Asked by: Lord Mendelsohn (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government, regarding the UK-funded World Food Programme cash assistance for conflict-affected Lebanese, (1) in which areas of Lebanon is the assistance is being delivered, (2) which organisations are acting as implementing partners and (3) what safeguards are in place to ensure that UK-funded assistance does not benefit Hezbollah.
Answered by Baroness Chapman of Darlington - Minister of State (Development)
The Integrated Security Fund (ISF) Lebanon programme provides funding to strengthen the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) and Lebanese Internal Security Forces (LISF) through targeted capacity building. In Financial Year 2025/26, UK assistance enabled LAF border deployments, training, essential equipment provision, and greater interoperability between the LAF and LISF. Palladium supports the delivery of UK funded programmes by providing technical advisory capacity.
World Food Programme (WFP) and other direct partners, including under the ISF, undergo enhanced due diligence to ensure strong controls preventing aid diversion, including risks of diversion to terrorists. UK cash assistance for vulnerable Lebanese households is distributed via WFP and downstream partners SHEILD, World Vision, Lebanese Red Cross and Caritas Lebanon and channelled nationwide through the Lebanese government's Shock Responsive Safety Net (SRSN) which targets the most vulnerable conflict affected families based on acute humanitarian needs. All funding is provided through reputable financial service providers.
Asked by: Lord Mendelsohn (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government what UK programmes were used to provide funding to the government of Lebanon or the Lebanese armed forces to support the dismantling of Hezbollah in the financial year 2025/26.
Answered by Baroness Chapman of Darlington - Minister of State (Development)
The Integrated Security Fund (ISF) Lebanon programme provides funding to strengthen the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) and Lebanese Internal Security Forces (LISF) through targeted capacity building. In Financial Year 2025/26, UK assistance enabled LAF border deployments, training, essential equipment provision, and greater interoperability between the LAF and LISF. Palladium supports the delivery of UK funded programmes by providing technical advisory capacity.
World Food Programme (WFP) and other direct partners, including under the ISF, undergo enhanced due diligence to ensure strong controls preventing aid diversion, including risks of diversion to terrorists. UK cash assistance for vulnerable Lebanese households is distributed via WFP and downstream partners SHEILD, World Vision, Lebanese Red Cross and Caritas Lebanon and channelled nationwide through the Lebanese government's Shock Responsive Safety Net (SRSN) which targets the most vulnerable conflict affected families based on acute humanitarian needs. All funding is provided through reputable financial service providers.
Asked by: Lord Mendelsohn (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government what role the company Palladium International Ltd plays in delivering UK-funded programmes in Lebanon.
Answered by Baroness Chapman of Darlington - Minister of State (Development)
The Integrated Security Fund (ISF) Lebanon programme provides funding to strengthen the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) and Lebanese Internal Security Forces (LISF) through targeted capacity building. In Financial Year 2025/26, UK assistance enabled LAF border deployments, training, essential equipment provision, and greater interoperability between the LAF and LISF. Palladium supports the delivery of UK funded programmes by providing technical advisory capacity.
World Food Programme (WFP) and other direct partners, including under the ISF, undergo enhanced due diligence to ensure strong controls preventing aid diversion, including risks of diversion to terrorists. UK cash assistance for vulnerable Lebanese households is distributed via WFP and downstream partners SHEILD, World Vision, Lebanese Red Cross and Caritas Lebanon and channelled nationwide through the Lebanese government's Shock Responsive Safety Net (SRSN) which targets the most vulnerable conflict affected families based on acute humanitarian needs. All funding is provided through reputable financial service providers.
Asked by: Lord Mendelsohn (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government how much funding (1) they have given so far, and (2) they have pledged to give, to support the government of Ukraine's investigations into war crimes, and how much they have given and pledged to give to the International Criminal Court or any other international bodies supporting victims and witnesses of war crimes.
Answered by Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
The UK is committed to holding Russia to account for its actions in Ukraine. We have provided £6.2 million of capacity-building support to Ukraine's domestic work to document, investigate, and prosecute war crimes. Since February 2022, we have provided £2.3 million in additional contributions to the International Criminal Court to increase its capacity to collect evidence and support survivors. This is on top of our annual budget contribution to the ICC, a total of £36.2 million for 2022, 2023 and 2024.
Asked by: Lord Mendelsohn (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what support they are providing for investigations of any alleged war crimes currently taking place; and whether they will increase the resources available to support those investigations.
Answered by Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
International criminal justice and accountability is a fundamental element of our foreign policy. The UK supports the International Criminal Court (ICC) in its role as the primary international institution with the mandate to investigate and prosecute war crimes and other international crimes of the most serious concern.
