UK-Israel Trade

Mary Robinson Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd July 2018 Westminster Hall

[Dame Louise Ellman]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman. Inventions and improvements in the human condition are about all of humanity and should benefit everyone; they are not about conflict. Trade is constructive; boycotts are negative. The BDS movement is fundamentally opposed to the state of Israel, and partial boycott campaigns, however presented, are part of the same movement. BDS has not affected Israel adversely. Israel’s trade is rising, both with the UK and with the rest of the world.

[Mary Robinson (Cheadle) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West (Chris Green) on securing the debate. The hon. Lady is entirely right to focus on pharma and on our trade links with Israel. I understand that in seven of the past 10 years the UK has had a trade surplus with Israel. Does she agree that we can build on that, and that it shows the strength of our trading relationship both now and for the future?

[Dame Louise Ellman]

I agree with the hon. Lady. Trade is beneficial, and it is beneficial to both countries; indeed, it should be international as well. I look forward to the day when the state of Israel and the state of Palestine establish good trading relationships with each other and with the UK, in accordance with the late Shimon Peres’s vision of a new middle east.

--- Later in debate ---

[Peter Grant]

I will come on to that in a minute. There is no doubt that trade relationships can lead to wider relationships and be used as a way of influencing—for good or sometimes for ill—the actions of other countries and Governments. Today’s debate, presumably not by accident, is not about trade with Palestine; it is about trade with Israel. If someone applied for a debate on UK-Palestine trade, and enhancing and expanding fair trade networks between the United Kingdom and Palestine, I wonder how many of the people who were so desperate to speak in this debate would be as desperate to speak in that one.

[Mary Robinson]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Peter Grant]

No, I am afraid I do not have a great deal of time.

Although trade in general between the UK and Israel is to be welcomed and promoted, we should not get things out of context. Israel accounts for less than 0.5% of UK exports—it will not fix the huge absence of trade that we will have if discussions with the European Union go wrong. We could increase exports to Israel by a factor of 10 and it would still be only a relatively minor trading partner compared with the European Union and a number of others.

We must try to negotiate an equivalent of 40 trade deals in just a couple of years, if we are lucky—possibly not even that long. I must take to task the hon. Member for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart), who said that the Trade Bill will replicate all the current trade deals in British legislation. No, it will not. The Trade Bill will convert EU legislation into UK law, but the only way that the UK can replicate its trade deals with the 40 countries in question is if those 40 countries agree to that. This Parliament cannot unilaterally agree to extend a trade deal after we have left the European Union, and the European Union cannot do that on our behalf.

Although we can speak positively about trade with Israel in general, there are two aspects of that trade about which I cannot speak positively. As the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) mentioned—I was very disappointed by the response he received—trade with the Occupied Palestinian Territories should not be treated as if it were trade with Israel. Indeed, at the moment, under the EU agreement with Israel that cannot happen, and when Gordon Brown was in office, he said that it would be an offence to take goods from the occupied territories and sell them marked as produce of Israel. I want the Minister to give an absolute assurance that after we leave the European Union, nothing will be done to land a deal with Israel that will make it easier for goods that have been produced illegally in the illegally occupied territories to be exported here. We should regard those goods as the proceeds of crime.

--- Later in debate ---

[Graham Stuart]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. Of course, it is always a pleasure to take a job and have one’s predecessor giving instructions on how to carry out that job.

Any decision about the resourcing in Israel is subject to a decision by Her Majesty’s trade commissioner for Europe, and that will come about in due course. However, I will take this intervention as strong lobbying by someone with a clear knowledge of the importance of DIT that it needs to be resourced appropriately in the future.

I will turn, if I may, to the effect of the trade agreements on the Occupied Palestinian Territories. I want to be absolutely clear that we believe that the level of control that Israel has over the west bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza strip amounts to occupation under international law. As has been said, the existing EU-Israeli agreements do not extend to Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territories, and we intend there to be a technical transfer of those agreements as they stand.

A particularly strong area of co-operation is science and technology, which is another subject that came up in so many speeches, not least that of my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West who secured the debate and began it. The respective strengths of Israel and the UK complement each other. The UK has one of the world’s strongest science bases, with four of the world’s top 10 universities, and we are ranked third worldwide for academic citations.

Meanwhile, Israel—as has been said—is the start-up nation, and it spends 4.3% of GDP on research and development, which is the highest figure in the OECD. We are seeing UK-Israel business-to-business links grow and grow. For example, Israel’s Orbotech, a micro-electronics company that has had a Welsh-based subsidiary since 2014, last year won the Queen’s award for enterprise in international trade.

[Mary Robinson]

rose—

[Graham Stuart]

I really have very little time, so if my hon. Friend will allow me, I will not take any more interventions.

We are seeing our links grow on an institution-to-institution basis, such as the Royal Society’s co-operation agreement with the Israeli Academy of Sciences and Humanities, which was signed in 2015. We are also seeing growing co-operation between our Governments. In May, we signed a £4 million science agreement to strengthen joint research in artificial intelligence, ageing and other priority areas. In response to the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), that is an example of what we are doing, and that comes on top of the existing UK-Israel tech hub—

[Mary Robinson]

Will the Minister give way?

[Graham Stuart]

I am afraid that I will not give way. As I was saying, that comes on top of the existing UK-Israel tech hub at our embassy in Tel Aviv—the first country ever to establish a tech hub at an embassy. That kind of co-operation, as the hon. Member for Strangford and others have said, will not only help our trade; it will have a real effect on our nation’s health.

I have very little time left, Mr Evans, so I will just say something briefly on the subject of arms, which was mentioned, including the specific case of sniper rifles. Only four licences were granted last year for targeting equipment: two were temporary licences for demonstration purposes; one was to return an item to its Israeli manufacturer after tests in the UK; and one was for laser illuminators for end use by the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office. On the subject of sniper rifles, the UK has not licensed the export of sniper rifles to the Israeli defence forces. We have granted only two licences in the last decade for a total of six sniper rifles and magazines, and they were for an Israeli defence company to test ammunition on its own firing range.

With that, I will cease.