Hansard

I was very proud to be part of the Scottish Government under First Minister Humza Yousaf when he spoke up so movingly on the plight of the Palestinian people, who were being subject to collective punishment for the brutal atrocities that were committed on 7 October. The suffering that they have endured at the hands of Israeli forces has been horrific. Ordinary citizens, half of them children, have been subject to bombardment for months and deprived of food, water, electricity and medical care in some of the worst war crimes of the 21st century.

Tens of thousands of people have been killed; schools, hospitals and homes have been bombed into rubble; lives have been cut devastatingly short; and more than 1 million people have been displaced. Now, in front of the world, the Trump Administration is calling for widespread ethnic cleansing. There are International Criminal Court arrest warrants out for the architects of the crisis and on-going investigations for breaches of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

The Scottish Government has rightly spoken strongly against the killing and against Donald Trump’s plan. The Scottish Government has been clear in its support for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza—something that was supported by the Parliament back in 2023. Yet, since the assault began, the Scottish Government has given more than £1 million to companies that have armed Israel and that have enabled that destruction.

We could debate the shameful role of the United Kingdom Government, which has approved those arms sales to Israel, and I expect that there would be a lot of unity among MSPs from across the chamber. Foreign policy is not devolved to Scotland. Scotland cannot control what the UK Government does on the world stage, but we can control where our public money goes and which companies and industries we choose to support.

The principle of our motion is very simple: if a company has profited from the sale of arms and weapons to countries that are complicit in war crimes and genocide, it should not receive public money from the Scottish Government. The Scottish Government has said that no public funding should be going to supply arms to Israel but, since 2019, at least £8 million in Scottish Enterprise grants has been awarded to 13 companies that are involved in arms dealing and manufacturing. A number of those businesses have directly supplied weapons and equipment to Israel during its assault on Gaza.

The Scottish Government must put its money where its mouth is and stand up for human rights. This morning, Oxfam and Amnesty International joined the calls for that funding to be stopped, with Oxfam describing the Government’s position as “morally incoherent”.

In 2019, the Scottish Greens secured a commitment from the Scottish Government that all Scottish public bodies would conduct human rights checks on companies, including arms companies, before funding them. In November 2023, The Ferret revealed that, despite Scottish Enterprise having conducted 199 human rights checks, not a single firm had failed, despite some having armed states that have been widely accused of war crimes, including Israel and Saudi Arabia.

Amnesty International has called the current human rights due diligence process “inadequate”, and it states that the process is

“failing to ensure that Scotland upholds its international obligations”.

If companies that are arming war crimes are not beyond the pale, who is? The Scottish Government might say that its hands are tied but, following the invasion of Ukraine, it rightly introduced measures against companies that trade with Russia. Why is Israel different?

When we invest public money in our economy, we have a responsibility to use it to shape the future that we want to see and invest in the kinds of organisations that share our vision for a fairer and greener future. It should go without saying that companies should not be profiting from human suffering or the war crimes that we have seen in the past 15 months. It is not honest for the Scottish Government to dismiss that by saying that the grants do not go directly towards weapons or munitions manufacturing. What is the moral distinction between funding the bomb and funding the bomb factory?

The Scottish Government is still choosing to give public money to companies that profit from the sales of arms and technologies that are currently being used by the Israel Defense Forces to commit human rights abuses in Gaza. BAE Systems, Raytheon and Leonardo have all received grants from Scottish Enterprise, and all three have been involved in arms sales to not only Israel but Saudi Arabia, which has used them to inflict a humanitarian crisis on the people of Yemen. In 2019, the Court of Appeal found those arms sales to have been granted illegally.

Many of the companies are reporting mega profits. BAE, which reported £3 billion-worth of profits last year alone, is profiting from human suffering. Our public money is increasing suffering and misery instead of building a fairer and better world, but it is not at all clear to me that mega corporations that rake in that kind of profit need public money at all. BAE, for example, is already the biggest arms company in Europe, and Raytheon is the second biggest in the world. Scottish public money would be better spent on supporting small businesses, co-operative businesses, social enterprises and rural businesses. Scotland’s small clean energy, nature restoration and organic food businesses could have made very good use of that money.

The Scottish Government has called clearly for an end to all United Kingdom arms sales to Israel, but Scottish public money is still being granted to companies that are complicit in the manufacturing of arms that are used by Israel. The Scottish Government must urgently overhaul the human rights due diligence process so that every penny of public money that is handed out by Scottish Enterprise goes towards making the world a better, fairer place in which human lives and human rights are respected.

Many of my colleagues in the chamber have backed calls for a ceasefire and condemned the destruction in Gaza. I hope that they will join me in saying that enough is enough and calling on the Scottish Government to end all public funding to companies that are complicit in the arms trade with Israel.

I move,

That the Parliament notes with concern that at least £8 million of Scottish Enterprise grants have been awarded to 13 companies involved in arms dealing and manufacturing since 2019, including £700,000 to Leonardo and £500,000 to Raytheon Systems; further notes that a number of these businesses have directly supplied weapons and equipment to Israel during its assault on Gaza; understands that, despite this, no company has failed the current Scottish Enterprise human rights due diligence checks; believes, therefore, that the current due diligence process at Scottish Enterprise is failing to ensure that Scotland upholds its international obligations, and calls on the Scottish Government to end all public funding to companies complicit in the arms trade with Israel.