Labour MPs have led a wide-ranging attack on the government’s plans to stop local councils and public bodies boycotting Israel.
They said guidelines unveiled by Cabinet Office Minister Matt Hancock last month, which leave authorities open to fines if they target Israel, were an attack on local democracy.
The MPs made their objections known during a bad-tempered debate in Parliament’s Westminster Hall on Tuesday.
Led by Richard Burden, Labour MP for Birmingham Northfield, they complained that there had been no parliamentary scrutiny of the plan, and repeatedly attacked Mr Hancock for unveiling the details in a press conference with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a trip to the country rather than in the House of Commons.
Mr Burden said: “It simply is not acceptable for councils, pension funds or other public institutions to feel threatened away from acting in line with their best judgments, in line with their duties, as a result of innuendo broadcast by the Cabinet Office Minister at the Conservative Party conference — or indeed, broadcast more recently in Israel.”
Labour Friends of Palestine vice-chair Andy Slaughter said the plan revealed by the Cabinet Office was at odds with the guidance on West Bank settlements provided by the Foreign Office.
He added: “Let us remember what we are talking about here: theft of land, occupation, colonisation, and the arbitrary detention of many thousands of Palestinians. Those are crimes in international law as great as anything that happened in South Africa.”
Clive Betts, MP for Sheffield South East, said he had visited the West Bank and Jerusalem with the UK branch of Fatah.
He asked: “Can the minister explain what he thinks the effect will be on race relations in my constituency, which has a large number of people of Muslim faith from a background of Pakistan, Bangladesh, Yemen, Somalia and Somaliland?
“What would be the impact on them if they saw their council tax being used to buy goods from the illegal Israeli settlements? How could that possibly be good for community relations?”
Conservative Hendon MP Matthew Offord attacked the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement and said the debate had “more to do with cheap political point scoring than with the lives of individuals”.
He said the BDS movement “has an antisemitic foundation”.
“The BDS movement only seeks to harm Israel, with little consideration of how its actions will affect the livelihood of Palestinians, even though Palestinians employed by Israeli companies enjoy substantially higher wages and improved living conditions than those employed elsewhere,” Dr Offord said.
His fellow Tory, Robert Jenrick, said the issue threatened community unity.
“It is worth recognising that the BDS movement has an impact on community cohesion, which is a negative one for many, particularly Israelis living in the United Kingdom and the Jewish community.
“Not everybody, clearly – that would be an outrageous oversimplification – but a number of those involved in the BDS movement are linked to intolerance and to antisemitic behaviour, and they make life extremely unpleasant for Jewish people living in our communities.”
Cabinet Office Secretary John Penrose outlined the government’s position and said that while it was “clear that the settlements themselves are absolutely illegal… that does not necessarily mean that activities undertaken by firms that happen to be based there are themselves automatically illegal”.
He added: “Public policy that includes decisions on whether to impose government sanctions on other countries is a matter reserved for central government.
“We are devolving a great deal down to local government and other parliaments within the UK, but foreign policy, particularly sanctions against other countries, is a matter still reserved for central government.”
