Israel and Palestine

Debate between Brian Mathew and Alicia Kearns

Monday 14th September 2026 Commons Chamber

[Brian Mathew (Melksham and Devizes) (LD)]

Many across the House, like me, welcome the Foreign Secretary’s announcement of a ban on products from illegal settlements in the occupied territories. Back in the early ’80s, I was a kibbutznik based at Kibbutz Re’im in the Negev, where I was conducting agricultural research. In those now far-off days, I would go with my Israeli friends to meet their Palestinian friends in Gaza—to meet, to trade, and to drink strong black Arabic coffee. Re’im was one of the kibbutzim attacked on 7 October 2023, so I can say that I understand something of the area and the tensions, and I can also say that peace is possible.

I would like to talk about a topic raised by one of my constituents at a constituency surgery in Melksham and Devizes last Saturday: the closure of the unit tracking potential law breaches, as announced in The Guardian on 24 April. The closure of the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office’s international humanitarian law cell is doubly worrying at this time, especially when it means that funding for the conflict and security monitoring project run by the Centre for Information Resilience will come to an end.

[Alicia Kearns]

To add to the hon. Gentleman’s point, he may not be aware that the Government have also closed the atrocity prevention centre that was set up in the Cabinet Office. I spent two years fighting for its introduction. Its whole point was to identify the signs of ethnic cleansing very early on, so that the Government could send experts in to improve the Foreign Office’s response. Does he not agree that that closure is concerning, given that we see more conflict around the world, not less?

[Brian Mathew]

I heartily agree with the hon. Lady. The centre’s work for the FCDO included the world’s largest open-source monitoring of incidents across Israel, Palestine and Lebanon. It is the only programme in the UK that collects, verifies and analyses human rights and conflict incidents in Israel and the occupied territories. The closure of the monitoring programme will mean that the Foreign Office will lose access to a database of 26,000 and counting incidents in the middle east, stretching back to 7 October 2023. The database also helps FCDO teams decide whether arms export control licences to Israel should remain suspended, and it is used by officials discussing whether international humanitarian law—for example, rules on proportionality—is being breached. The head of the Metropolitan police’s war crimes team in the counter-terrorism unit underlined the importance of CIR’s work in helping the Metropolitan police to consider war crimes allegations, including the unlawful shooting of minors in Gaza.

I hope the Minister can clarify whether these cuts have been reversed. For the Government to be operating blind at this time would be extremely concerning. Furthermore, this issue casts light on the importance of the FCDO’s work and the self-defeating nature of the Government’s cuts to our aid programme, which those in my party, and I suspect many Members across the Chamber, condemn.