On 14 July 2022, I represented the UK at the Ukraine Accountability conference in The Hague. I met with ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan and stressed the UK's continued commitment to ensuring that our assistance in the investigation of atrocity crimes and support to victims, is effective. The UK has also joined with the United States and the European Union to launch the Atrocity Crimes Advisory Group (ACA), which is supporting the Office of the Prosecutor General to investigate and prosecute conflict-related crimes. The UK will commit £2.5 million to delivering justice for war crimes in Ukraine, through the ACA's vital work.
Asked by: Lord Mendelsohn (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what budget they allocate to (1) the support they are providing to Ukraine in response to investigating alleged Russian war crimes committed in that country, and (2) investigating alleged Rwandan war criminals living in the UK.
Answered by Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
Russia's use of indiscriminate force against innocent civilians in Ukraine amounts to war crimes. Those must be investigated and those responsible must be held to account. The UK led efforts to refer the situation in Ukraine to the International Criminal Court (ICC). It is for the ICC Prosecutor to independently determine who should be prosecuted for war crimes committed in Ukraine. The UK will provide the necessary support to the ICC, including through £1 million in funding and technical assistance. In addition to supporting the ICC investigation, the Attorney General led a scoping mission to the region in May, to assess how UK Government Departments can assist Ukraine's domestic investigation into war crimes.
Regarding alleged Rwandan war criminals in the UK, an ongoing Metropolitan Police Service investigation into five alleged Rwandan genocidaires remains a priority for the Police, Home Office and wider UK Government.
Asked by: Lord Mendelsohn (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what assurances they have received from the government of the United States that the permitted airport Homeland Security checks are random and not based on racial and other profiling.
Answered by Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
US airport security checks are a matter for the US authorities. The US Department for Homeland Security has established mechanisms for anyone to submit a complaint if they feel they have been subject to discriminatory checks at US airports. Further details are on their website at: https://www.dhs.gov/file-civil-rights-complaint.
Asked by: Lord Mendelsohn (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the impact of the recent cuts to Overseas Development Assistance on research and preparedness for future pandemics; and how many grants for research into pandemics and global health have been affected by these cuts.
Answered by Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
We have prioritised our aid to be more strategic and remain a force for good across the world. Following a thorough review, the FCDO's aid budget has been allocated in accordance with UK strategic priorities against a challenging financial climate of COVID. FCDO will now work through what this means for individual research programmes, in line with the priorities we have identified.
We will focus our research on the core priorities for poverty reduction, including COVID recovery, pandemic preparedness and other international health priorities. Overall, we have committed up to £1.3 billion of aid spending to counter the health, socio-economic and humanitarian impacts of the pandemic. Scientific and technological innovation runs through every one of the seven priority themes for our ODA spend. UK expertise in science, research and development has led to one of the first effective and affordable COVID-19 vaccines. We will remain a world-leading aid donor and across Her Majesty's Government we will spend more than £10 billion this year to address poverty, climate change and global health threats - including ensuring that developing countries have access to COVID-19 vaccines and treatments.
Asked by: Lord Mendelsohn (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask Her Majesty's Government when they expect that UK production of vaccines will be sufficient to send doses to developing countries, beyond those doses already arranged through the COVAX framework.
Answered by Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
The UK Government recognises that the fight against COVID-19 is a global effort requiring international collaboration, but our first priority is to protect the British public.
We are committed to rapid, equitable access to safe and effective vaccines, and have committed to sharing the majority of any excess doses from the UK supply with COVAX. As the multilateral mechanism set up to support international cooperation on COVID-19 vaccines, COVAX is best placed in allocating any surplus vaccines, and the UK has already committed £548 million to COVAX.
Asked by: Lord Mendelsohn (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon on 3 July (HL16512), how many UK-funded programmes and projects to support actions agreed at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting 2018 have been evaluated with those evaluations published; and what is the timeline for the evaluation of remaining programmes.
Answered by Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
All UK-funded programmes and projects to support actions agreed at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) 2018 are subject to regular reviews. The majority of such programmes and projects are subject to the standard Annual Review processes of either the Department for International Development (DfID) or the Conflict, Stability and Security Fund (CSSF), which look at the effectiveness and value for money of each programme, and consider how teams have assessed risk and changing contexts. Summaries of the annual reviews are published on the CSSF page on gov.uk, while DfID reviews are published on DfID's Development Tracker, again accessed through gov.uk. DfID annual reviews are published throughout the year, depending on the date of the review. CSSF annual reviews are carried out in the first quarter of the financial year and summaries of the reviews are published later in the year.
A small number of programmes and projects are not funded by DFID or the CSSF, but they also undergo regular reporting throughout their implementation and on completion, including published annual reviews and/or internal annual progress reports.