Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, pursuant to the Answer of 30 November 2020 to Question 120023 on Palestinians: Radicalism, what recent assessment he has made of the (a) effectiveness of UK Government representations to the Palestinian Authority on that matter and (b) effect of the Palestinian Authority's practice of paying salaries to prisoners convicted of terrorist offences on the prospects for a peaceful resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

We are clear that the prisoner payments system should be reformed and is one among many hurdles in the way of a peaceful resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The UK has made frequent representations to the Palestinian Authority (PA) on the matter, which have helped establish it as a priority of the PA to address. Coordination between the parties, suspended in light of Israel's threat to annex parts of the West Bank illegally, has now resumed. We hope that the parties will soon again be resolving the problems between them.