Middle East Minister Hamish Falconer yesterday refused to apologise for appearing to suggest that Israel’s ambassador to the UK Tzipi Hotovely was not to the government’s “taste”.

Asked by the JC on Sunday whether he would apologise, following calls for him to do so by shadow foreign secretary Dame Priti Patel and a public rebuke by Israel’s foreign ministry, Falconer said he was “surprised” that his comments had been interpreted as a slight.

“I was asked in the House of Commons earlier in the week about why I was not expelling the Israeli ambassador”, he said, explaining that he was discouraging the questioner, John McDonnell MP, formerly Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow chancellor, “from focusing on the political nature of an ambassador, and said I would continue to talk to the ambassador and the Israeli government.

“That is, indeed, the only way to conduct diplomacy and try and change things on the ground like secure hostage releases.”

He added that he thought it was “pretty clear” that he was not “commenting personally on the Israeli ambassador”, and was, in fact, “disagreeing with the premise of the question: which is that I should expel her. So, I don't think there's a substantive disagreement on the point between the two governments.”

Falconer was speaking at a session organised by Labour Friends of Israel (LFI) at the Jewish Labour Movement’s one day conference, held at JW3.

Middle East Minister Hamish Falconer (Image: Jewish Labour Movement).

In the discussion, chaired by LFI chair Jon Pearce MP, Falconer admitted that he could not “disguise the fact that there is a disagreement between the British government and the Israeli government on the conduct of the war” in Gaza.

The Middle East Minister said not enough aid had been getting into the Gaza Strip , something he had witnessed personally in a visit to Al-Arish in northern Sinai, Egypt: “there were piles and piles, tons and tons of British aid – paid for by the British government using British taxpayers’ money – which has not got into Gaza, and much of it had been there for a long time”.

He continued: “The flood of aid that we were promised by the Israeli government has not been forthcoming, and it needs to get in there urgently.”

Falconer, who was first elected at last year’s general election to represent Lincoln, later added that “Israel has a legitimate right to try and ensure that what is going into Gaza is not going to be fired in a rocket straight back at Israel, but it also has an obligation about aid.”

Prior to becoming an MP, Falconer served as a hostage negotiator for the Foreign Office and had worked on securing the release of British citizens held by the Taliban.

Speaking of hostages held by Hamas in Gaza, Falconer said he was aware, “from my own experience of how painful this is for families, and I'm very grateful to see some of them here today” — referencing Sharone Lifschitz, whose father Oded is still being held hostage by Hamas and who had spoken at another session at the conference.

On the prospect of a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, Falconer said it was “welcome that the tone has changed over the last few months”, noting that there had been periods “where the tone, publicly and privately, was of a real distance from any possible ceasefire talks”.

He went on: “We are clearly closer now. But for those for whom this is a lived agony each and every day, I don't want to give people confidence that it's imminent. I hope, my God, I hope that it is, but they've given the complexity and the nature of these things. We need to be cautious until the ink is dry.”

In another session at the JLM conference, Attorney General Lord Hermer claimed the decision to suspend some arms sales to Israel was “purely a legal decision”, not a political one.

Attorney General Richard Hermer KC makes his way to Number 10 for his first day as a cabinet minister on 6 July (Photo by Alex McBride/Getty Images)

“Everything we want to do in this government, where there are legal issues, we will play it by a straight bat,” he said.  “Sometimes that will lead to decisions we really don't want to take but that is how we're going to do it”, he told those present.

Hermer, one of two Jewish members of Sir Keir Starmer’s cabinet, was interviewed on stage by Reform Judaism’s Rabbi Laura Janner-Klausner, who also revealed she was Hermer’s madrichah in RSY, the youth movement of Reform Judaism, in the 1980s.

She started the session by joking: “So, which of the stories am I not meant to tell about 1983?”