UK Politics: Pro-Israel Influence

Mike Wood Excerpts

Monday 22nd June 2026 Westminster Hall

[Iqbal Mohamed]

My definition would be donors who turn a blind eye to blatant violations of Israeli law, British law or international law.

[Mike Wood (Kingswinford and South Staffordshire) (Con)]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Iqbal Mohamed]

I will continue because of time.

Britain claims to defend its democracy from foreign interference. We rightly sanction Russia for undermining democratic institutions, and warn about the threats from China and Iran to our political system, yet when substantial evidence of foreign influence concerns Israel, our principles of transparency, scrutiny and accountability appear to vanish.

Given the lack of time, I will give just one example. Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest arms manufacturer, operates 16 sites across the UK and supplies around 85% of Israel’s drones and military ground equipment—systems that have been widely used during Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Declassified UK reported that in December 2024, representatives of Elbit Systems met Home Office officials in a private meeting, with details withheld under FOI exemptions. Elbit Systems benefits from substantial British defence contracts. The defence industry cannot become a shield for privileged and secret political access without accountability.

No amount of democracy should exempt a state from scrutiny, no lobbying should be beyond accountability, and no Government should let political convenience override the principles of democratic integrity.

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[Mike Wood (Kingswinford and South Staffordshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Harris. We are here to debate e-petition 752646, which calls for a public inquiry into what the petitioners term “pro-Israel influence” on UK politics, party policies and public debate. I thank the petitioners for raising concerns about foreign influence, transparency and public confidence in democratic institutions, but I share the misgivings of my hon. Friend the Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont) about the apparent motivations of some the petition’s supporters.

Although Parliament must always take seriously any issue that touches on the integrity of UK democracy, the evidence that has been put forward does not support the allegations. There is clearly deep public concern about the conflict in Gaza and the west bank, and that strength of feeling runs across communities and all parts of the country. As the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones) made clear, there is nothing wrong with criticising the political decisions of any Government, including that of Israel—I have certainly done so myself in relation to illegal settlements—but it is concerning when Israel is singled out for scrutiny in a way that no other country is.

When donors who happen to be well—

[Iqbal Mohamed]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mike Wood]

The hon. Gentleman did not have the courtesy to give way to me, but I will give way to him.

[Iqbal Mohamed]

I apologise for not giving way earlier. On the point about Israel being singled out, the Rycroft review focused specifically on Russia and China, and did not mention Israel once. It was correctly carried out and nobody had any objections. What is the difference?

[Mike Wood]

The difference is that every day of every week of every year there are concerted attacks from Russia and China on our democratic system, on communities around the country and across online media, to try to set one part of our community against another, and they do not care who wins.

When the hon. Gentleman spoke earlier about donors—mostly about donors to the Labour party, but I know there are donors to other parties—he described them as pro-Israel because they happened to be Jewish and had not questioned the actions of the Israeli Government. It is hard to find a clearer breach of the international definition of antisemitism than to hold Jewish people in the UK accountable for the actions of the Israeli Government, which is what the he appeared to do.

[Joy Morrissey (Beaconsfield) (Con)]

Anti-Israel hatred creates a scourge of antisemitism against our Jewish community. They suffer for doing nothing other than being British Jews who happen to live in this country, and are caught in the middle of the conflict for no other reason than their ethnic and religious background. Does my hon. Friend agree that that is simply unfair and racist?

[Mike Wood]

I could not agree more strongly. Let me be entirely unambiguous from the outset: His Majesty’s Opposition firmly reject the premise of the petition and any suggestion that Israel—or any British organisations expressing solidarity with it—represent a malign or covert influence on British politics and democracy.

[Jim Shannon]

I commend the hon. Gentleman, who is speaking exceptionally well, for his very strong words. Does he agree that the Government were right to take action against Palestine Action? The Government went to the Court of Appeal and won that case. Palestine Action has stepped over the line of what is acceptable when it comes to protesting, so it should be condemned for being an illegal organisation.

