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

Wayne David Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 5th September 2023 Public Bill Committees

[Mark Jenkinson (Workington) (Con)]

As per my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, I have been on a trip to Israel funded by Conservative Friends of Israel, and James Gurd is personally known to me.

[Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)]

I have been to Israel on a visit funded by Labour Friends of Israel, but that was many years ago.

[The Chair]

I suppose, for the sake of completeness, that I should say I too have been on a trip to Israel with Labour Friends of Israel. However, as with Wayne David, that was many years ago.

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[The Chair]

Thank you. I will now bring in the first Member with a question.

[Wayne David]

Q Thank you, Chair, and good morning to you both. Your organisations support the legislation. I have read your submissions, and it is quite clear that you are supportive of the various aspects of it. But can you tell us, hand on heart: if you had a blank sheet of paper before you, would this be the approach that your organisations would be in favour of?

Russell Langer: I judge the legislation based on whether or not it adequately prohibits BDS in public bodies, and I believe it does; whether or not it covers the correct public bodies within its scope, and it does; and whether or not it has the appropriate enforcement powers to ensure that the Bill will have the intended effect, and it does. I did not draft the legislation—I saw the legislation at probably a similar time to you—but on those bases, it is something that I am very comfortable in supporting.

Daniel Sugarman: Similarly, we had no role in drafting the legislation, of course; we saw it at probably around the same time as many of you did. This is a policy area that we have been very interested in for quite a while now, and I think that the Bill as it stands addresses the concerns that we have, although of course if amendments are raised, we will watch them with interest, as will other people.

[Wayne David]

Q But let us say that there had been formal consultation with you before the publication of the draft legislation. Are there any specific points that you would have asked to be included in the legislation and which you do not find before you now?

Russell Langer: If we had amendments that we were proposing, we would have included them in our written submission, and I do not believe either organisation has. I look forward with interest to seeing amendments as they come forward, and we will consider them on their merits, but we are happy, as it stands, with the Bill.

[Wayne David]

Q Could I ask just one further question? I think that both organisations are in favour of a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict. One thing in this legislation that is different from any other legislation that I have seen from this Government or any other British Government is that it equates the state of Israel with the Occupied Palestinian Territories. It has been suggested that that coupling, that equality of treatment, for the first time by a British Government, calls into question their commitment to a two-state solution. What is your view on that?

Daniel Sugarman: I think that we have to accept the circumstances as they currently are, and the circumstances currently are that there are hundreds of thousands of Jewish people living beyond what one might call the green line. There has been already a firm understanding among different parties to peace negotiations that there will have to be land swaps in terms of the future two-state solution that we hope and pray for. Given that that is the case, to penalise people who are living, essentially—there is a difference between hilltop settlements and towns, essentially, connected to Jerusalem where tens of thousands of people live. I think that the way things have worked up until now has led to everything being tarred with the same brush, and I am not sure that that is particularly helpful.

Russell Langer: If I can add this, I disagree with your assessment that the legislation paints it all in the same way. First, very clearly, Israel, the Occupied Palestinian Territories and the Golan heights are listed separately in the Bill, and I am pretty sure that if you were to ask the Israeli Government, they would see that as them being listed separately. But more importantly, the UK Government have been clear that this does not change UK policy. UK policy on Israel and the settlements is something that is a reserved matter for the national Government and something that gets debated in this place on a regular basis. What we do not require is for that debate to happen in every public body around this country, especially when it is usually—it tends to be—the only foreign policy debate that happens in public bodies around the country. I think that is the really key—important—part here. To me, this is not a discussion about settlements. That is a legitimate conversation to happen in Parliament; we do not need to be having that conversation in every public body around this country.

[The Chair]

Thank you. Minister?

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[The Chair]

This is a very short session and three people have signified that they want to ask questions. I will bring in Wayne David. Again, I ask Members to be concise in their questions and our witness to be equally concise in her answers.

[Wayne David]

Q Hannah, we have heard from the JLC and the Board of Deputies of British Jews that they are broadly supportive of the legislation as it stands. You have expressed your concern and reservations about it. Could you objectively give us an indication of what the feeling is among other Jewish organisations in Britain, and also among progressive voices inside Israel itself?

Hannah Weisfeld: Yes. This has been mentioned by colleagues, but there is obviously not a homogeneous opinion about anything inside the Jewish community, as there is not in any faith or minority community. I think it is important to mention, though, that Yachad is a member of the Board of Deputies, and there are a number of other organisations that are members of the Board of Deputies, or whose parent organisations are members of the Jewish Leadership Council, that have been very publicly opposed to this legislation.

I want to draw your attention particularly to the Union of Jewish Students, which is the main Jewish student body in the UK. It represents more than 9,000 students and more than 70 Jewish societies. At its last conference, which I think was in April, it passed a unanimous motion—among all 400 students, there was not one dissenting voice—that said:

“UJS reaffirms its support for the democratic right to non-violently protest and opposes the government’s proposed Boycott Bill which is a curtailment of that right, as well as presenting a risk to British Jewish communities and a setback to Israeli-Palestinian peace.”

One thing that has often been expressed is a concern about what is happening to young Jewish students on campus and the way that BDS affects them and interacts with their student experience. I do not think that there is a clearer expression of concern against this legislation than the one that I have just read to you. That has been echoed by four of the major Jewish youth organisations.

