Jonathan Reynolds has announced the Labour government seeks to deepen commerce with Israel, continuing the policy of his Conservative predecessor, Kemi Badenoch.

Trade negotiations between the UK and Israel seek to establish a new bilateral agreement and have been ongoing since 2022. In the talks Reynolds is dealing with a minister in Tel Aviv, Nir Barkat, who is one of the more extreme proponents of Israel’s brutal war in Gaza.

Reynolds is a personal recipient of funding from Britain’s Israel lobby. He has been on two visits to the country organised by parliamentary lobby group Labour Friends of Israel (LFI), of which he is a vice-chair. LFI refuses to declare its funders. Given that organisations linked directly or indirectly to the Israeli state may fund LFI, this raises the possibility of a conflict of interest for the trade secretary.

Reynolds told the media last week that “I… have spoken to my counterpart the Israeli trade minister because we’ve inherited a process in terms of improving the trade relationship that we have with Israel”.

The trade secretary’s negotiating partner, Nir Barkat, is the former mayor of Jerusalem and now economy minister who is tipped to take over from Benjamin Netanyahu as leader of the Likud party.