A Birmingham MP has insisted local councils should be free to boycott companies which operate in Palestinian land occupied by Israel.
Birmingham Northfield MP Richard Burden led a House of Commons debate criticising a Government announcement that councils will be banned from imposing boycotts.
Under rules published by Cabinet Office Minister Matthew Hancock, local councils will be barred from boycotting any country unless the Government has imposed formal legal sanctions or restrictions.
The measure seems to have been prompted by attempts by some local councils to refuse to buy goods or services from firms which are active in land occupied by Israel, or to refuse to invest pension funds in those firms.
In 2014, Birmingham City Council threatened to not renew a contract with French multinational company Veolia, which runs the city’s incinerator and refuse tip, due to its operations in the West Bank.
This is a an area of land which should be part of an independent Palestinian state according to UN resolutions, but which is currently controlled by Israel. Around 400,000 Israelis currently live in settlements in the West Bank.
Veolia later announced it was closing its West Bank operations.
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Mr Burden said councils should be free to boycott firms because of their behaviour - including businesses which profited from an illegal occupation of Palestinian land - but not simply for their nationality.
Councils already had to follow rules set out by the World Trade Organisation which state you cannot discriminate against companies on the basis of their nationality, the MP said.
He added: “But if you invest in or have financial dealings with Israeli settlements in the occupied territory, those settlements are illegal.
“And if you look at the Foreign office website, it actually warns private companies about the risks of having financial dealings with settlements in the West Bank, because they are illegal.
“So it’s not because they are Israeli - it’s because they are illegal.”
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The Government has linked its guidance to calls for a blanket boycott against Israel, although there is no evidence of councils attempting to join such a boycott.
But some campaigners who support the Palestinians do call for a total boycott of Israel. This is known as the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS).
The Palestine Solidarity Campaign urges supporters in publicity material on its website: “If it says ‘made in Israel’, don’t buy it!”.
And the website of the Palestinian BDS National Committee says: “Anyone can boycott Israeli goods, simply by making sure that they don’t buy produce made in Israel or by Israeli companies.”
Critics of this boycott include Michael Gove, the Justice Secretary. Speaking at a conference in Berlin on anti-Semitism, he said: “The BDS campaign indulges prejudice rather than fighting it. It calls for the shunning of Jewish academics, the boycott of Jewish goods, the de-legitimisation of Jewish commerce. We have seen these all before. And we know where it takes us.”
Mr Gove linked the BDS campaign to the guidance for councils, saying the government was “outlawing prejudice paid for by public money.”
He said: “We have made clear that local authorities and public bodies cannot adopt BDS policies aimed at Israel; they cannot use public resources to discriminate against Jewish people, Jewish goods and a Jewish state.”
