A recent newsletter from the District Councils’ Network reminded councils of the anniversary of the massacre of Muslims at Srebrenica, a genocidal act that everyone hoped would never again be seen on the soil of Europe after the Second World War.
Regrettably, oppressive and despotic regimes are to be found in many places around the world. Think of Myanmar, North Korea, Iran, Syria, Afghanistan to name just a few. They use various methods to maintain power that involve such things as suppression of human rights, discrimination against people on grounds of race or gender, imprisonment, torture, executions, cultural genocide or mass killings.
The ability of democratically elected councils to demonstrate their opposition to such regimes and to express their solidarity with those who suffer under them is now in jeopardy – certainly so far as it relates to procurement and investment decisions but perhaps more widely.
The Economic Activity of Public Bodies (Overseas Matters) Bill may have a long title but it is short on logic or respect for councils as democratically elected bodies. It would make it illegal for councils to implement boycotts of products and organisations from countries with such unacceptable regimes. Councils and a range of other public bodies ‘must not have regard to a territorial consideration in a way that would cause a reasonable observer of the decision-making process to conclude that the decision was influenced by political or moral disapproval of foreign state conduct’.
It goes much further. Clause 4 prohibits a body from publishing a statement indicating that it intends to act in a way that would contravene that general prohibition or a statement that the body would intend to act in such a way if it were lawful to do so.
If this Bill is passed as drafted, a council could not even publish a statement that – if it was permitted to do so - it would cease to procure goods from Afghanistan (for example) in response to the recently announced closure of women’s beauty and hair salons by the Taliban regime. Nor could a council say that it would cease to procure from or invest in a country that was responsible for a genocidal massacre such as Srebrenica, if such an event happened in the future.
Government departments often use the ‘chilling effect’ on policy development in refusing freedom of information requests. Clause 4 would have an even more chilling effect, preventing councils from publishing statements about what they would like to do – something that individuals can do to demonstrate our shared humanity.
Has the proud role that many councils played as part of the anti-apartheid movement in the 1980s been so swiftly forgotten?
No one believes that councils or other public bodies set the foreign policy of the UK. In international relations, only the UK Government – supervised by and sometimes with the explicit consent of Parliament – decides and conducts foreign policy, negotiates treaties and so on. Whatever any council may resolve in respect of a country outside the UK is not going to set the UK’s foreign policy.
Such resolutions are not merely symbolic. A council might want to demonstrate support for a diaspora community in its area by criticising or condemning their mother country, including choosing not to trade with or invest in that country.
From time to time, some countries’ actions are so beyond the pale that they deserve widespread revulsion as we have seen with Russia and Belarus since the illegal invasion of Ukraine. In their community leadership role, democratically elected councils should have the ability to voice the views of their residents on such matters and take appropriate other steps. Localism demands that it is up to councils whether or not they do so.
The contrast with the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023 could not be more stark. That legislation requires higher education institutions to secure freedom of speech within the law and not to deny access to premises to anyone on the basis of their ideas or opinions. At the very least it seems inconsistent that a university – which is not democratically elected - must not deny a platform to someone who seeks to criticise a foreign state, when this Bill will prevent democratic councils from publishing statements about the unacceptable behaviour of other countries.
Ministers can make regulations to specify a country to which the prohibitions in the Bill do not apply – in other words councils and other public bodies can choose not to procure from or invest in a country but only on a Minister’s say so. Rogue states do not deserve to benefit from local government in the UK for a moment longer than is necessary. The Bill removes legitimate and proportionate scope for action by democratically elected councils. If Parliament chooses to pass it in its current form, what will be the next restrictions on the freedom of speech and action of councils as corporate bodies?
Ian Miller is chief executive of Wyre Forest District Council and writes here in a personal capacity.
