Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what cooperation programmes his Department has with the Government of Israel for research and trade in the agricultural sector and what assessment he has made of the potential for future collaboration in that sector after the UK leaves the EU.
The UK, as part of the EU, is currently a member of around 40 EU trade agreements covering over 55 countries; one such country is Israel. After leaving the EU, the UK will be able to implement an independent trade policy. This would make it possible to revisit and improve existing agreements where appropriate.
Defra does not currently cooperate on agricultural research programmes with Israel bilaterally. We do cooperate with Israel through multilateral research programmes such as the Joint Programming Initiative on Agriculture, Food Security and Climate Change (FACCE-JPI) and the STAR-IDAZ International Research Consortium on Animal Health and we intend to continue to do so after we have left the EU.