Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government what provision will be made for wounded children with no surviving family in Gaza who require urgent medical care to be brought to the United Kingdom for medical treatment.

Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)

The Government is working urgently to get some of the critically ill and injured children medically evacuated from Gaza. The first patients are expected to arrive in the United Kingdom in the coming weeks.

Children will only be transferred to the UK where it is clinically safe to do so and in the interests of each individual patient and where there is capacity within the National Health Service to treat them. They will be accompanied by their immediate family which means their parents, and siblings aged under 18 years old. Where both parents are deceased, they must be accompanied by a legal guardian. We will not be evacuating unaccompanied children.

It is too early to say how long this process will run for and thus the number of children we expect to be evacuated.

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government how many wounded children from Gaza they will bring to the United Kingdom for medical treatment; and whether they plan to increase this number.

Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)

The Government is working urgently to get some of the critically ill and injured children medically evacuated from Gaza. The first patients are expected to arrive in the United Kingdom in the coming weeks.

Children will only be transferred to the UK where it is clinically safe to do so and in the interests of each individual patient and where there is capacity within the National Health Service to treat them. They will be accompanied by their immediate family which means their parents, and siblings aged under 18 years old. Where both parents are deceased, they must be accompanied by a legal guardian. We will not be evacuating unaccompanied children.

It is too early to say how long this process will run for and thus the number of children we expect to be evacuated.

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to accelerate the process to bring wounded children from Gaza to the United Kingdom.

Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)

The Government is working urgently to get some of the critically ill and injured children medically evacuated from Gaza. The first patients are expected to arrive in the United Kingdom in the coming weeks.

Children will only be transferred to the UK where it is clinically safe to do so and in the interests of each individual patient and where there is capacity within the National Health Service to treat them. They will be accompanied by their immediate family which means their parents, and siblings aged under 18 years old. Where both parents are deceased, they must be accompanied by a legal guardian. We will not be evacuating unaccompanied children.

It is too early to say how long this process will run for and thus the number of children we expect to be evacuated.

Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government how many chemical weapon attacks took place in Syria under Bashar al-Assad's rule.

Answered by Baroness Chapman of Darlington - Minister of State (Development)

Independent international investigations mandated by the UN Security Council and the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) have confirmed that the Assad regime used chemical weapons at least nine times against its own people after Syria joined the Chemical Weapons Convention in 2013, including chlorine and sarin nerve agent.

Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of their sanctions policy in relation to Israel, following that country’s attack on Qatar on 9 September.

Answered by Baroness Chapman of Darlington - Minister of State (Development)

On 11 September, the UK's Permanent Representative to the UN, Dame Barbara Woodward, condemned Israel's strikes on Doha as a "flagrant violation of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Qatar," warning of the risk of further escalation. The Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary have both expressed grave concern over the incident, reaffirming UK solidarity with Qatar and calling for de-escalation. Since taking office, this Government has announced three packages of sanctions in relation to Israel/Palestine. In June we imposed sanctions on Israeli Cabinet Ministers Smotrich and Ben Gvir, in their personal capacity for inciting violence towards Palestinians, while the previous rounds targeted individuals, illegal settler outposts and organisations perpetrating and supporting violence against Palestinian communities in the West Bank.