Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, with reference to the IPC Acute Food Insecurity Report on Gaza, published 21 December 2023, what assessment he has made of (a) the risk of famine in that region and (b) the potential implications for his policies.

According to the World Food Programme (WFP), nine out of every 10 Palestinians in northern Gaza may be eating less than one meal a day. The situation is desperate - and projected to get worse. What matters is simple: more aid delivered by land, more quickly and more effectively. We have already supported the United Nations World Food Programme to deliver a new humanitarian land corridor from Jordan into Gaza, with 750 metric tons of life-saving food aid arriving in the first delivery. The Foreign Secretary continues to discuss and press for the action that needs to be taken to increase aid to Gaza in his regular calls with his Israeli, Egyptian, Jordanian, Lebanese, US and Palestinian Authority counterparts. As he has outlined, Israel must take steps, working with other partners including the UN and Egypt, to significantly increase the flow of aid into Gaza including allowing prolonged humanitarian pauses, opening more routes into Gaza and restoring and sustaining water, fuel and electricity.