Foreign Aid Expenditure

Debate between Andrew Percy and Desmond Swayne

Monday 13th June 2016 Westminster Hall

[Andrew Percy]

I am conscious of time, and I will perhaps give way to the Minister in a moment. The hon. Gentleman is entirely right in a lot of what he says. The Overseas Development Institute stated that our aid money to the Palestinian Authority had failed to promote peace and a peaceful attitude. There is more to be done.

I mentioned a terrorist who confessed that he had engaged in his behaviour to obtain payments. I also want to mention NGO funding, particularly the Ibda’a cultural centre, which will receive £5,602 from DFID this year. Last year, it hosted an exhibition to honour martyrs, including Mohanad Al Halabi, who killed one and injured 11. We must be careful about where our money is going and always be prepared to review.

[Sir Desmond Swayne]

rose—

[Andrew Percy]

I will give way to the Minister out of respect.

[Sir Desmond Swayne]

Let me say that we take the issue of incitement very seriously indeed. With respect to the hon. Gentleman’s point about The Jewish Chronicle, I assure him that both I and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State keep that matter under review continually, precisely because it is so controversial. With respect to the matters raised in relation to integration and so on, I understand that I am receiving a delegation from the hon. Member for Dudley North (Ian Austin) to discuss that on Wednesday.

[Andrew Percy]

I thank the Minister and I hope that he will look at the Ibda’a cultural centre grant that I mentioned.

In my last minute or so, I want to talk about some of the co-existence projects. We had a wonderful meeting last year in Jerusalem with a group of Palestinian and Jewish young people from MEET—the Middle East Entrepreneurs of Tomorrow. It was a really inspiring meeting. Those Palestinian youth and Jewish youth were being educated together. Both were very open about what they thought about each other beforehand and how that project had helped to bring them together. We should be supporting projects such as that, as we should—in these last 46 and a half seconds—be supporting Save a Child’s Heart, which I am proud to serve as a UK patron of. It is a wonderful charity. I was very moved when we visited it last year, particularly when we were meeting and talking with the young Gazan children who receive treatment through it. That organisation supports heart surgery not just for Palestinian children—it is mainly Palestinian children, with Israeli doctors—but for Tanzanian children and Iraqi children. It trains doctors and nurses and is a project that has a reach beyond just Israel and the Palestinian territories. I hope that that is one of the projects we can look at funding in the future.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Andrew Percy and Desmond Swayne

Wednesday 17th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Swayne]

The Gaza reconstruction mechanism, in which we have invested heavily, had a faltering start and only 46 truck-loads were delivered in October. We are now up to 302 as of the beginning of this month. It is not good enough, and we are working for more, but it is the only game in town.

[Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)]

The situation in Gaza is of course made more dire by the actions of Hamas, which misappropriates hundreds of thousands of tonnes of concrete and uses it to construct 32 terror and murder tunnels. Can the Minister tell me what he is doing to ensure that Hamas does not similarly misappropriate aid that should be going towards ordinary Gazans?

[Mr Swayne]

We contributed £500,000 to the implementation of the mechanism, and the Australians have paid for the software, in order to ensure, by agreement with the Israeli Government, the Palestinian Authority and the UN, that no building materials would be misappropriated.