The British government has committed an additional £19 million of aid to Gaza, including £7 million to the controversial UN agency for Palestinian refugees, Unrwa.

A total of £12 million would be directed to the United Nations’ Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and World Food Programme (WFP) and £7 million to Unrwa’s Flash Humanitarian Appeal for Gaza, the government said on Monday.

The announcement came as Development Minister Annelise Dodds took part in a humanitarian conference in Cairo focused on alleviating suffering in Gaza as part of a three-day visit to the Middle East.

In a trip to the West Bank, she is set to meet Palestinian Prime Minister Dr Mohammad Mustafa, visit an Unrwa-operated refugee camp as well as visit areas affected by settler violence.

Dodds will then arrive in Israel and, according to a government statement, hold “meetings with Israeli representatives” and “call on Israel to remove impediments to getting aid into Gaza and discuss finding a lasting resolution to the conflict”.

The minister will also meet the families of UK and UK-linked hostages in Israel and “will reiterate that the UK continues to exercise every possible diplomatic lever to see the hostages immediately and unconditionally released”, the statement said.

Dodds said ahead of the conference that the situation in Gaza was “catastrophic. Gazans are in desperate need of food, and shelter with the onset of winter. The Cairo conference will be an opportunity to get leading voices in one room and put forward real-world solutions to the humanitarian crisis.”

She continued: “The UK is committed to supporting the region’s most vulnerable communities, pledging additional funding for Unrwa, and to supporting the Palestinian Authority reforms.”

Dodds also called on Israel to “immediately act to ensure unimpeded aid access to Gaza. I will meet counterparts both in Israel and the OPTs (Occupied Palestinian Territories) to discuss the need to remove these impediments, bring about a ceasefire, free the hostages and find a lasting solution to the conflict.”

The UK was one of several countries that stopped funding Unrwa in January 2024 after Israel accused its employees of participating in the October 7 attacks and subsequent violence, a decision reversed by the Labour Party in government.

In October, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said the UK was “gravely concerned” at legislation passed by Israel’s Knesset aimed at curtailing Unrwa’s operations.

Even Members of the Knesset, critical of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu backed the controversial pieces of legislation.

Leader of the centre-right opposition party Yisrael Beiteinu, Avidgor Lieberman said at the time: “Unrwa employees not only collaborate with Hamas, but were involved in the murder, kidnapping and rape of Jews on October 7, and they continue to assist Hamas in the war against Israel to this day.”

In an interview with the JC, the former leader of Israel’s Labour Party was scathing about Unrwa and said that “a lot of people who work in Unrwa are Hamas's people”. 

Unrwa has maintained that only 0.66 per cent of its 30,000 staff have been “identified as being implicated in breach of neutrality allegations”.