Middle East

Debate between John Howell and Angela Watkinson

Monday 30th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Dame Angela Watkinson]

The hon. Gentleman is quoting from his speech, and I will come to those matters as I continue with mine.

In addition, Israel has participated in disaster relief efforts worldwide, most recently providing assistance to Syrian refugees arriving in Greece and elsewhere.

Violence has been fomented by repeated inflammatory and false allegations from the Palestinian Authority, Fatah and Hamas accusing Israel of planning to destroy the al-Aqsa mosque and other Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem. Yet Hadassah medical centre, home to Jerusalem’s largest emergency ward, treats the city’s wounded regardless of whether they are victims or attackers, and co-operation between Palestinian and Israeli doctors has helped to save 607 Palestinian children since 2005. The hospital has mixed Jewish and Arab medical staff and routinely treats both attackers and victims, often in adjacent wards.

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

I wonder whether my hon. Friend, like me, has been to Save a Child’s Heart in Tel Aviv and acknowledges that the work that the doctors there do in the Palestinian territories, particularly in Gaza, is second to none in saving children’s lives.

[Dame Angela Watkinson]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. When I continue my remarks, he will find that I cover that.

Israel’s Teva Pharmaceutical Industries provides the NHS with one in six of its prescription medicines, making it the NHS’s largest supplier of generic drugs. It is leading the world in the development of drugs to combat Alzheimer’s disease, cancer, Parkinson’s disease, and multiple sclerosis. Scientists have developed methods for producing human growth hormone and interferon, a group of proteins effective against viral infections. Copaxone, a medicine effective in the treatment of multiple sclerosis, was developed in Israel by Teva Pharmaceuticals from basic research to industrial production. It has also developed early diagnosis for mad cow disease and Creutzfeldt-Jakob genetic disease in humans, with a urine test instead of a brain biopsy, and identified the gene that causes muscular dystrophy and the gene linked to post-traumatic stress disorder.

In July 2015 the British embassy announced three new water research programmes between UK and Israeli scientists. The work of Israeli research institutions, such as Tel Aviv University and the Weizmann Institute of Science, improves the lives of people in water-poor countries by sharing Israel’s expertise in waste water treatment, purification and water reuse. The programmes will enable scientists from Britain, Israel and the region to work together to tackle water shortages.

Israel is one of the founding members of Digital 5, a group of leading digital Governments who met for the first time in London in December 2014. In March 2015 it was announced that three UK-Israel academic collaboration projects will receive £1.2 million of cyber-research funding from the UK Government.

The total value of trade and services between the UK and Israel is now more than £4.5 billion a year, and the UK is Israel’s second biggest export market. British businesses such as HSBC, GlaxoSmithKline, Barclays and Rolls-Royce have invested more than £1 billion in Israel. The UK and Israel work closely together in technological and scientific research, including cyber-security.

In short, Israel is a tolerant, fair society. Creative and innovative, it produces and develops, and it advances knowledge. Britain’s close relationship with Israel is a force for good in the middle east, and it is essential that we build and maintain that strong relationship.

Skills and Growth

Debate between John Howell and Angela Watkinson

Wednesday 17th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

May I say what a privilege it is to be called in this debate—first, Mr Deputy Speaker, to welcome you back to the Chair, but also to follow the excellent maiden speech by the hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss)? She represents a fascinating area of the country and she gave a very good explanation of what has been going on there and her role in it. Her speech comes on the back of an enormous number of excellent maiden speeches, including those of the new broom, the hon. Member for Bradford East (Imran Hussain), and the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (John Nicolson), if I may pick out just two. The latter reminded me of my days as an archaeologist at the University of Edinburgh. I am very familiar with the Antonine Wall that he described.

I want to deal with apprenticeships. I can agree with the first bit of the motion—

“That this House notes that improving education is imperative for the future economic growth of the country”—

but not with the rest of it. If the hon. Member for Dudley North (Ian Austin), who is no longer in his seat, wants a more bipartisan approach, it could start with this motion acknowledging that the apprenticeship programme has been a flagship programme of this Government and we have put £1.5 billion into making sure that it works.

The wording of the motion does not bear comparison with the situation in my constituency, where the advancement of the apprenticeships scheme is having an excellent result. One way of seeing that is to look at the unemployment figures in the constituency. The figures released today show that the total number of people unemployed across the whole constituency amounts to 244. That is a diminution in the number of unemployed on the previous month, and in effect it represents full unemployment and the normal churn of people looking for jobs. Most importantly, in the previous month the number of youth unemployed in the constituency was down to 30. I have every sympathy for those 30, but this represents a very good achievement for the Government. I welcome my hon. Friend the Member for Watford (Richard Harrington), who is no longer in the Chamber, to his new position. He is right to stress the role of MPs in driving the process along; each of us has the ability to do that. In my constituency I have Henley College, which is a very strong player in providing training for apprenticeships and has been working hand in hand with companies to promote those apprenticeships.

[Dame Angela Watkinson]

Will my hon. Friend join me in welcoming the increasing number of girls who are taking STEM subjects, which are leading to apprenticeships in engineering and technical subjects, and does he agree that we need more of them?

[John Howell]

I absolutely welcome my hon. Friend’s comments. She makes a very good point that we all need to bear in mind.

At the time when the recession was at its deepest, I took the initiative in my constituency to get together a whole lot of players in this field, including Henley College, to help businesses cope with the fact that they were going into recession. Henley College rose to the challenge very well. It was instructive to find that many people in the room from firms that had done business in the area for 25 years did not know a single soul among the rest of those gathered there. I think that if I were to do the same thing now, that would not be the case. They know where they are going, and they are taking the lead in promoting apprenticeships.

Colleges like Henley can make an important contribution in encouraging the provision of training. This is to do with a lot of the work that companies are undertaking to find the best training providers to help them in delivering apprenticeships. I recently went to see two contrasting companies in the constituency to hear about the work they were doing in apprenticeships. One was DAF, the truck manufacturer, which is one of the biggest companies in my constituency and sits at the centre of a web of apprenticeships that goes right across the country. It has made great efforts to find the right training provider to help it in this—a college down in the west country with which it can work to deliver this training. It has degree-type award ceremonies at the end of the apprenticeship training so that people feel they have got something out of the whole process. I have been invited to the ceremony it will conduct in September, to witness it at first hand.

The other company I went to visit was Williams Performance Tenders. Despite the constituency being landlocked, Williams Performance Tenders is the biggest producer of boats by volume in the whole country. Having been on one of those boats, I know they are extremely fast. This company, too, has a very good apprenticeship scheme that it manages largely by itself. That scheme operates in the most deprived village in the whole of my constituency, and it is making a big difference to people’s lives.

As a result of all this, if we look back to the beginning of 2010, we see that there has been an increase of some 58% in the number of apprenticeships taken up in the constituency. That is an excellent achievement. I put on record my thanks to all the businesses that have participated in and are contributing to this.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dame Angela Watkinson]

Does my hon. Friend attribute that to good co-operation between local education and training providers and local employers, so that the skills that employers need are identified and young people are taking the right courses?

[John Howell]

That is a difficult question to answer. I attribute it partly to that, but the role of schools needs to be worked on further, because they can do more.

During the election campaign, I became aware of the way schools in the constituency still regard apprenticeships in an academic light as providing an academic training rather than a genuine life option for people.