Question to the Department for International Development:

To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, pursuant to the Answer of 21 January 2019 to Question 209284 on Palestinians: Schools, whether her Department has commissioned the study into the new Palestinian textbooks.

The UK government is deeply concerned about the findings of the IMPACT-se report into the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) new curriculum and it remains a priority for the Department for International Development (DFID) to commission an independent review of the PA’s textbooks. Our timeline for the textbook review remains unchanged. We expect to be able to announce our partners in the review and the start of work on this project shortly. We cannot yet provide further information owing to ongoing commercial discussions, but we will inform interested parliamentarians as soon as possible. In the interim, we are continuing to raise our concerns about incitement in education, which I did personally at a meeting with the Palestinian Education Minister in January 2019.