Having grown up in a working class part of Middlesbrough, Business Secretary Greg Clark had never met a Jew before starting university.

But since then, his closest mentors have been Jewish, he told Jewish Care supporters at the charity’s 90th Business Group breakfast, held at London’s Mansion House.

Two of his eldest child’s godparents are observant Jews, “a challenge for both the church that conducted the [christening] service and the rabbis of my friends, whom they approached for permission [to participate].”

It was through his “great friend Diana Gould”, who set up a home care business, that he “came to know about the extraordinary work and achievements of Jewish Care”.

Mr Clark went on that a great hero of his was Sir David Salomons, the first Jewish Lord Mayor of London and, in 1851, one of the first Jews to be elected an MP.

“David Salomons fought tirelessly for his communities — the Jewish community, Greenwich, the City of London and Tunbridge Wells. He won the right of members of the Jewish community to take up their rightful place in Britain’s great institutions, from Parliament to the Mansion House.”

Sir David and his nephew David Lionel Salomons “were among Britain’s foremost champions of the technologies that were sweeping the world. Their home in Tunbridge Wells, Broomhill, became a centre of research and innovation.

“David Salomons Jnr established workshops and laboratories and took out patents for electric lamps, motors and generators.

“Broomhill was one of the first homes in the world to be lit by electricity and the first to use electricity for cooking. In 1895, he organised, in Tunbridge Wells, Britain’s first-ever motor show.”

It was a frustration that “the necessary national debate over Brexit has detracted from what I am convinced would otherwise be our national conversation — the extraordinary revolution that is taking place in almost every industry in the world”.

The breakfast raised £40,000 for Jewish Care services.