UK-Israel Trade Negotiations

Damien Moore Excerpts

Thursday 20th January 2022 Westminster Hall

[Damien Moore (Southport) (Con)]

As always, Mr Paisley, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) on securing this important and timely debate. The bilateral relationship between the UK and Israel runs deep, from intelligence sharing and security co-operation to our trade ties, which have flourished over many years. For example, the Britain-Israel research and academic exchange partnership has brought together scientists from both countries to tackle some of the world’s most challenging medical conditions and diseases, including cardiovascular and liver disease, diabetes and Parkinson’s. That cutting-edge research and co-operation benefits citizens in the UK, Israel, and further afield.

Israeli innovations benefit the British people, and our close partnership keeps us all safe. I will take this opportunity to reflect on those ties in my contribution today, and I urge the Minister to explore further areas for collaboration in our ongoing trade negotiations with Israel. To list a few examples, we have the Israeli pharmaceutical company Teva, which has been mentioned, and which is a leading provider of medicines to the NHS. With over 200 Teva tablets or capsules taken on average by patients in the UK every second, not only does Teva improve the health of millions of people in this country every day, but it employs hundreds of British workers at sites across our country. There is also the Israeli-designed PillCam, a capsule camera that patients swallow painlessly to get checked for cancer that is currently being trialled across the NHS, and the Israeli-developed phone app that reads the results of urine tests by using AI and colour metric analysis, sharing the results instantly with the individual’s GP practice. These home testing kits, which detect early stage chronic kidney disease, have already started shipping to half a million UK patients.

The brave men and women of our armed forces also benefit greatly from Israeli technology, which protects our soldiers on the battlefield. Israeli-developed virtual reality training scenarios have prepared British soldiers for a range of hostile battle situations, and Israeli intelligence-collecting drones help to keep our troops safe. The list goes on. However, there remain those who seek to dismantle our close ties with Israel and call for a trade embargo, as mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East. Boycott campaigns that seek to undermine this important cooperation, and to make peace harder to achieve, must be opposed. Boycotts of Israel harm the Israeli and Palestinian people, and they threaten our close collaboration in defence, science and medicine. I warmly welcome the Government’s commitment to stopping public bodies from imposing needless boycotts on foreign countries. All too often, these aggressive campaigns target the state of Israel and single out the world’s only Jewish state for criticism.

I am sure that the Minister will reiterate the importance of our close ties with Israel in his remarks. I urge him to do everything possible to oppose needless boycotts and sanctions against Israel, including introducing the legislation committed in the manifesto on which we were both elected, and I urge him to continue working to further strengthen the bilateral relationship between Israel and the United Kingdom.