CFI’s Parliamentary Chairman in the House of Lords, Rt. Hon. The Lord Pickles, praised the UK-Israel relationship this week saying that the UK “have moved on from just seeing Israel as a good ally in the battle against terrorism to a partner in innovation”.
“We have moved on from a position of being polite and interested to one in which our economies are increasingly integrated”, he added on a delegation organised by ELNET in partnership with the Britain-Israel All-Party Parliamentary Group.
The Peer celebrated Israeli innovation claiming that “without Israel’s medicines and innovations, [The UK would] have been a real mess. We’ve also seen a number of moves together in terms of cardiothoracic work and on dementia, and there’s quite a number of Israeli companies now on the UK stock market”.
The Peers comments came after he attended a cross-party Peers delegation to Israel. The group of 20 Peers also included former Conservative Party leader Michael Howard, and Conservative Peer Lord Wolfson of Tredegar.
The delegation met with Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana and Intelligence Minister Gila Gamliel, and visited Ramalllah as well as the Israel-Gaza border. On Tuesday, Lord Howard and Lord Turnberg laid wreaths and lit the flame of remembrance at Yad Vashem during a visit to the Holocaust Memorial Museum.
