Gaza: Humanitarian Obligations

Hamish Falconer Excerpts

Monday 24th November 2025 Westminster Hall

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Butler. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Irene Campbell) for opening the debate. I want to thank every hon. Member who has spoken with such clarity and conviction.

I was asked a number of questions over two and a half hours. If hon. Members will permit me, I intend to make a brief statement about the humanitarian situation before taking any interventions. I know that the voices in this Chamber echo the deep concern felt across the country—concern so strong that nearly 200,000 people signed the petition that brought us here today, including many of my own constituents in Lincoln. I know that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale (Paul Waugh) says, this is not at all a fringe concern—it is on the minds of constituents represented by all of us, right across the country.

The ceasefire was achieved with great difficulty and in the face of great danger. It must hold. We must confront the humanitarian catastrophe that continues in Gaza. We must see the bodies of the hostages returned to their grieving families and move quickly from phase 1 to phase 2—reconstruction and recovery—to rebuild shattered lives. As we take peace plans forward, we must not lose focus on the catastrophic humanitarian situation. More than 69,000 people have lost their lives since October 2023. Tens of thousands have been wounded, most of them women and children, and over 90% of the population remains displaced. Our immediate priority must be aid—rapid, sustained and unrestricted. The international system can deliver at scale, but that is not happening on the ground.

As we speak, vital equipment and field hospitals are waiting just miles away, blocked by red tape. Winter, as many contributions have made clear, is closing in, and displaced families need shelter and basic services restored. The Israeli authorities must open all crossings without delay, and aid agencies and NGOs must be able to operate freely across the whole of Gaza. Restrictions on UNRWA and other UN agencies must be lifted. The system and the supplies exist. I was pleased to hear other colleagues who have seen them in el-Arish—as I have. The will in the UK exists. If the ceasefire and the 20-point plan are to succeed, the political block on aid must end.

I understand the frustration my colleagues expressed tonight. Let me reassure the House that the Government are doing all they can to support the ceasefire and get aid into Gaza. We have allocated £78 million for humanitarian and recovery support this year, including £20 million for water, sanitation and hygiene services. Over the past two years, we have restored funding to UNRWA and provided nearly £250 million in development assistance. I was challenged on whether that has made any difference to individuals in Gaza—it is 439,000 people who have received essential health care, 647,000 who have received food and over 300,000 who have gained access to clean water and sanitation.

Many hon. Members rightly challenged me and the Government to consider the individuals at the heart of this, rather than the numbers. I was in Yemen last week and saw a malnourished child in front of me at one of the healthcare clinics that we are supporting. The sight of a severely malnourished 11-month-old baby is a truly arresting one. It is a reminder to me, as I know it is to everyone in this House, that there are thousands of such children in Gaza.

We must do everything we can to ensure that the ceasefire holds and that the aid gets in. We have deployed UK advisers to the Civil-Military Co-ordination Centre to help to co-ordinate reconstruction and humanitarian efforts. In total, we are providing £116 million this year for humanitarian aid, economic development and strengthening PA governance and reform.

[Alice Macdonald]

I thank the Minister for giving way and for the speech he is making. It was announced today that the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is ceasing operations. It was said that the GHF has shared lessons with the CMCC. Does the Minister think that it is important that we learn what not to do in delivering aid? We have seen that the best way to do that is through recognised organisations such as the UN. Will the Minister comment on the GHF statement today?

[Mr Falconer]

I thank my hon. Friend for that important contribution. I have been absolutely clear throughout that the GHF was no way to deliver aid. The cost to the people of Gaza was absolutely clear from the grim images of its operation that we saw day in and day out. It has always been the case that a system exists in order to provide aid across Gaza. It is not a perfect system, and where there are abuses of that system, they need to be investigated—I am very glad to hear from our partners that the looting of aid has considerably reduced following the ceasefire—but the system exists. The aid exists. It is the United Nations system. It is mentioned specifically in the 20-point plan. That is how aid must be distributed across Gaza.

