Occupied Palestinian Territories: Humanitarian Access

(Limited Text - Ministerial Extracts only)

Wednesday 10th September 2025 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs (Mr Hamish Falconer)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. There was a rather large number of questions, but I will try to address them as much as possible, take interventions and leave some time for my hon. Friend the Member for Cowdenbeath and Kirkcaldy (Melanie Ward), whose work in this area is so deep and respected across the Chamber, as we have heard. I may not be able to make as much progress through my speech as I might under normal circumstances, but I hope colleagues will forgive me, as many of them will already have heard me speak about the middle east for about an hour in the main Chamber.

My hon. Friend is a stalwart voice on these questions. She has worked on them tirelessly in Parliament and before. I knew her when she was the chief executive of Medical Aid for Palestinians, and many across this Chamber will appreciate not just her work, but the work of the organisation she used to lead.

It goes without saying that the humanitarian situation in Gaza remains a scar on our collective conscience. Many Members have asked what the view of history or the view of our constituents will be when this conflict hopefully comes to a close, and that sense rests heavily on me personally and heavily on the Government. More than 64,000 lives have been lost since October 2023. More than 2,000 people have been killed and 16,000 have been injured while seeking aid since May. Those are extraordinary figures in a—I was about to say in a modern context, but in any context at all.

Let me turn first to some of the questions about accountability. I have called on the Israeli Government to conduct independent investigations into a number of strikes on a number of occasions. I agree with the request made by my hon. Friend the Member for Cowdenbeath and Kirkcaldy; we will call again for independent investigations, particularly into the recent so-called double-tap strike on the hospital. It is a source of enormous frustration and tension between the Israeli Government and the British Government that, even in cases that have involved British nationals being struck in drone-recorded videos, as in the case of the World Central Kitchen attack, while there have been preliminary investigations conducted within the IDF, we still await, 15 months on, the findings of the military advocate general. I have met those families repeatedly and they, like so many other families affected, await the level of investigation and accountability that would give them satisfaction and provide confidence that the Israeli Government are taking accountability seriously.

One of the contributions suggested that the Government were looking away or turning away. This is the longest opportunity I will have to talk about humanitarian aid since the recess, and I want to reassure colleagues that during that period I met UNRWA, MAP, the International Committee of the Red Cross, the Red Crescent and, perhaps most searingly, British doctors recently returned from Gaza, on a number of occasions. I heard directly the tales not just of injuries, as so many hon. Members have recounted during the debate, but of the injuries to children, the similarities in those injuries over particular periods and the impact that had on the British doctors who had gone out, let alone those affected and their families.

[Gideon Amos (Taunton and Wellington) (LD)]

The Minister knows from when I wrote to him that what distinguished the shooting up and ransacking of the Action around Bethlehem Children with Disability charity by the Israeli army was the fact that it is a British charity. Will he pursue compensation from the Israeli Government for that British charity for the destruction of the children’s centre in Palestine, as was raised by my constituents in North Curry?

[Mr Falconer]

If I have not responded to the letter, I will ensure that I do so, and I will add the case to the list that I have described of cases on which we seek further action.

In relation to questions of accountability, there are areas where we need to see much more action but, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cowdenbeath and Kirkcaldy rightly pointed out, it is not simply the strikes themselves that impede humanitarian work; there is the question of visas and access for those doctors and other skilled humanitarian workers, just as there are outstanding questions that this House has heard many times from me in relation to so-called dual-use goods. The policy on those goods is applied in such a way that it is very difficult to provide, both in medical and in many other contexts, the kind of equipment and supplies that aid agencies require to carry out their duties.

I turn to the important questions asked by the Opposition spokesperson, the right hon. Member for Wetherby and Easingwold (Sir Alec Shelbrooke). It is regrettably the case that not only is the volume of aid being brought in through the GHF insufficient, but huge volumes of it are being looted. The percentages are difficult to assess, but the WFP thinks that at least 80% of aid trucks are being looted almost immediately, so the ability of anyone to provide assurance that aid is reaching the most vulnerable people is very limited, and any assurance about where that aid ends up is also very limited.

I understand the frustration of hon. Members across the House who often press me to try to find other methods by which aid might be brought into Gaza, whether that is by air or sea. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Cowdenbeath and Kirkcaldy has operational experience of the limitations of the alternatives, which have been explored on several occasions. I do not rule any alternative out. Over the recess, along with our Jordanian partners, we supported aid drops into Gaza. Of course, we will consider any measures that we can use to try and assist people.

