20:24 Andy McDonald (Labour)

The Bill will be a disaster for the environment and the drive to net zero, by withdrawing the freedom of public bodies to boycott countries that pollute our environment. As for Palestine, which has been the subject of a lot of attention in this debate, the legal opinion of Richard Hermer KC, commissioned by Labour Front Benchers, states that

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20:55 Imran Hussain (Labour)

The Bill undermines the ability of public bodies and civic society to divest from those who are harming our environment and driving climate change. It provides the Government with unprecedented and deeply alarming powers of enforcement that curtail freedom of expression and democracy by gagging public bodies that have the audacity to speak and act on their conscience. It forces public bodies and civic society to kneel, against their own moral convictions, to the Secretary of State’s foreign policy.

This rotten, unworkable and dangerous Bill is an alarming overreach of Government powers that breaks the UK’s international obligations and undermines efforts to protect our environment and fight climate change. It protects human rights abusers in countless nations and gags democratically elected local representatives. We cannot pick and choose which human rights abuses to act on and which to turn a blind eye to. Let me be clear: human rights are a universal obligation and a universal right. It is time the UK Government accepted that. I will therefore be standing up, as I always have done, for democracy, for our environment and for human rights by voting for today’s amendment that will reject the Bill.

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21:27 The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Felicity Buchan)

Many Members have mentioned clause 4. I reassure Members that clause 4 only prevents public authorities from making statements of intent to boycott or divest. It does not prevent public bodies from disagreeing with this legislation. The Bill does not ban ethical, religious or socially conscious funds, so, for instance, climate change funds can continue with the Bill unless there are issues that are country-specific.

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