Israel: Trade

Lord Livingston of Parkhead Excerpts

Thursday 8th January 2026 Grand Committee

[Lord Livingston of Parkhead (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Austin, for tabling this QSD and I welcome, if rather belatedly, the noble Lord, Lord Stockwood, as a Minister. It is excellent to have somebody with his extensive business knowledge in the position. I think I am right in saying that he has a good knowledge of Israel, from his time in a kibbutz as a student, so he will be able to contribute in many ways.

I speak as an ex-Minister for Trade and Investment but also as someone who has been a director of many companies that trade around the world. While many other noble Lords have spoken about the size of trade with Israel, I will talk a little about quality rather than just quantity. There is a great fit between the UK and Israel in many sectors: life sciences, fintech, defence—which has been mentioned—AI, cyber and technology more generally. In fact, when I was CEO of BT, we had one technology scanning team for Asia, one for Silicon Valley, one for Europe and one for Israel. That gives an idea of the scale of technological innovation coming out of Israel.

As a Trade Minister, I recall how many Israeli companies would seek to come to the UK as their first point of expansion out of Israel. They were setting up their European or global hubs in the UK; indeed, one of the largest sources of AIM-listed companies was Israel. Yet we have the BDS movement, which uniquely agitates against a democratic country that has so many shared interests with the UK. I would point out to these protestors that, if they are truly serious in their misguided views and want to boycott Israel, they are going to have to do something different from picketing Barclays, which does not have much of a relationship with Israel, or standing beside the kosher counters of Marks & Spencer supermarkets.

If they want to be serious, for a start they must stop using their iPhones, which contain a huge amount of Israeli products. They must turn off their computers, because one of Microsoft’s major research hubs is based in Israel, and not use AI: Nvidia recently described Israel as its second home, so they would have to stop using AI. They must also reject the range of medicines and cutting-edge treatments that Israeli health companies provide. When they come down for their weekly protests, please can they not use the mapping software provided by Waze, which is Israeli, or the buses, because the software that supports all our bus scheduling comes out of Israel as well. I would tell them to get lost, but they will probably manage that on their own, in the circumstances.

It is also worth reflecting on the relationship between Israel’s universities and businesses, which I think we can replicate in the UK; it is particularly strong. I recently met the rector of one of Israel’s leading universities, who is a renowned neurobiologist. She told me that she had been disinvited from a number of conferences, presumably to strike a blow against the supposed Israeli apartheid. She is an Arab Maronite Christian. This highlights the absurdity of the BDS movement.

We need to recognise the substantial benefit to the UK of Israeli trade, but we also need to stand against the malign forces we are seeing, promote the benefits to the UK of this trade and assure Israeli companies that this is a good place to invest in order to create UK jobs, as the noble Lord, Lord Leigh, just said. I would be interested to hear how the Minister and his Government will, going forward, say that the UK is a good and safe place for Israeli companies to invest.