Outside of formal legal sanctions, embargoes and restrictions put in place by the Government, such boycotts by public authorities are clearly inappropriate. Town hall boycotts undermine good community relations, poisoning and polarising debate, weakening integration and fuelling anti-Semitism. I do not believe it is for local government to pursue its own municipal foreign policy - as rightly, that matter is reserved to the UK Government.
The World Trade Organisation Government Procurement Agreement requires countries that have signed up to the Agreement to treat suppliers equally, so any discrimination against Israeli suppliers involving procurement would be in breach of the Agreement.
This new guidance complements existing guidance about trading or investing overseas, including with Israel, and I believe it will help prevent damaging and counter-productive local foreign policies undermining our national security.
I am pleased that the Government is taking further action to curtail municipal foreign and defence policies. For example, the Department for Communities and Local Government has been consulting on new Local Government Pension Scheme guidance, to clarify that schemes should not introduce investment policies which pursue municipal boycotts, divestments and sanctions, other than where formal legal sanctions, embargoes and restrictions have been put in place by the Government.
The new guidance will impact all contracting authorities, including central Government, executive agencies, non-departmental public bodies, the wider public sector, local authorities and NHS bodies.
David Cameron has reiterated Britain's commitment to a two state resolution as the only way to secure lasting peace in the Middle East. He has recently emphasised the importance of improving daily life for the people of Gaza, for example, through better power and water supplies and facilitating travel in and out of Gaza.
Only a negotiated a two-state solution, with a secure and universally-recognised Israel living alongside a viable State of Palestine, based on 1967 borders plus agreed land swaps, with Jerusalem as a shared capital, will resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict once and for all. There must be a just, fair and agreed resolution of the refugee question. Gaza must be an integral part of the Palestinian state.
The boycott, divestment and sanctions movement makes little distinction between Israel and the illegally occupied territories, and is deeply associated with unpleasant militancy. In practice, such campaigns lobby for divestment in British companies like G4S. Multi-national companies like Veolia have also been threatened with losing a contract to empty household bins in Birmingham. In Britain, we have seen how such boycotts have led to anti-Semitic incidents, such as kosher food being taken off the shelves of supermarkets like Sainsbury's.