Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of increasing co-operation between medical R&D facilities in the UK and Israel.

The UK and Israel are co-operating in a wide range of areas in medical R&D, with many successful partnerships across academia and business. The Britain Israel Research and Academic Exchange Partnership has supported medical collaboration over the last seven years, distributing 19 grants for joint research excellence totalling over £8 million. Our Embassy in Tel Aviv and the British Council manage the programme with private funding raised from a diverse coalition of non-Government organisations. In 2018 the British and Israeli Governments signed an agreement covering a two year £4 million bilateral programme to support business-to-business R&D collaboration between Israeli and UK companies. Projects to receive funding will be announced later this month with a number of medical R&D projects in contention.

The UK-Israel Tech Hub at our Embassy also helps to create tech and innovation partnerships across several sectors, including healthcare. One of their projects, the UK-Israel Dangoor Healthcare Initiative, aims to create a pipeline of digital innovation for the NHS. We are currently exploring further opportunities to expand cooperation in medical R&D.