[Mike Wood]

The hon. Gentleman gets to the heart of the issue, as he so often does. Protest stops being peaceful protest when it involves using weapons to harm and intimidate those who hold a different view. To suggest that open and transparent advocacy by British citizens and established communal organisations constitutes an improper or malign conspiracy is not only factually incorrect but treads into deeply troubling territory. As I have said, the petition is not supported by credible evidence. Instead, it invites vague suspicion of covert—

[Ayoub Khan]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Mike Wood]

I have given way a number of times; I need to make a little progress.

The petition invites vague suspicion of covert, improper activity by unnamed organisations and we must call it out for what it is. The use of terms such as “the Israel lobby” to describe British Jewish communal bodies combines unfounded claims of disproportionate backroom influence with the ancient insidious trope that Jewish citizens are inherently disloyal or untrustworthy.

[Ayoub Khan]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Mike Wood]

I give way briefly.

[Ayoub Khan]

The hon. Member is clearly very emotional in delivering his points. Would he agree that, whichever nation is concerned, our responsibility to the millions of British citizens is to be transparent? Would he support transparency when it comes to donations of any kind?

[Mike Wood]

Of course. One of the reasons why those donations have been highlighted and publicised as thoroughly as they have is that they are recorded and published. I myself have not taken any donations to which that applies, but there is nothing inherently wrong with them.

The Leader of the Opposition has repeatedly warned that we are witnessing a deeply concerning normalisation of rhetoric towards British Jews that would once have been unthinkable. Far too often, individuals use their political views on Israel as a convenient cover to display blatant antisemitism. We cannot allow a moral and political vacuum to be filled by a hatred of Jews. We must be vigilant that parliamentary procedures, including the e-petition system, are not inadvertently weaponised to legitimise those harmful tropes.

Our political system is built on open, transparent advocacy. Members of this House regularly engage with a wide variety of groups to understand complex international issues, and we recognise and value the long-standing, transparent activities of groups such as Conservative Friends of Israel and Labour Friends of Israel, which work openly to foster strong bilateral ties, trade and security co-operation between the United Kingdom and a democratic ally.

At the same time, our parliamentary democracy benefits from a diverse range of perspectives. Organisations such as the Conservative Middle East Council and other advocacy groups play an invaluable role in ensuring that Members of Parliament receive a comprehensive understanding of the region. They work diligently to ensure that parliamentarians receive detailed information and insights from a range of viewpoints, including pro-Palestinian and pro-Arab perspectives. That is how healthy, transparent democracy should operate: through open debate, visible briefings and competing arguments presented clearly in the light of day. There is no secrecy here, no hidden hand and certainly no malign infiltration.

While this petition asks us to chase shadows and investigate legitimate domestic advocacy, it distracts from the very real, pressing and deeply dangerous threats of foreign interference that our security services warn us about every single day. The greatest threat to British politics and democracy comes not from democratic allies or British community groups, but from hostile foreign state actors, most notably China and Russia. That is why they were at the heart of the Rycroft review.

Our intelligence agencies have been explicit. In October 2025, MI5 issued urgent guidance to Parliament warning that Russian hackers had actively stolen data from Members of Parliament, leaked sensitive UK-US trade documents ahead of the 2019 general election, and even impersonated foreign embassies to contact Ministers directly. We have seen the tangible consequences of that subversion in our legal system, such as the sentencing in November 2025 of Nathan Gill, the former leader of Reform UK Wales, to more than 10 years in prison after he was found guilty of accepting bribes from a pro-Russian Ukrainian politician to peddle Kremlin narratives.

Equally alarming is the sustained, calculated campaign of espionage and democratic infiltration orchestrated by Beijing. MI5 security alerts have warned of covert attempts to recruit individuals with access to sensitive information within the Palace of Westminster. We have seen a string of high-profile cases, including espionage involving the UK Border Force and Hong Kong trade officials, and deeply concerning allegations involving political advisers and researchers. China is actively seeking to pass information on parliamentarians and undermine our sovereign affairs. It continues to spy on our colleagues and to target Hong Kong activists, many of whom remain British citizens and who have sought refuge on our shores, and actively works to weaken our democratic resilience.

