Changes to the Pensions Service Pensions and Judicial Offices Bill will give the Local Government Secretary new powers to direct Local Government Pension Funds not to make decisions that conflict with government foreign and defence policy.
The British government has taken the historic first step in outlawing the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement in the country, Jewish Chronicle reported.
An amendment tabled by former Communities Minister Rob Jenrick has been passed with the government support to stop local authority pension funds from backing BDS sanctions against UK companies connected with Israel, the paper said.
The amendment drew protests from some Labour MPs.
Changes to the Pensions Service Pensions and Judicial Offices Bill will give the Local Government Secretary new powers to direct Local Government Pension Funds not to make decisions that conflict with government foreign and defence policy.
It comes after the Supreme Court, in 2020 overruled a previous attempt by the government to curb BDS in Britain at the end of a four-year legal battle bought by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.
At the time, the government said it was committed to stopping “local boycotts” from being introduced.
Speaking in the parliament, Jenrick said public sector pensions, paid for by the taxpayer and underwritten by the government, were “quite clearly the preserve of the state” and it was “perfectly legitimate” for the government to have a say in how they were regulated.
“For too long we have seen public pension schemes pursue pseudo foreign policies and all too often the foreign policy of these public pension schemes is I’m afraid, exclusively focused on re-writing the UK’s relationship with the world’s only Jewish state, Israel,’’ he added; .
Branding BDS campaigners a “minority of an extreme and well organised clique” he said: “You don’t have to look very hard to find a pattern of antisemitic behaviour in connection with campaigns promoting a boycott of Israel. Successive studies have shown the single best statistical predictor of anti-Jewish hostility is the amount of BDS activity…”
The government move comes as the local authority in the county of Hertfordshire has rejected a bid from supporters of the BDS movement to divest from companies that have ties to Israel.
The Hertfordshire County Council was legally bound by its constitution to hear the pro-BDS petition, organized by David Leigh from the Herts Palestine Support Coalition, because it contained more than 1,000 signatures from residents in the county.However, the proposal, which targets the Herts Pension Fund, was rejected by the council on Tuesday.
Conservative group leader Caroline Clapper, along with fellow Conservative councilors Morris Bright, John Graham and Seamus Quilty, said they stand “united” in their opposition to anti-Israel boycotts.
“This is BDS supporters trolling the mainstream Jewish community in an area with a very large Jewish population by using procedures of the council to publicize their anti-Israel agenda,” Luke Akehurst, director of We Believe in Israel, told Jewish News. “It’s very heartening that all the councilors that have expressed a view reject BDS and that hundreds of local residents have emailed their councilors to express their concern about this move.”
The petition comes following a wave of hate crimes against Jews in the Stamford Hill neighborhood in London, which is south of Hertfordshire. In one incident earlier in February, a pregnant Jewish woman was blocked from getting off a public bus in Stamford Hill by an alleged racist repeat offender who told the woman, “Don’t get off the bus f***ing Jew.”