I will move on to the important questions about medical and other evacuations shortly. However, I am afraid that the inescapable truth is that it is only the UN operation, operating only by land, that can make a real difference to the absolutely horrific circumstances that are described in the IPC report. It is only via land that the volumes of aid required can be delivered; it is only via land, with UN support, that we can ensure that there are sufficient distribution centres; and it is only through those tried and tested mechanisms that one can have confidence about where the aid ends up.

[Andy McDonald]

I am very grateful to the Minister for giving way. He is a good man who pays an awful lot of attention to these issues. He is telling us about the difficulties regarding aid and he is applying his mind to them. However, as we speak, we have President Herzog in the country.

So I ask the Minister: is that opportunity being used to discuss the root cause of this situation? The failure to transmit humanitarian aid is because of the genocide and war crimes being committed by Israel. Is President Herzog being challenged on his open statements about collective responsibility and saying that there is no such thing as an innocent Gazan? And will he be upbraided for blithely signing his name on bombs that come raining down on Palestinian children? If so, will the Minister make those comments known to the public? We must know how this President is being received.

[Graham Stringer (in the Chair)]

Just before I call the Minister to respond, we have done really well on the timings so far. However, if hon. Members are going to make interventions, can they be short and to the point, please?

[Mr Falconer]

Thank you, Mr Stringer; I will try to speed up as well. I will come to the important points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough and Thornaby East (Andy McDonald) shortly, but first, I will just segue from the overall humanitarian challenges to discuss some of the specific areas of work on which I and the rest of the Government have been heavily engaged over the recess period.

My hon. Friend the Member for Cowdenbeath and Kirkcaldy asked vital questions about the evacuation of vulnerable people. Over the recess, we repeated our commitments to assist both medically vulnerable children and a number of scholars, and there are a number of other people, too, whom I and the Foreign Office are trying to get out of Gaza. However, the operation to get anybody out of Gaza is enormously complex and involves a range of operational partners, and the brute truth is that it also involves the Israeli Government. Nobody can leave Gaza without the support of the Israeli Government.

I am pleased to report to the House that we are making progress on some of those cases, but not all of them. It is an overwhelming focus for me—the operational challenge implicit in getting even handfuls of people out of Gaza. This contribution is, of course, a tiny one, given the scale of need outlined in the IPC report and everywhere else. However, despite the small number of people involved, the operational challenge remains great.

I hope to be able to update the House on the specifics shortly. I know that many right hon. and hon. Members have constituents who are personally affected. As soon as I am in a position to give confirmation on specific cases, I will do so. I know that there are so many right hon. and hon. Members who are deeply concerned about this situation. I can give the House the commitment that at the moment there is nothing else on which I am spending more time, and I will continue to do so until as many people as we can possibly rescue are rescued.

My hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough and Thornaby East asked an important question, which was also asked by other Members. Just to clarify, President Herzog’s visit is a private visit. He has come not at the invitation of the British Government. Nevertheless, given his presence in the UK, we are taking the opportunity to raise a number of very important issues with him.

The Foreign Secretary met the President this morning, and the Prime Minister will meet him this evening. I am sure that they will provide a full account of the points that they have raised. From speaking briefly to the Foreign Secretary, I know that she raised a range of important points, including the importance of Israeli support for our evacuations, over the course of her discussion this morning.

I want to leave my hon. Friend the Member for Cowdenbeath and Kirkcaldy some time to respond, but I would like to say that, understandably, Members raised the question of determinations, and I want to make as clear as I can how the British Government approach genocide determinations. They are, obviously, a question for a competent court. No competent court has made a determination, but courts have made provisional findings, which we would clearly abide by. The previous Foreign Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy), set out in his letter that, of course, as I have told the House on a number of occasions, we conduct assessments of likely breaches across the whole range of our international legal commitments, including in relation to genocide.

As hon. and right hon. Members will know, there are different tests for different elements of international law. As I have always told the House, we take our commitments under all elements of international law, including the genocide convention, extremely seriously. We keep all those assessments under regular review. The spirit of the previous Foreign Secretary’s letter was not to break with what hon. Members have heard me say many times—that it is for a competent court to make determinations—but to seek to give further aeration to the IDC about what our internal assessment looks like on that particular element.