Occupied Palestinian Territories: Humanitarian Access

Debate between Graham Stringer and Hamish Falconer

Wednesday 10th September 2025 Westminster Hall

[Graham Stringer (in the Chair)]

Just before I call the Minister to respond, we have done really well on the timings so far. However, if hon. Members are going to make interventions, can they be short and to the point, please?

[Mr Falconer]

Thank you, Mr Stringer; I will try to speed up as well. I will come to the important points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough and Thornaby East (Andy McDonald) shortly, but first, I will just segue from the overall humanitarian challenges to discuss some of the specific areas of work on which I and the rest of the Government have been heavily engaged over the recess period.

My hon. Friend the Member for Cowdenbeath and Kirkcaldy asked vital questions about the evacuation of vulnerable people. Over the recess, we repeated our commitments to assist both medically vulnerable children and a number of scholars, and there are a number of other people, too, whom I and the Foreign Office are trying to get out of Gaza. However, the operation to get anybody out of Gaza is enormously complex and involves a range of operational partners, and the brute truth is that it also involves the Israeli Government. Nobody can leave Gaza without the support of the Israeli Government.

I am pleased to report to the House that we are making progress on some of those cases, but not all of them. It is an overwhelming focus for me—the operational challenge implicit in getting even handfuls of people out of Gaza. This contribution is, of course, a tiny one, given the scale of need outlined in the IPC report and everywhere else. However, despite the small number of people involved, the operational challenge remains great.

I hope to be able to update the House on the specifics shortly. I know that many right hon. and hon. Members have constituents who are personally affected. As soon as I am in a position to give confirmation on specific cases, I will do so. I know that there are so many right hon. and hon. Members who are deeply concerned about this situation. I can give the House the commitment that at the moment there is nothing else on which I am spending more time, and I will continue to do so until as many people as we can possibly rescue are rescued.

My hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough and Thornaby East asked an important question, which was also asked by other Members. Just to clarify, President Herzog’s visit is a private visit. He has come not at the invitation of the British Government. Nevertheless, given his presence in the UK, we are taking the opportunity to raise a number of very important issues with him.

The Foreign Secretary met the President this morning, and the Prime Minister will meet him this evening. I am sure that they will provide a full account of the points that they have raised. From speaking briefly to the Foreign Secretary, I know that she raised a range of important points, including the importance of Israeli support for our evacuations, over the course of her discussion this morning.

I want to leave my hon. Friend the Member for Cowdenbeath and Kirkcaldy some time to respond, but I would like to say that, understandably, Members raised the question of determinations, and I want to make as clear as I can how the British Government approach genocide determinations. They are, obviously, a question for a competent court. No competent court has made a determination, but courts have made provisional findings, which we would clearly abide by. The previous Foreign Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy), set out in his letter that, of course, as I have told the House on a number of occasions, we conduct assessments of likely breaches across the whole range of our international legal commitments, including in relation to genocide.

As hon. and right hon. Members will know, there are different tests for different elements of international law. As I have always told the House, we take our commitments under all elements of international law, including the genocide convention, extremely seriously. We keep all those assessments under regular review. The spirit of the previous Foreign Secretary’s letter was not to break with what hon. Members have heard me say many times—that it is for a competent court to make determinations—but to seek to give further aeration to the IDC about what our internal assessment looks like on that particular element.