More than 85 British MPs have written to Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood after reports that the government is blocking the evacuation of dozens of women and children from Gaza. The letter, sent on Thursday by Labour MP Kim Johnson and signed by MPs from across different parties, puts the Home Office’s paperwork machine at the center of a crisis that has already shredded families.
The State's Paper Wall
Last September, the Home Office suspended refugee family reunion applications pending the introduction of new, stricter rules, but those rules have not yet been announced. That delay has left families in Gaza who had applied to join an immediate family member in Britain before the suspension blocked from doing so. The language is bureaucratic. The effect is not. People who were told there was a legal route to reunification are still waiting while the state decides what kind of mercy it wants to permit.
Johnson said, “Family reunification should never be treated as a political bargaining chip.” She added, “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 also said, “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.” The Home Office, for its part, has not yet announced the rules it said would replace the suspended process.
The letter was signed by dozens of Labour MPs, including Richard Burgon, Diane Abbott, Clive Lewis, John McDonnell and Abtisam Mohamed. It was also signed by Green MPs Sian Berry, Carla Denyer and Hannah Spencer, members of the parliamentary Independent Alliance and some Liberal Democrat and Scottish National Party MPs. The cross-party signatures don’t change the basic setup. One arm of the state suspends the route. Another asks it to reopen it. Families remain stuck in the gap.
The Evacuation Machine That Doesn't Move
The letter said Palestinians in the UK had been told by the Foreign Office that they had agreed to evacuate their families from Gaza. It said lawyers reported that the Home Office appeared to be refusing to provide the required onward travel assurance and sometimes using legal challenges to block these families from coming to the UK, in a way that appeared to be taking a harsher line with Palestinian families than with refugees from other countries applying for family reunification visas. That is the machinery in plain view: one department says yes, another withholds the paperwork, and the people caught between them are left to absorb the consequences.
The letter further said the government's medical evacuation scheme, which commits to bringing 300 children “in need of life saving and life changing medical care” from Gaza to the UK, still remained unmet. It raised the cases of two children from Gaza, 12-year-old Mahmoud Mansi and 15-year-old Obaida Atwan, who were evacuated from Gaza and met former Prime Minister Keir Starmer last December, when he promised to do everything in his power to reunite them with their remaining family back in Gaza. The letter said they had heard nothing further in the months since. Promises were made. The files stayed put.
The MPs asked Mahmood to urgently reinstate the family reunification process for Palestinians and work with counterparts in the Foreign Office to evacuate everyone who had been granted permission to come to the UK. They also asked that the Home Office ensure its policy on Palestinians from Gaza was in line with refugees from other countries applying for family reunification visas. The demand is modest, almost painfully so: apply the same rules, stop blocking the ones already approved, and let the people the state says it will help actually move.
Complicity, Then Apology
MEE said it had contacted the Home Office for comment. The report also said Andy Burnham apologized for the Starmer government's response to Israel’s genocide in Gaza shortly before he became prime minister last month. Burnham said, “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,” and called the “unbearable suffering” in Gaza a “scar on our collective conscience.” He also criticized Israel's ever-expanding occupation of territory in Gaza, saying, “We’ve got to do more to put pressure on the Israeli government.”
The report said Britain operated hundreds of surveillance flights over Gaza during Israel's genocide and shared intelligence with Israel, which the government insisted was for “hostage rescue” purposes. It said the Starmer government imposed a partial arms embargo on Israel in 2024 and recognized Palestinian statehood last September. The state can surveil, share intelligence, embargo partially, recognize symbolically, and still leave families trapped in administrative limbo. Different tools. Same hierarchy.
What sits underneath all this is a familiar arrangement: ministries, legal thresholds, and diplomatic language deciding who gets to cross a border and who stays trapped by it. The MPs’ letter names the obstruction. The Home Office created it last September and still hasn’t replaced it with the rules it promised. The Foreign Office says one thing. The Home Office does another. Children wait. Parents wait. The state keeps its hands on the gate.