Oral Answers to Questions

Mark Logan Excerpts

Thursday 15th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jayawardena]

Indeed I do join my right hon. Friend in wishing all Israelis a happy independence day. He is right to recognise the strong relationships that we have with the state of Israel. We welcome the normalisation of relations, which creates many opportunities for increased trade, tourism and cultural links as well. Britain is well placed to support Israel in this endeavour. Total trade between us was £4.9 billion in the year to September 2020, up from the previous year. We are building a framework for a new bilateral science partnership. In addition, the tech hub based in the British embassy in Tel Aviv continues to partner Israeli expertise with British companies, delivering significant benefits to the British economy.

[Mark Logan (Bolton North East) (Con)]

What recent estimate she has made of the number of jobs in the north-west that are delivered by international trade.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for International Trade (Graham Stuart)]

Around 630,000 jobs in the north-west were supported by exports in 2016, and export—[Interruption.]

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[Graham Stuart]

Export activity helped support a further 472,000 jobs in the region through the consumption spending of export workers in the wider economy. In total, more than 1.1 million jobs—not a laughing matter, Mr Speaker—in the region are linked to exports in some way.

[Mark Logan [V]]

Napoleon said that Britain was a nation of shopkeepers; I want to say that Bolton is a town of exporters. I recently hosted the parliamentary export programme in Bolton North East, seeking to help Bolton businesses such as Ajax Equipment and Velden Engineering to take advantage of new trading relations. Across Greater Manchester, foreign direct investment and foreign capital investment are worth £37 billion to the local economy. What actions is the Minister taking to put Bolton North East at the forefront of the global stage when it comes to research and development?

[Graham Stuart]

It is as much my hon. Friend as me who is putting Bolton North East at the forefront. He has joined colleagues as a member of the parliamentary export programme, and I congratulate him on hosting a recent event. He will have seen that we are working hard to help Bolton North East companies take advantage of new global opportunities and promoting a strong north-west R&D offer to international investors through the high potential opportunities programme in frontier sectors such as molecular diagnostics, lightweighting and sustainable packaging.