Thank you to every constituent who has taken the time to write to me about Gaza. I share your total distress and dismay. On Saturday, July 26, 2025 I joined Sam Rushworth MP and others in signing a cross-party letter to the government. Together we are asking for support for Project Pure Hope to evacuate a further forty children to the UK for urgent life-saving treatment. You can read the letter in full below. Please know that I will continue to look for ways to use my voice to help in any way I can.

 Dear Home Secretary and Foreign Secretary,

As a cross-party group of MPs, we write to support the Foreign Secretary in the commitment he expressed last week to the International Development Committee to “do more” to bring children from Gaza to the UK for urgent specialist medical treatment and to urge some clear first steps to achieving this.

Last week, the Foreign Secretary told the Committee, “We have supported the (Project Pure) Hope Charity initiative to bring children to the UK”, adding, “I am happy to do more if those requests come in… and if there are more children that we can work with Hope and others (to bring) of course we will do that.”

We know you share our heartbreak about the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza and the images of innocent children suffering and dying because they cannot access the urgent medical care they need.

The World Health Organisation estimate that as many as 12,500 patients in Gaza need urgent medical evacuation. Up to 10th April, 7,229 patients had been evacuated since the start of the conflict, of whom nearly 5000 were children. Their main destinations were Egypt (4045), United Arab Emirates (1285), Qatar (970), Turkey (430), Algeria (136), and EU countries (126).

Since the WHO’s appeal in April, the EU Civil Protection Mechanism has medically evacuated 223 Palestinian patients from Gaza to 11 EU Member States (Belgium, Germany, Greece, France, Spain, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Malta, Romania and Slovakia) and 3 UCPM Participating States (Albania, Norway, Türkiye). This includes 17 patients evacuated to hospitals in Italy last month with the support of Giorgia Meloni’s government.

As you know, the United Kingdom has so far taken only two children, with a third hopefully due to arrive next week. All of this has been 100% privately funded by Project Pure Hope.

A key obstacle to bringing suffering children to the UK, even for short-term medical treatment, is difficulty obtaining visas. The most desperate need is for medical evacuation from Gaza itself, but the UK closed our only authorised biometrics registration centre in Gaza in October 2023. If the government is not willing to defer biometric registration until arrival in the UK, we exhort you to work with the WHO, COGAT and the Jordanian government to secure passage to the consulate in Amman, where the relevant biometrics check can be done prior to flying to the UK.

The precedent of Malala Yousafzai, who received life-saving surgery at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham just four days after she was shot by the Taliban in 2012 demonstrates what can be achieved with international co-ordination and political will.

A second obstacle is cost. With the government applying the NHS tariff plus 150% surcharge if NHS facilities are used, the costs can run to hundreds of thousands of pounds per patient. We welcome the role the UK has played supporting just under half a million people to receive essential health care in Gaza and funding the polio vaccine roll-out. Could ODA not be used to likewise support life-saving health care “at cost” in the UK? Paediatric specialists around the UK stand ready to help.

Project Pure Hope, who have privately funded all this work so far, have been required to use private medical facilities to treat the injured children, rather than NHS hospital and facilities, whilst many NHS CEOs and people remain ready to support the needs of injured Gazan children, like they have and continue to for Ukrainian children and those from other conflicts.

From the 669 children rescued by Sir Nicolas Winton on the Kindertransport 86 years ago, to the more recent Homes for Ukraine scheme, the British people expect our country to play our part. Project Pure Hope is requesting your support to evacuate a further forty children to the UK for urgent life-saving treatment. Please let’s work together to achieve this.

Dr Sam Rushworth MP

Sir Edward Leigh MP

Sarah Champion MP

Dr Brian Matthew

James Naish MP

David Baines MP

Paula Barker MP

Olivia Blake MP

Ian Byrne MP

Charlotte Cane MP

Adam Dance MP

Cat Eccles MP

Will Forster MP

Mary Foy MP

Allison Gardiner MP

Lord Michael German

Mary Hendrick MP

Pippa Heylings MP

Wera Hobhouse MP

Christine Jardine MP

Liz Jarvis MP

Paul Kohler MP

Angus MacDonald MP

Ben Maguire MP

Mike Martin MP

Rachel Maskell MP

Susan Murray MP

Sarah Olney MP

Manuella Perteghella MP

David Smith MP

Cameron Thomas MP

Claire Young MP