EU Council and North Africa

Daniel Kawczynski Excerpts

Monday 7th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I did have discussions with Baroness Ashton about this, it was also discussed around the table and I had a very good meeting with Hillary Clinton in Munich. Obviously, there are concerns that instability in Egypt will make progress on the middle east peace process more difficult, but I strongly believe that we should not take our eye off the ball and that we should keep the pressure up—that means pressure on both sides. It means pressure on Israel to make progress on issues such as settlements and pressure on the Palestinians to return to meaningful talks. Britain will play a very key role in this, and I commend Baroness Ashton for her work.

[Daniel Kawczynski (Shrewsbury and Atcham) (Con)]

Trade between the United Kingdom and north African countries has historically been lamentable; we are way down the list on bilateral trade compared with our European partners. Will the Prime Minister do more to make sure that UK Trade & Investment plays a leading role in helping British companies to increase trade with countries such as Tunisia and Egypt to support democracy there?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes a good point and the Foreign Secretary will be going to Tunisia later today. We want to have good trading relationships with those countries, but that should never be bought at the price of trading off our values. We should have had a clearer red line about what was and was not appropriate, but Britain has to trade itself out of recession and links with fast-growing countries all over the world are absolutely what we are trying to put together.