Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, when he last discussed with his Israeli counterpart the planned building of 1,000 new houses in Jerusalem.

I issued a statement on 29 October condemning the announcement of plans for 1,060 new housing units in East Jerusalem. I made it clear that this was an ill-judged and ill-timed decision, which makes it harder to achieve a two state solution with Jerusalem as a shared capital. Officials from our Embassy in Tel Aviv have raised this issue with the Israeli National Security Adviser, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Political-Military Adviser, senior contacts at the National Security Council and the Cabinet Office.