Thank you to the tens of thousands of you who took action urging MPs to publicly call for a total ban on settlement goods entering the UK. The volume of your response and the size of the movement have been incredible.
Now that the MPs are back from recess, it's time to continue our pressure on MPs to publicly call for a total ban on settlement goods. The UK has an obligation under international law to act. We need to continue reminding them.
If your MP replied without answering if they support a ban on settlement goods, and instead pointed out all the things the government has done, saying something along the lines of “goods produced in Israeli settlements are not entitled to benefit from any preferential tariff treatment under the UK’s current trade agreements with the Palestinian Authority and the Government of Israel” and “where there are doubts about the declared origin of goods, HMRC (Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs) will undertake checks to verify the origins of these goods.”
You can reply saying:
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The fact that settlement goods do not receive trade preferences does not go nearly far enough – the UK is allowing the import of proceeds of a war crime.
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The UK has banned the import of goods from Crimea and illegally occupied parts of Ukraine. They don’t merely restrict trade preferences for these goods, so why is that the case for goods from settlements in illegally occupied Palestine?
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Ministers themselves have said that mislabelling of goods from settlements is “ a challenge”, what evidence can they provide that HMRC does actually investigate cases of settlement goods being passed off as Israeli goods?
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If it’s a Labour MP, you can ask if they will join 60 of their Labour colleagues who recently called for a ban on the UK importing settlement goods? E.g. this letter https://x.com/LFPME/status/1943978367520264331