Former minister says BDS is to be banned in Britain - The Jewish Chronicle

The campaign to boycott Israel may soon be outlawed in the UK, according to a former Cabinet Minister. Former Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick said that legislation to ban the Boycott, Divestments and Sanctions (BDS) movement may emerge within months. The BDS campaign has become a rallying point for the hard left. Campaigners have put local authorities and universities under pressure to divest from companies operating in Israel. Critics of the boycott movement say it goes beyond legitimate political action and may be antisemitic in its singling out of Israel. Mr Jenrick told a conference he thought the BDS movement was being “beaten back” in Britain. The Conservative MP said: “In the following months, we will be working to outlaw BDS in the UK.” He added: “There is no political party in the UK that would support BDS today and it is becoming much more of a fringe activity.” He was speaking at an online conference hosted by the Leadership Dialogue Institute think tank, entitled “Why do so many people hate Jews?” Should the legislation be passed, it would fulfil the pledge by the Conservative Party in their 2019 manifesto to ban public bodies from imposing “their own direct or indirect boycotts divestment or sanctions campaigns against foreign countries” which “undermine community cohesion”. In 2020, the Supreme Court overturned a government order banning local authorities from divesting their pension funds from Israel. The judges’ decision followed a legal challenge by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign against guidance issued by then Communities Secretary Sajid Javid in 2017. Following the court’s ruling, the government said it was committed to ensuring public bodies took a “consistent approach to investments and (stopped) local boycotts”. Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has said his party does not support BDS. However, at the party’s policy-making conference in Brighton in September, Labour members passed a motion which branded Israel an apartheid state and called for British sanctions.