A cross-party coalition of more than 85 Members of Parliament in the United Kingdom has sounded the alarm over allegations that the UK government is halting the evacuation of dozens of vulnerable Palestinian women and children from conflict-ravaged Gaza, penning an official letter to Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood to demand urgent action. The correspondence, organized by Labour MP Kim Johnson and sent Thursday, draws attention to a months-long administrative freeze that has left eligible families trapped in a war zone, separated from loved ones already residing in the UK.
The crisis traces back to September 2024, when the Home Office paused all new refugee family reunion applications to draft stricter replacement regulations. Five months on, those new rules have yet to be published, leaving pre-suspension applicants – many of whom are Gaza-based families waiting to join immediate family members already settled in Britain – in legal limbo, with their journeys to safety completely blocked.
Johnson, in comments to independent outlet Middle East Eye, emphasized that family reunification is far more than a bureaucratic procedure for families surviving the catastrophic violence in Gaza. “Family reunification should never be treated as a political bargaining chip,” she said. “For families enduring the horrors of Gaza, it is a lifeline – often the only hope of safety and the chance to hold their loved ones again.” She went on to argue that unnecessary administrative delay is indefensible in the face of mass trauma, adding, “At a time of unimaginable loss and trauma, the very least we should be doing is ensuring those with a legal right to be together are not torn apart by needless Home Office obstruction. We cannot allow bureaucracy to stand in the way of humanity.”
Signatories to the letter stretch across the UK political spectrum, including high-profile Labour MPs such as Diane Abbott, John McDonnell, Richard Burgon, Abtisam Mohamed and Diane Abbott, all three Green Party Westminster MPs, multiple members of the Parliamentary Independent Alliance, and several MPs from the Liberal Democrats and Scottish National Party.
The letter outlines serious allegations of discriminatory treatment against Palestinian applicants. It notes that the Foreign Office has already given approval for many UK-based Palestinians to evacuate their family members from Gaza, but the Home Office has repeatedly refused to issue the required travel documentation needed to complete the journey. In some cases, the Home Office has even launched legal challenges to block entry – a harsher approach than that applied to refugee families from other global conflict zones seeking reunion, the letter claims.
MPs also highlighted that the government’s pledged medical evacuation scheme, which promised to bring 300 seriously ill Palestinian children in need of life-saving treatment from Gaza to the UK, has still not delivered on its commitments. They highlighted the specific case of two teenage evacuees, 12-year-old Mahmoud Mansi and 15-year-old Obaida Atwan, who met former Prime Minister Keir Starmer in December 2024. At that meeting, Starmer publicly promised to use all his power to help the boys reunite with their remaining family still trapped in Gaza. As of this week, the families have received no update on their applications, more than four months after the meeting.
The letter lays out two clear demands for Mahmood: first, to urgently restart the family reunification process for eligible Palestinian applicants and coordinate with Foreign Office counterparts to facilitate the immediate evacuation of all people already approved for entry to the UK; second, to revise Home Office policy to ensure Palestinian applicants from Gaza receive equal treatment to refugees from other regions applying for family reunion visas. Middle East Eye confirmed it has reached out to the Home Office requesting a formal response to the allegations and demands.
This intervention comes amid growing internal pressure on the Starmer administration over its approach to the Gaza conflict. Earlier this month, leading Labour figure Andy Burnham publicly apologized for his party’s early response to Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, shortly before he took office as prime minister. “I know many people feel that at the start of Israel’s military action in Gaza, my party didn’t get it right, and I am sorry about that. The response has too often not been good enough. We need to do better,” Burnham said. He described the “unbearable suffering” in Gaza as a “scar on our collective conscience” and called for greater diplomatic pressure on the Israeli government to end its expanding occupation of Gaza territory.
This pressure also comes amid revelations of UK military involvement in the region: declassified records confirm the UK carried out hundreds of surveillance flights over Gaza during the military campaign, sharing intelligence with Israeli forces, a move the government has insisted was solely for hostage rescue operations. The Starmer administration has taken some limited steps toward accountability, imposing a partial arms embargo on Israel in 2024 and formally recognizing Palestinian statehood last September.