The Opposition believe that we must go much further to protect the integrity of British politics and our wider democratic framework, which is why the shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, my hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Alex Burghart), has called for China to be formally placed on the enhanced tier of the foreign influence registration scheme. That would require strict monitoring of any political activity taking place in the UK at the instruction of the Chinese state. The Government must publicly accept that China is already acting in a matter opposed and hostile to the core interests of the United Kingdom.

[David Taylor]

The hon. Member rightly mentioned Russia and China. Does he agree that Iran also poses a massive threat, is interfering in our democracy and is behind some antisemitic attacks and the spreading of some antisemitic conspiracy theories?

[Mike Wood]

We have seen that Iran, seeing itself as not only a regional but an increasingly global power, is becoming increasingly willing to make physical attacks and also take sub-threshold action against our democracy.

In conclusion, we do not support a public inquiry into the imaginary threat of pro-Israel lobbying. To grant one would be to validate a petition that lacks credible evidence and fuels antisemitic conspiracies. Instead, the Cabinet Office and Government must focus their finite resources on the genuine systemic dangers that face our democracy. Let us strengthen our defences against the hostile state apparatus in Beijing and Moscow, protect our parliamentarians from actual espionage, and maintain a political culture where open, transparent discussion from all sides of the middle east debate can thrive without fear of malicious vilification.

[Iqbal Mohamed]

On a point of order, Mrs Harris. The hon. Member for Kingswinford and South Staffordshire (Mike Wood) referred to my remarks in answering a question. Maybe I was not very clear, but he mischaracterised my remarks as referring to all Jews or Jewish donors. My remarks clearly referred to pro-Israeli donors, whoever they are. To clarify, it is those who support the illegal actions of Israel or—

Digital ID

Mike Wood Excerpts

Thursday 15th January 2026 Commons Chamber

[Mike Wood (Kingswinford and South Staffordshire) (Con)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster if he will make a statement on mandatory digital ID.

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Josh Simons)]

Following my appointment as a joint Minister across the Cabinet Office and the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, I would like to respond to Members’ concerns about the digital ID policy. The programme has two core objectives. The first is to transform the state and make it work better for ordinary working people. Too often, accessing public services is harder than it should be. Digital ID will change that, providing the foundation of how we transform public services for everyone.

The new digital ID will be a modern, secure and trusted way for people to prove who they are and to access services across both the public and private sectors. It will be inclusive. We will issue the new digital ID to everyone who wants one and has the right to be in the UK, including the around 10% of UK citizens without traditional forms of ID. That will be transformational for how they access services, and it will unlock Government services that work better for people, saving people time, hassle and money. It will reduce fraud, enable new possibilities for integrated services and make interacting with Government easier for everyone. That is why, by the end of this Parliament, we will design and roll out a digital credential to every eligible UK citizen who wants one—one that is easy to use and unlocks improved public services.

Secondly, we are committed to reducing illegal migration and will be mandating that right-to-work checks are conducted digitally. Currently, employers can carry out checks of over a dozen different forms of ID. For British and Irish citizens, many of those checks are currently paper based. That is confusing, vulnerable to fraud and does not always create a clear record of when and where checks have been carried out.

As the Prime Minister clearly said yesterday, there will be checks, they will be digital and they will be mandatory. Those seeking to work illegally in the United Kingdom will no longer be able to provide fraudulent papers. Information obtained from digital right-to-work checks will be available to help crack down on unscrupulous employers who are undercutting British workers and hiring people without the legal right to work. This is about fairness and ensuring that only those with a genuine right to work in the United Kingdom are able to work in the United Kingdom.

We will be consulting imminently, in a range of ways, on how we design this scheme. We want to hear from people, businesses and stakeholder groups across the United Kingdom about what approach works for them. A new digital ID will put power back in people’s hands, helping to make services more personal, joined up and effective, and ensuring that everyone can access the support that they need, when they need it. It will be—

--- Later in debate ---

[Josh Simons]

I am, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am proud that this Labour Government are building this vital public infrastructure to make Government work better for everyone.

