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.

Oral Answers to Questions

Damien Moore Excerpts

Thursday 15th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Greg Hands]

The hon. Member will know that there is of course a financial services memorandum of understanding between the UK and the EU, and we are acutely aware of the importance of the financial services sector, not least to my constituency as well. Many, I have to say, were surprised when the SNP voted for no deal on 30 December, especially after Nicola Sturgeon called it “unthinkable”. However, I have to say that I was not as surprised, because over the years I have seen the SNP vote against every single UK or EU trade deal, so the idea that it was going to vote in favour of a trade deal between the two of them was, frankly, highly unlikely. The SNP is anti-business, anti-jobs and against Scotland’s best interests.

[Damien Moore (Southport) (Con)]

What recent assessment she has made of the potential merits of strengthening the UK’s trading relationship with Tunisia. [R]

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for International Trade (Mr Ranil Jayawardena)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his work as the Prime Minister’s trade envoy to Tunisia and Libya. There is great merit in strengthening the trading relationship with Tunisia. Our trade deal entered into force at the beginning of this year and it provides a platform to deepen trade and investment. As he knows, we are already supporting businesses such as Unilever, AstraZeneca and Vodafone, who already operate in Tunisia, and we look forward to backing British businesses to do even more.

[Damien Moore [V]]

Tunisia is a leading exporter of olive oil and wants to export more to the UK, but minimum quota requirements based on the last two years are making this difficult. Will my hon. Friend look into this so that trade is made easy with Tunisia, which is eager to build an even stronger trading partnership with the UK?

[Mr Jayawardena]

I am aware of this matter and am keen to make sure that businesses can make the most of our transition to trade agreements, so I will look into it. I look forward to working with my hon. Friend and my Tunisian counterpart to open up and promote opportunities for British and Tunisian businesses; more trade means more jobs.

Oral Answers to Questions

Damien Moore Excerpts

Thursday 23rd January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

I am pleased to tell my hon. Friend that we have 130 international trade advisers and 186 export champions—businesses that already export and that encourage their peers to export—across the north of England. We have just sent out an exporting toolkit to MPs on both sides of the House so that they can get in touch with those local trade advisers and help their businesses export. We estimate that there are 600 businesses in every constituency with the potential to export that do not currently do so. MPs have a really important role in helping those businesses to get the information and support they need.

[Damien Moore (Southport) (Con)]

7. What steps her Department is taking to promote trade between the UK and North Africa.

[The Minister of State, Department for International Trade (Conor Burns)]

North Africa is an important region for the United Kingdom. To advance trade in this area, I have in the last four months alone visited Morocco twice and Algeria once, and led trade discussions at the UK-Tunisia bilateral forum, and the Government have laid transition texts of the Morocco and Tunisian association agreements in Parliament. Taking advantage of the UK-Africa summit this week, I signed a memorandum of understanding to explore opportunities in more detail with Morocco and spoke to the Algeria British Business Council. My hon. Friend is right to see enormous opportunities in north Africa, and we will use the coming months to develop those.

[Damien Moore]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his response. One of the countries he referred to was Tunisia. Will he join me in welcoming the new trade agreement between the United Kingdom and Tunisia, which was signed recently, and which will see 7,723 tonnes of Tunisian olive oil available to the British economy duty-free? Will he meet me and the respective UK and Tunisian ambassadors to explore further trading opportunities?

[Conor Burns]

My hon. Friend is right to see the enormous opportunities. It was my pleasure to lead the trade discussions in the UK-Tunisia bilateral forum last September, and I would be absolutely delighted to meet the ambassadors with my hon. Friends to see what more trade we can do between our two countries.

Oral Answers to Questions

Damien Moore Excerpts

Thursday 6th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Damien Moore (Southport) (Con)]

What steps are being taken to champion the rules-based system in emerging economies such as Tunisia?

[Dr Fox]

The whole issue of the WTO will be at the centre of what we discuss at the G20. The alternative to a rules-based system is a deals-based system, which would suit only the very biggest and most powerful economies, and we would lose the potential to use trade as a means of getting countries out of poverty. The rules-based system is necessary because it applies to everyone—the richest and the poorest, the strongest and the weakest—and we must give every defence to it that we can.

Oral Answers to Questions

Damien Moore Excerpts

Thursday 20th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Penny Mordaunt]

It will come as no surprise to the hon. Lady that I am already speaking to the Department for Work and Pensions about a whole raft of issues. We need to focus much more on broadening the work of the Government Equalities Office towards addressing the issues of low paid women. Women with low pay will often still be in low paid work a decade later. We need to look at the barriers to their having the career progression and the training that they want, while enabling them to cope with all the other things that women do.

[Damien Moore (Southport) (Con)]

3. What steps the Government are taking to support more disabled people to stand for election.

[The Minister for Women and Equalities (Penny Mordaunt)]

We are undertaking a programme of work with disability organisations to help political parties better support disabled candidates. In the meantime, to ensure that support is in place for the local elections next year, we have launched the £250,000 EnAble fund, which is an interim fund to support disabled candidates.

[Damien Moore]

In May, my right hon. Friend made a commitment to work with political parties to help support disabled candidates. Can she give a further update on how that work is going?

[Penny Mordaunt]

We are making good progress. We have met a number of political parties and disability organisations, including Disability Rights UK and Mencap, and those meetings will continue into the new year. It is very important that political parties support all candidates; by sharing good practice and doing this work in a much more methodical way, I hope that all political parties will be able to do so in the coming years.

UK-Israel Trade

Damien Moore Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd July 2018 Westminster Hall

[Damien Moore (Southport) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Evans. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West (Chris Green) on securing the debate. I draw Members’ attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, as I recently made a trip to Israel with colleagues.

As has been mentioned, trade between the UK and Israel is at a record high, and the UK is Israel’s second largest trading partner. It is often said of trade, particularly now that we are leaving the EU, that it should be as free and frictionless as possible. How do we apply that idea? I believe that the answer is through technology, with partner countries that appreciate the same idea. Israel is certainly one of those. It spends about 4.27% of its GDP on research and development—more than any other developed country. I am sure that we in the UK can admire that, and of course we shall be only too keen to emulate it in the coming years, as I expect the Minister will agree.

There are many types of technology that can facilitate trade between our two nations as we lead digital disruption across the world. One of the key examples is distributed ledger technologies. Some Members may have heard of blockchain, which is one type of DLT. For those who have not, DLTs are the building blocks of the internet of value and can record interactions of peer-to-peer value without the need for a centrally co-ordinating entity. In that sense, value can refer to any record of ownership of an asset, be it money, land, commodities, or even music industry ownership rights. Its decentralised nature makes that data safer from hackers who could try to compromise it. As hon. Members can see, DLT could be something big that could enhance every industry, and if we seek to use it we will need partner countries that are as technologically advanced as we are. Israel is pioneering DLT with world-class projects in Tel Aviv.

It is important that we prepare the UK for its future trade beyond Brexit, and we must follow in Israel’s footsteps and put technology and digital innovation at the forefront of our trade strategy. I commend the efforts of one UK organisation, FinTech Central, which is working hard to promote the UK’s financial technology industry and ensure that it benefits trade across borders. UK-Israel trade is strong, and by harnessing the potential of distributed ledger technology, I believe it could be stronger still.