Question to the Department for International Development:

To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, pursuant to the Answer of 1 April 2019 to Question 236490, what comparative assessment she has made of whether the Palestinian Authority prisoner payment system is equivalent to conventional welfare payments.

The UK Government deplores any act of violence or incitement to violence. The UK government does not consider the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) prisoner payments system to be equivalent to conventional welfare payments. The UK government acknowledges that people in need are entitled to access support that is based on objective social need. For this reason we continue to press the PA to make the prisoner payments system more needs based, transparent and affordable. UK Ministers have raised this personally with the Palestinian Foreign Minister, and officials raised this with the PA at senior levels most recently on 28 March 2019. No UK aid is used for payments to Palestinian prisoners or their families.