Trade between the United Kingdom and the United Arab Emirates could reach £30bn by 2030, according to Lord Davies of Abersoch, the UK Co-Chair of the UAE-UK Business Council. In an interview, he said the two governments should negotiate a bilateral Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) once the UK-GCC Free Trade Agreement is in force, with a focus on artificial intelligence and data.

Trade between the two countries is already worth more than £25bn, and more than 14,000 British companies export goods and services to the Emirates. Lord Davies said bilateral trade rose by 3.7 per cent last year despite a difficult global environment.

He expects the figures for 2026 to show a modest decline because of this year's regional conflict, which disrupted trade flows. Recent visits to the UAE, he said, had shown him a major rebound in commerce over the past few months, and he believed the £30bn figure was within reach. Getting there would depend on British companies forming partnerships with UAE innovators and entrepreneurs.

The UK-GCC agreement is estimated to add £3.7bn a year to the UK economy and to remove tariffs worth £360m from the day it enters into force. British companies exported £1.4bn of cars to GCC countries in 2025, and those vehicles currently face a tariff of 5 per cent that will fall to zero. The agreement also allows financial data to move across borders and prohibits unjustified data-localisation requirements.

Lord Davies said a bilateral CEPA would supplement that agreement by encouraging collaboration in innovation and in sectors that rely heavily on technology, particularly those using AI and data. With tariffs largely eliminated, he said, it would address the non-tariff barriers that might impede such collaboration. Securing a "comprehensive and ambitious" agreement is the main policy change he wants from the British Government during his first year as Co-Chair. Lord Davies said he was confident that both governments wanted the agreement to happen. 

The interview coincided with the Council setting out its programme for 2027, announced at its first Plenary Conference in London in six years, which was held in partnership with HSBC. The programme includes campaigns on digital assets and clean energy, among other areas, and the Council will assess the commercial, economic and social impact of the UAE-UK Sovereign Investment Partnership over its first five years.

According to the Council, more than £30bn has been invested in the UK through that partnership, which has made 159 investments and sustains 200,000 jobs. This sum is separate from the trade projection. Lord Davies said the partnership was active in seven of the eight sectors identified in the UK's Modern Industrial Strategy and that more than two-thirds of its capital had been deployed outside London. He pointed to Masdar's second UK battery-storage project, at Rochdale, which will produce enough clean energy to power 35,000 homes. It follows the opening of the company's Stockport facility last December.

British investment in the UAE is also growing. In the first three months of 2026, 62 further British firms set up in Dubai, which lifted the total of active British businesses there to 10,334 at the end of March, an increase of more than 330 per cent since 2020. Asked whether UK tax changes, regulation and political uncertainty were encouraging companies, capital and senior talent to relocate to the Emirates, Lord Davies cautioned against describing the movement as one-way. Capital, he said, was moving in both directions for different reasons.

The Council has not seen British companies withdrawing from the UAE, he said, although he advised businesses to consider alternative routes into the country as part of their resilience planning because of constraints affecting the Strait of Hormuz. He named a lack of knowledge as the principal obstacle to greater bilateral investment and recommended that companies seek help from the British Embassy and market-entry specialists when choosing among the UAE's more than 40 free zones. He also called for continued work on the mutual recognition of professional qualifications.

The UAE Co-Chair, Saeed Al Hajeri, said ties between the two countries had reached what he called an “exciting turning point”. Lord Davies said the Council's priority for 2027 was to turn the opportunities ahead into measurable economic activity.