MPs issue plea over Gaza biometric student visa deferral

More than 70 MPs are calling on the government to defer biometric checks for students from Gaza who have secured a university place in the UK for the upcoming academic year.

MP for Brent West Barry Gardiner wrote to Sir Keir Starmer alongside Abtisam Mohamed MP, who is co-chair for the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for International Students, asking to allow biometric checking in Egypt or Jordan.

Gardiner cited Haia Mohammed, who was awarded a scholarship at Goldsmiths University, as one of more than 80 students who could not record their data, as there is no visa application centre in Gaza.

The Home Office said it was considering how it could best support the students.

The letter said: “Within the first 100 days of war, every single university in Gaza has been bombed, leaving over 90,000 students without access to higher education.”

Referencing those with UK university places, they added: “We ask you to coordinate an urgent evacuations route for this group of students, who have lost everything, and yet have achieved scholarships to study, so that they may return to rebuild Palestine for the future.”

They called for a swift response so that the students could begin the academic year in September.

A spokesperson for the government said: “We are aware of these students and are considering how we can best support.

“Of course, the situation on the ground in Gaza makes this extremely challenging but we are doing everything we can to find a solution.”

On Thursday, shadow home secretary Chris Philp said the biometric checks for the Gazan students should be made in British consulates in Israel and argued that they were “an essential part of our security arrangements”.

He said: “One of the reasons [biometric checks] are done is to then check the photograph and check the fingerprints against various databases.”

These contain the details of people who are suspected of extremism, terrorism offences, or have been removed or deported from the UK previously, he said.

“There’s a number of security checks like that, which get done to make sure that people arriving in the UK are being properly vetted,” he said.

He argued that the students mentioned in the letter could use consular facilities, such as the British Embassy or British consulate office in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

“I would ask that the Israeli government make sure that they arrange safe passage for those people to get to the British consulate office in order to have those checks done, prior to travelling,” Mr Philp said.

Gardiner said they were not asking for the checks to be dispensed with, but to be deferred to Egypt or Jordan.

“The point is there is nowhere that they can be done in Gaza,” he said.

“We dispensed with those checks for students from Ukraine in a war situation, and other countries have done it as well.

“This is not saying let’s allow people with a dodgy record come to the UK people, that’s just nonsense.”

The BBC has contacted Goldsmiths University for comment.