[Mike Wood]

The Minister read his speech beautifully, and with a straight face. In September, the Prime Minister tossed this mandatory digital ID on to the table as a classic dead cat distraction, purely to keep Andy Burnham off the front pages as the Labour party conference started. Now it is left to a junior Minister to come to Parliament to explain why the policy that the Prime Minister spent months saying was absolutely vital is being hollowed out.

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his appointment to his new position last Friday, but I suspect he is quickly learning that the price of his red box is to have to go out on a very thin limb and put his own credibility on the line, only for those higher up in Government to rev the chainsaw, leaving him exposed, with only the flimsiest of pretences to protect his dignity—the pretence that this policy is still a going concern. In less than four months, the policy has gone from dead cat to dead parrot. Like Monty Python’s pet shop owner, the Minister is asking us all to deny what we can see clearly with our own eyes. He does everything short of inviting us to admire its beautiful plumage, but this policy has passed on.

My questions for the Minister are: do the Government still expect digital ID, in this new form, to cost £1.8 billion? Is it going to be mandatory or not? What on earth does the taxpayer get for that money if people do not even have to have it? Above all, when is he going to finally face facts, stop spending billions on this zombie boondoggle that is wandering aimlessly in search of a problem to solve, and save taxpayers’ money? This is a dead policy.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Someone’s had their Weetabix.

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[Paulette Hamilton (Birmingham Erdington) (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for coming here today to talk to us about the revised policy.

[Mike Wood]

He didn’t come here voluntarily!

[Paulette Hamilton]

Well, okay; I apologise. But the Minister is here today and he has given us the revised policy, with which I am delighted. I am so pleased that the Minister and the Government have decided not to make it a mandatory scheme. I have had an overwhelming number of complaints in my constituency. Going forward, areas like mine have a very high level of digital exclusion. Can the Minister assure me that the Government will ensure that they bring constituents and residents along with them in this consultation phase, so that people do not feel they have been left behind and then start to object because they feel it will go from voluntary back to mandatory?

Hospitality Sector

Mike Wood Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd September 2025 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

We are not taxing them out of existence, as I have tried to explain to the hon. Gentleman. He is another one of those people who is awfully nice when you meet him in the bar—[Interruption.] The shadow Secretary of State is saying that that sounds terrible, but he was saying earlier that every single pint that is pulled represents an increase to the economy, so the hon. Member for Meriden and Solihull East (Saqib Bhatti) helped out. The point that I am trying to make—not very well—is that it is impossible to simply say, “We are not going to tax,” and still want to see the same level of expenditure. That is what got us into the trouble in the Truss Budget, and for family finances that meant—

[Mike Wood (Kingswinford and South Staffordshire) (Con)]

On that point, will the Minister give way?

[Chris Bryant]

I will not give way again. That meant that mortgage rates rose faster than they have ever risen in our history, which made it almost impossible for people to survive economically.

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[Mike Wood (Kingswinford and South Staffordshire) (Con)]

I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I have received hospitality below the threshold from UKHospitality, the British Beer and Pub Association, the Campaign for Real Ale and probably the British Institute of Innkeeping.

Hospitality, as has been said, offers more than just a place for food and drink. With Pub is The Hub, I was fortunate to see pubs in Cornwall that offer everything from the last village shop to jobs, clubs and even the village hairdresser and barbers. I think of the venues that provide drop-in sessions to tackle loneliness and isolation in our communities, and I think of all the pubs, cafés and restaurants up and down the country that fund grassroots sports and raise enormous amounts of money for charities and local good causes. That is why the previous Government worked so hard to try to support them. They scrapped Labour’s beer duty escalator. There was a series of freezes and cuts in alcohol duty, and a new draught beer duty differential, so that a pint in a pub always pays less duty than equivalent beer bought in supermarkets. We had 75% business rate relief for hospitality businesses, taking three quarters off their bills. We must not forget the tens of billions of pounds invested in supporting hospitality during the pandemic and as we recovered from the effects of covid.

