Gaza: Humanitarian Situation

Lord Turnberg Excerpts

Thursday 30th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

We do not agree that the people of Gaza should be prevented from returning to their homes. We are very clear about that. On what the noble Baroness said about UNRWA, yes, it is very difficult to see how the aid will be delivered and received without UNRWA. If there is another way of doing this that can be done straight away, on the scale that we need—clearly, the only important thing is that the aid gets where it is needed, not who does it—it is difficult to imagine how that could be achieved. So we continue to make that case; we know what the date is and what the law says. We will continue to make the case to the Israeli Government, but we are concerned, as the noble Baroness indicates we should be.

[Lord Turnberg (Lab)]

My Lords, perhaps I can help my noble friend the Minister. We must do everything that we can to provide humanitarian aid. COGAT has provided figures on who provides the aid: UNRWA in fact has recently provided only 13% of the aid that goes in. Much more comes from other organisations. The World Food Programme, for example, provides more than 30%. In view of the problems that UNRWA has with its relationship with Hamas, should we not be ensuring that the aid that we provide goes through the World Food Programme and other organisations, rather than UNRWA, which is suspect?

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

I am sorry, but I do not agree with that. UNRWA has been by far the most effective organisation at delivering aid in Gaza for very many years. There are other organisations and they may need to do an awful lot more, very, very quickly. We all should appreciate just how unlikely and difficult that will be.