[Brendan O’Hara]

I wholeheartedly agree with everything that the Minister has said, and applaud much of it. The restriction of aid in Gaza is utterly reprehensible. There have been multiple calls for action in this Chamber, but what is the plan if Israel says no? If Israel says that it is not allowing unfettered access to humanitarian aid, what do we do?

[Mr Falconer]

It may be helpful to the House if I set out what the UK sees as unfettered access. There are three areas where our advocacy is particularly focused. One is the registration provisions around NGOs, which was raised by many colleagues. We have raised that issue directly with the Israeli Government, which is what the hon. Member asked about in his intervention.

The second is dual-use items. There has been an overly restrictive approach to dual-use items that has restricted shelter, in particular, and a range of other things, including water purification equipment and a whole range of medical supplies. The dual-use list must be considerably loosened to enable the kinds of operations that so many hon. Members have discussed.

The third, turning to the comments of the hon. Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell), is the crossings. There are two crossings open, which I understand the shadow Foreign Secretary saw during her recent visit, but significant crossings remain closed: the Allenby crossing into Jordan and the Rafah crossing. Those are two critical crossings, and their opening was clearly envisaged in the 20-point plan. It is on that point that we continue to press the Israeli Government.

The opening of those crossings is related to some of the important points made by hon. Members about both aid access going in and people coming out. I have told hon. Members before that I do not wish to be drawn on specific numbers of medically injured children and students whom we have assisted to leave Gaza. Many hon. Members in this Chamber have discussed some of these questions with me. Those whose questions I have not yet answered have my word that I will come back to them quickly. I can say that, after the most recent wave of evacuations, we have now exceeded the target that I had mentioned to some hon. Members in recent months. We have, after a series of evacuation operations, managed to save hundreds from what awaited them in Gaza and provided opportunities for them to take up here in the UK.

I take the point that the hon. Member for Argyll, Bute and South Lochaber (Brendan O’Hara), and others, have made that they would like to see larger numbers. There is a balance to be struck here. Clearly, medical assistance is most effective and timely in Gaza itself—on both sides of the yellow line. After that, it is most effective in the region, and I was pleased to be in Cairo recently seeing some of that provision. Where that assistance cannot be provided, it is appropriate that we look at specialist cases, as we have done.

[Dr Ellie Chowns (North Herefordshire) (Green)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Falconer]

Very briefly, and then I will wrap up.

[Dr Chowns]

I thank the Minister; I appreciate that. We have been talking about the desperate need for unfettered aid access into Gaza for desperate, starving civilians. At the same time, this country continues to provide completely unfettered trade access for settlement goods into the UK—proceeds of crime, literally. Is it not time for the British Government to ban trade in settlement goods? Might that not help to put a little pressure on the Israeli Government to allow aid into Gaza?

[Mr Falconer]

As the hon. Lady knows, there is not unfettered trade with the occupied territories. They are not subject to the same trade arrangements as Israel, and where there are breaches, we will investigate those thoroughly. We have discussed many times some of the challenges around ensuring that goods produced in the occupied territories do not find their way into the mainstream Israeli trading system, but I do not have the time, I am afraid, to rehearse some of those arguments again this afternoon.

I will close by saying that the Government understand the urgency of the humanitarian situation in Gaza, on both sides of the yellow line. His Majesty’s Opposition ask whether we want to see the international system enter what some are calling the red zone, west of the yellow line, and indeed we do. That is absolutely vital. That is where 90% of Gaza’s population remains to this day. Humanitarian provision east of the yellow line cannot make a dent in the very significant humanitarian suffering that so many have described so eloquently.

The most recent figures that we have show famine levels reducing, and severe malnutrition has decreased since the ceasefire, but it is still far too high. I give this House my solemn commitment, and that of the Government, that we will not rest until humanitarian aid is entering Gaza in the volumes required to try to meet the staggering level of human suffering that so many have talked about with such power this afternoon.