Hot Topic: Gove’s Gagging Order – the Economic Activities of Public Bodies (Overseas Matters) Bill
Our latest Hot Topic is Michael Gove’s extraordinary attempt to stop devolved Parliament Ministers, Local Councils, Universities and other public bodies from using their procurement powers to boycott goods and services on ethical and moral grounds in a way that would implicitly oppose UK Government foreign policy.
And in addition it stops Ministers and staff in those public bodies from stating that they would apply a boycott, were the boycott not illegal under this Bill. So in effect the Bill applies gagging orders on public bodies. As if this isn’t bad enough, the Bill brings threats of fines being issued for non compliance!
Both the Scottish and Welsh Parliaments have refused legislative consent for the Bill and yet it continues its progress through Westminster. In Holyrood Tom Arthur led the debate that legislative consent be refused. Watch him and others explain why:
When it came to a vote in Holyrood, the motion to refuse consent was passed with 88 votes in favour from SNP, Labour, Greens, Lib Dem, and Alba MSPs . 27 MSPs voted against. No prizes for guessing which political party they all came from. You can find the voting record here.
Bill Kidd MSP got a bit mixed up with the voting “machine thing” but don’t worry the Presiding Officer made sure his vote was recorded 🤣
You can find our previous Hot Topics here. They include Joanna Cherry speaking on the Rwanda Bill; Stephen Flynn protesting about the Speaker dropping a bombshell on the SNP’s Debate Day, Neal Canvey attempting to get powers transferred to Holyrood, and the demonstration to get the Scottish Labour Party Conference to back an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.
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