Middle East and North Africa

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Wednesday 7th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

There is going to be a review, and I hope it is very quick. I do not know about anyone else, but I would certainly like to draw a line under this. We need to understand what went wrong here. Mr el-Fattah was given British citizenship under the previous Government. The noble Earl, Lord Courtown, asked me about this and I did not give him an answer, so I will do that now. It takes a lot for us to remove someone’s citizenship. I was asked whether we look at the previous social media of everyone we provide consular assistance to. No, we do not do that routinely. There may be occasions where that is appropriate. Some of our fellow citizens—how shall I put this diplomatically?—have views that we do not particularly appreciate, but that does not mean that we do not try to help them. We do not make a judgment in all cases about why they went somewhere we told them not to go to, or got themselves in a situation we would prefer they had not got into. We provide assistance judgment free, if you like.

This situation is slightly different because of its high-profile nature and because of ministerial involvement over successive Governments from all parties, so it is right that we look at exactly what went wrong here and why we did not know, because we may have made slightly different judgments at different points along the way. That is what this review is about. I hope it is quick so that we can share the findings and perhaps avoid this sort of situation in future.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, on Gaza, I very much associate myself with the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed, about the lack of progress on the peace process. The Statement talks about NGOs being banned, aid being stuck at the borders and the huge continuing humanitarian crisis that is contributing to. With that in mind, I note that the Foreign Press Association has expressed profound disappointment that the ban on free and unfettered access for foreign journalists in Gaza has continued. In the last year, Gaza was the deadliest place to work as a journalist; 56 Palestinian media professionals were killed in the last year there. Clearly, getting international eyes on the ground is important for the world to understand what is happening. Are the British Government pushing for that to happen so the situation can open up to media scrutiny?

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

Yes, that needs to happen, and it should happen. The world needs to have proper journalists able to report to a high standard about what is happening now and what has happened previously.

The 20-point plan is something we are going to stick with. It is all there is. There is no alternative peace plan: this is it, imperfect though it surely is. There has been a dramatic increase in the amount of aid getting into Gaza. It is not enough. We do not agree at all with the registration requirements and the disclosure of names of personnel; we are fundamentally against that. It goes against the principles by which we work. We have said so, and we will continue to make that point.