Foreign Office accused of multimillion-pound cover-up over Palestinian projects

The Foreign Office has been accused of a multimillion-pound cover-up after refusing to reveal how taxpayer funds are being spent on Palestinian projects.

The row centres on the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), which received £4.6 million from the UK Government for Palestinian programmes in 2022.

A freedom of information request from NGO Monitor, an Israel-based research institute, asking the Foreign Office for a breakdown of how money is distributed was denied, despite lawyers arguing it was in the public interest amid concern over the danger of inadvertently funding groups with links to terrorism.

The NRC has worked with the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC), a Palestinian labour organisation, two members of which were arrested for their involvement in a bombing in 2019 that killed Rina Shnerb, a 17-year-old Israeli girl. The investigation is ongoing.

The Dutch government ceased funding the UAWC in 2022 after an investigation revealed some union members were also in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which is designated as a terrorist organisation in the EU, UK and other countries.

Israel has also banned the UAWC citing its “links to terrorism”.

The NRC removed its online list of affiliated organisations in Palestine in 2019.

Pro-Israel campaigners claim the NRC may have continued to work with the UAWC and have called on the charity and the Foreign Office to disclose the full accounts and reveal its beneficiaries.

The NRC receives a total of £33.3 million for projects around the world from the British Government.

Jonathan Turner, from UK Lawyers for Israel, warned that the Foreign Office is concealing the recipients of large sums of British taxpayers’ money by failing to disclose how the cash is being distributed by the NRC. He said: “The Foreign Office claims that revealing the recipients would cause ‘friction’ in its relationship with the intermediary, which I think is completely bogus and certainly doesn’t justify the cover-up.”

He added: “Governments and organisations such as the Norwegian Refugee Council should welcome scrutiny of the recipients by organisations such as NGO Monitor, instead of obstructing it.”

Anne Herzberg, legal adviser for NGO Monitor, said: “It is clear that the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) is highly embarrassed about the nature of its work with the NRC, and is desperately seeking to hide the details.”

In a statement cited in proceedings, the FCDO admitted: “In order to support UK interests, we may need to work with partners regardless of the views of their government of the day.

“This means that it is sometimes appropriate to keep the identity of those partners confidential; this protects the partners from unnecessary attention from their government and protects the UK’s relationship with the government.”

The freedom of information request was denied.

A Foreign Office spokesman said: “The FCDO has a longstanding relationship with Norwegian Refugee Council, and we are not aware of any funds provided by the department to the NRC being transferred to parties that have been designated as terrorist organisations by Israel.

“The FCDO carries out due diligence assessments of partners it funds directly, including the NRC, which is a leading international NGO and a trusted aid partner.”

The NRC said it “received £4.6 million from FCDO for Palestine in 2022, which included £2 million that was distributed to consortia partners. The FCDO has strict due diligence requirements and standards to which all its funding partners, including NRC, must adhere.”

It added: “NRC complies with laws and regulations, screens all potential partners against sanctions and terrorism lists (including entities proscribed by the Israeli government) and has policies in place to ensure our aid reaches those in need of assistance.”

The NRC said that it “has tried and tested systems aimed at preventing any funding falling into the wrong hands” and that governments and bodies “have strict requirements to ensure funds are only used as intended”.