Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, whether there is a safe evacuation route that allows Palestinian academics to be evacuated from the Occupied Palestinian Territories to allow them to take up positions at universities in the UK.

We are working urgently to support Chevening Scholars and fully-funded scholarship holders in Gaza who have offers from British universities to leave and take up their places in the UK. We are doing everything we can to support their safe exit and onward travel to the UK, but the situation on the ground in Gaza makes this extremely challenging. All individuals who enter the UK are subject to robust security checks and have to submit their biometrics ahead of travel.