I should say that Jewish youth provision is very organised in the Jewish community. It is where Jewish youth groups produce the future leadership of the Jewish community; I think that if you were to speak to many people running Jewish communal organisations today, that is where they grew up inside the Jewish community. Four of the seven or eight major mainstream ones have come out very publicly against this legislation. Of those, three are the youth organisations of the major religious denominations within our community—the Reform movement, the Liberal movement and the Masorti movement, which are three of the four major strands of Jewish denominations.

So there is not unanimous support for this legislation. We are, obviously, also against it. There is a very ferocious debate, I would say, about the merits of whether the way in which you protect Jewish life in this country is by legislating against opinions that we do not agree with.

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[Nicola Richards]

Q We have heard concerns from others giving evidence today about people who wish to disagree politically with things that happen in Israel. People should have the right to freedom of speech on those matters. In your evidence, however, you make it clear that the aims of BDS are to cut off economic and cultural ties. Do you believe that the nature of BDS is totally different from making a political argument against a Government and policies and activities that happen in another state? Is it that difference that makes it so damaging to the Jewish community, in your view?

James Gurd: We have seen a growth in BDS activities in public bodies over the last decade. As I have referred to before, BDS is uniquely discriminatory in nature, as it only targets Israel.

I first encountered BDS while I was at university. I was at King’s College in ’09, which coincided—as is so often the case when there is conflict in Israel and the Palestinian territories—with a spike in BDS interest. That led to a series of BDS activities, which students were perfectly entitled to do and which they will be able to continue to do under the Bill, but it led to a series of antisemitic incidents on campus. The head of the university had to send around a communication to all members of the student body to call it out. It has since gone mainstream, in the sense that it has left the student body politic and entered public bodies here in the UK, so it has grown as a challenge.

Having said that, it is worth putting it on the record that the Bill will in no way challenge the right of a private individual or a private company to pursue BDS. They are perfectly entitled to do so if they wish.

[Wayne David]

Q I think everyone would agree that foreign policy is a reserved matter in the United Kingdom, but there is a danger of assuming that the United Kingdom is still a unitary state, which it is not. We can talk about foreign policy on the one hand, but on the other hand we talk about procurement policy, much of which is devolved, whether that is to the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Senedd or the Northern Ireland Assembly. There have been frictions, for example over Brexit, about where exactly the line is drawn in terms of a devolution settlement.

Do you see it as a difficulty that there is a lack of clarity in the legislation, because the assumption is that Britain is Britain? Well, Britain is not Britain; Britain is a number of nations. There is a concern, certainly among the Welsh Senedd, that that factor has not been taken into account with regard to the legislation.

I will give a specific example of a concern from Northern Ireland, where public service pension schemes are devolved to the Northern Ireland Assembly. For this legislation to be introduced in Northern Ireland requires a legislative consent motion. The trouble is that there is not a Northern Ireland Assembly sitting to give it. I therefore presume that this legislation would not apply to Northern Ireland. Is that your understanding? Do you think that the issue of devolution and the nations of the United Kingdom is not fully taken into account in the Bill?

James Gurd: I am not sure that I am perfectly placed to comment on Stormont not sitting or on devolution, but I believe that the UK Government are right in taking a UK-wide approach on this. It was a manifesto commitment made in 2019 to all citizens of the United Kingdom.

If we look at the evidence, it is in Wales and Scotland that we have seen perhaps the most BDS activities by public bodies. That includes anything from West Dunbartonshire banning the inclusion of the books of Israeli authors in its libraries in 2009, through to the Labour Welsh Government two years ago, I believe, announcing their intention to release a procurement advice note in relation to economic activities in procurement practices with Israeli settlements, the sole thing identified as a problem within that process. That was subsequently dropped following a backlash from organisations including the Jewish Leadership Council and the Board of Deputies. The First Minister of Wales met them to hear their concerns. This is clearly a very live problem, but it is a UK-wide problem. I would support the UK Government in whatever approach they deemed best to tackle it.

[Wayne David]

Can I ask a brief supplementary?

[The Chair]

Before you do, is there anybody else? [Interruption.] I will bring in Chris Stephens and come back to you if there is time.

[Chris Stephens]

I will yield to Mr David to pursue his supplementary.

[Wayne David]

Q I am someone who has been on record many, many times as being totally opposed to BDS, but I also respect the devolution settlements. Irrespective of the issue, is it not right for the devolved institutions to exercise the powers that they have without an overbearing influence from central Government?

James Gurd: My understanding is that foreign policy is still a reserved matter for His Majesty’s Government in those situations. It is only right and proper that the democratically elected Government of this country get to determine what those foreign policy positions are. To repeat what I said earlier, this will have a very significant effect in countering the divisive nature of BDS in all corners of the United Kingdom.

We have seen the Jewish community on the receiving end of repeated efforts to pursue boycotts of Israel or indeed companies operating within the contested territories—the Occupied Palestinian Territories—but that has often led to the targeting of the Jewish community directly. This is not just an Israel-Palestine issue; it feeds into the persecution of and discrimination against the UK’s Jewish community. The Tricycle Theatre in London cancelled its hosting of the UK Jewish Film Festival one year. As was cited earlier, there was the case of Sainsbury’s in Holborn removing kosher goods from its shelves due to pressure from BDS activities. This is a problem that has been left unaddressed for too long. There is a clear problem, and I believe that this is the right approach to respond to it.