Kit Malthouse

I, too, met the mother of Hersh Goldberg-Polin in Jerusalem. It is a terrible tragedy that his name has joined the list of many thousands of innocents on both sides who have died in this conflict over the last few months. The Secretary of State will know that I have long been concerned about the situation in the west bank. I understand that the measures that he has taken today, and indeed sanctions generally, are not purely performative —he wants them to have some bite—so I wanted to ask about the case of the Hilltop Youth. That violent settler organisation was sanctioned by the previous Government earlier this year and was recently described as a bunch of terrorists by the head of the internal security service in Israel, yet our sanctions have seemingly had no impact on its behaviour and conduct or on the violent persecution that it is visiting upon innocent Palestinians in the west bank. Will the Secretary of State consider extending our sanctions to those who support and sustain that organisation and others, both within Israel and externally? If we are to be taken seriously on the international stage, whether in the case of Iran or these violent organisations, our measures have to have bite and effect. At the moment, seemingly, they do not.