Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, for what reason the Government did not send a full representative to the Paris Peace Conference of 15 January 2017 on peace between Israel and Palestine.

The UK welcomes France’s efforts to promote peace. But we were always clear that a conference so close to the change of US administration, and without the attendance of the two main parties, was not the best way to make progress. Therefore we decided to attend the conference as an observer, at senior official level.