Even though that support made the difference between surviving and going under for many, it was still tight. Many still carry a lot of covid debt and they still need our support. Instead, they have suffered a continuous onslaught of taxes and higher costs caused by Labour’s choices since the election. The changes to national insurance contributions, the national minimum wage and business rates have piled an additional £3.4 billion a year on to businesses, and the Government have hit hospitality businesses that rely on many part-time staff particularly hard.

It is no wonder that eight in 10 operators have been forced to raise their prices since April. Business rates more than doubling for a small independent pub or café have meant that thousands of pounds is out of the till before a single pint has been pulled or a single breakfast served. Those are fixed costs that many just cannot meet. Some 69% of businesses are running below required capacity because of staff and cost pressures. One in eight are planning to cut sites and two thirds have cut staff hours. As has been said, the chair of UKHospitality put it plainly last month when she said:

“At a time when the country needs jobs, the Government should be encouraging hospitality to grow and create jobs, not tax them out of existence.”

As we prepare for the pre-Christmas Budget, we need the Government to take this issue seriously and to take hospitality needs seriously. They need to fix national insurance contributions by raising the threshold, particularly for smaller venues. They should introduce exemptions for young people and returners to work. We need them to reconsider their plans to pile further burdens on small businesses next year. We need them to come good on their promise to reform business rates and make sure that when that reform finally happens, those businesses are paying bills that are lower, not higher than what they were paying last year. Finally, the Government should look at how some flexibility can be added to covid loan repayments so that those loans do not threaten otherwise viable businesses.

Protection of Children (Digital Safety and Data Protection) Bill

Mike Wood Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 7th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Helen Hayes]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for helping me out at a difficult moment. I have now found the correct place in my speech, and I will tell him what I believe should happen next.

The debate about both smoking and seatbelts raged for years, with much controversy at the time. Some were demanding higher and higher levels of proof, while others argued that the matter could be dealt with simply through guidance and through individuals’ choosing to change their behaviour.

[Mike Wood (Kingswinford and South Staffordshire) (Con)]

Does the hon. Lady recognise that, unlike the indoor smoking ban in particular, the regulation of mobile technology and social media is very much not a one-off event? When the Bill that was to become the Online Safety Act was published, it was genuinely world-leading in many respects, but, as the hon. Member for Whitehaven and Workington (Josh MacAlister) pointed out, many countries have now introduced measures that go further. Should we not be taking action now and then continuing to develop it, rather than just introducing a series of reviews?

[Helen Hayes]

If the hon. Gentleman will bear with me for a moment, I will come to some of the points that I think he wanted to emphasise. In the end, in both those cases—seatbelts and smoking—legislation had the effect of changing behaviour and changing societal norms, and in both cases, decades on from the introduction of legislation, it is hard to imagine that the regulation was ever controversial.

Last year, the Select Committee recommended action across Departments to protect children from addiction, online harms and the mental health impacts of excessive use of smartphones. It supported a ban on mobile phones in schools and recommended a formal monitoring mechanism for a ban introduced through guidance, potentially leading to a ban in legislation. It recommended guidance for parents, whom it found to be lacking in confidence when it came to knowing exactly how to tackle this issue affecting children and young people, and recommended that the guidance should include—particularly for parents of babies and very young children—an emphasis on the importance of face-to-face interactions with their children, and guidance on the impact of screen use by parents while caring for very young children. That is an aspect that we do not debate enough in this place. The Select Committee supported an increase to 16 as the age of digital consent and recommended, among other developments, the promotion of a children’s class of phone that can be used for parental contact and for GPS locations, but not for internet access.

I share the worry expressed by many Members that the Government are not acting with the urgency that is required in the face of the evidence they already have. The Bill will deliver, even in the form in which it has been presented today, some positive interventions that will make a difference, but I fear that the Government are doing too little too slowly. Parents want strong legislation, schools want strong legislation, and strong legislation will help to change societal norms in the way that is needed to protect children and young people and to stop the harms.

The Education Committee will take a close interest in what happens from now on—the impact of the measures that the Government are introducing—but I urge the Government to get on quickly with the review and the guidance to which they will commit themselves today, and to go further and establish, with urgency and speed, a framework in law that can help parents, schools and professionals working with children to deal with a challenge that we all need to get to grips with.