Secretary of State will know, this subject is very litigious. There are lawyers sympathetic to Israel and those sympathetic to Palestine. From the Secretary of State’s speech, it seems that the Bill is aimed squarely at that particular conflict in this world. Lawyers on both sides will gear up, and an industry will arise to attack, defend, analyse and scrutinise every decision, and all these bodies will have to take significant internal legal advice to deal with it as well. Subjecting them all to this enormous burden seems to me disproportionate to the problem that the Government are trying to address.

Finally, my greatest concern is for the impact on British Jewry. As the Secretary of State has said, he is trying to bring this Bill in to deal with the growth in antisemitism in the United Kingdom, but my view is that the Bill will play entirely into the hands of the antisemites. I imagine that this Bill will be manna to those rotten social media groups and WhatsApp groups that espouse conspiracy theories about Israel and the Jewish community. They will see this, as Jonathan Freedland—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. I call the SNP spokesperson, with no time limit.

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[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. There will be a three-minute limit until the end of the debate.

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[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. I shall be calling the Secretary of State to wind up the debate no later than 6.42 pm, and the Division will take place at 6.45 pm.

[Claudia Webbe (Leicester East) (Ind)]

As we have already heard, the Bill is largely an explicit reaction to the success of Leicester City Council in defeating legal attempts in 2018 to force it to end its boycott of goods from illegal Israeli settlements until Israel complies with international law and ends its illegal occupation. Arguably, Leicester’s stance has been thoroughly vindicated by events over the last few months, during which Israel has launched what South Africa and many United Nations bodies have called “genocidal acts” on Gaza, which have also killed hundreds in the west bank and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, while protecting Israeli settlers as they beat and even kill Palestinians trying to go about their peaceful lives.

While Leicester and other councils have been shown to be doing the right thing, the Government have found themselves yet again on the wrong side of the issue, backing the oppressor against the oppressed and giving the Israeli regime licence to kill tens of thousands. Many of my constituents back the council’s actions and bitterly oppose Israel’s war crimes against Palestinians, and the illegal settlements whose proliferation has only accelerated. The Bill would prevent Leicester and councils like it from carrying out the will of the voters who elected them, tying the hands of the principled and enforcing the will of a Government who have shown that they prize geopolitical and economic ends above the lives of tens of thousands of innocent children, women, teachers, doctors, aid workers and journalists. It is a Bill designed to hobble democracy and decency. It subjugates local British democracy to the actions and wishes of a foreign occupying power. It is clearly also intended to circumvent the will of the court, given that Leicester comprehensively won its case against those trying to overturn its boycott.

The Conservatives appear to have little regard for South Africa’s forensically compiled case against Israel, which has invoked the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide at the International Court of Justice. Tomorrow that case will begin to be heard at The Hague. A boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign lasting almost three decades was a vital factor in the bringing down of South African apartheid. South Africa knows all about the power of such a peaceful but resolute campaign, and is uniquely well placed to bring a case to the International Court of Justice, invoking the genocide convention against Israel. However, despite having only six weeks ago appended their signature to Gambia’s genocide case at the International Court of Justice against Myanmar, specifically because of Myanmar’s treatment of children—

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

Order. The hon. Lady’s time is up.

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[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

I oppose this anti-boycott Bill on several points. It is difficult to see its timing as anything other than a cynical move by the UK Government. The Secretary of State talks about support for community cohesion and a peaceful two-state solution, but this Bill does nothing to achieve either. Instead, it will seriously curtail our civil liberties and undermine devolution. If the volume of correspondence I have received on this Bill is any indication, the people of Glasgow, as ever, see right through the Tories.

My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South West (Chris Stephens) mentioned the granting of the freedom of the city of Glasgow to Nelson Mandela. In 1986, Glasgow District Council renamed St George’s Place as Nelson Mandela Place as a mark of the city’s solidarity with Nelson Mandela, who was still imprisoned at the time. The point was that the South African consulate was located on the street and was forced to use an address bearing the name of South Africa’s most high-profile political prisoner.

This act of international resistance would simply not have been possible if this legislation had been in place in 1986 as, at that time, the UK Government were still refusing to condemn apartheid. Who would want to speak with one voice when that was what the UK Government were saying on Scotland’s behalf? Indeed, even discussion of such an act would have been unlikely to take place under clause 4’s gagging effect. According to Liberty:

“In practice, a public body seeking to comply with the Bill is likely to take steps to distance itself from anything which suggests that it holds any political or moral views as to the conduct of foreign states, for fear that it could be found to be in breach of the ban or the related prohibition on statements.”

This legislation will undoubtedly alter the executive competence of Scottish Ministers and should be opposed by all of those who value devolution.

The provisions in this Bill are disproportionate and, frankly, unnecessary. The Bill hands sweeping powers to the Secretary of State and the Treasury to request information from the devolved Administrations to assess whether a breach of the boycott ban or gagging clause has occurred and to impose a compliance notice. This is a huge overstep. There are already significant protections in Scottish procurement legislation for bidders from countries where a relevant trade agreement exists. It is not clear what problem the UK Government are trying to fix with this Bill. Worse, the Bill makes it unlawful for Scottish Ministers even to publish a statement that they would have acted in a certain way if not curtailed by these measures. The legislative consent memorandum published by the Deputy First Minister describes this as an “assault on democratic expression”.

As we head into an election year, the Prime Minister is affirming that the legacy he and his predecessors will leave behind will be one of a democracy in tatters, faith in public institutions annihilated and our hard-won rights stripped bare. It is increasingly the case that the only hope left for people in Scotland to protect our democratic freedoms is the hope of an independent Scotland.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I call Miriam Cates, to speak until 6.42 pm.

[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.