British secretary of state for international development Priti Patel has apologised for holding several secret meetings with Israeli officials during a family holiday in August, in which she discussed a number of issues, including India.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis summer I travelled to Israel, on a family holiday paid for myself. While away I had the opportunity to meet a number of people and organisations. I am publishing a list of who I met.? The Foreign and Commonwealth Office was aware of my visit while it was underway,\u201d Patel said in her apology.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn hindsight, I can see how my enthusiasm to engage in this way could be misread, and how meetings were set up and reported in a way which did not accord with the usual procedures. I am sorry for this and I apologise for it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The meetings amounted to a breach of the ministerial code, since the Foreign Office was not informed of them in advance.<\/p>\n
Prime Minister Theresa May said she had spoken to Patel, who had been \u201creminded of her obligations\u201d as a cabinet minister.<\/p>\n
Patel\u2019s apology statement included a list of people she met, along with a brief summary of the discussions.<\/p>\n
During a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, she discussed her family background that included her parents fleeing Uganda in the 1970s and settling in Britain. They also discussed \u201cIndia, given the secretary of state\u2019s family background\u201d.<\/p>\n
The statement added the Foreign Office was aware of the visit while it was underway, but was not informed about it in advance. The Foreign Office, it said, was \u201cclear that UK interests were not damaged or affected by the meetings on this visit\u201d.<\/p>\n
Former Conservative foreign secretary Malcolm Rifkind told BBC the meetings were \u201cextremely unwise\u201d, adding: \u201cNot only did she not tell the Foreign Office directly, so far as I\u2019m aware the British embassy in Israel wasn\u2019t aware that this was happening. Now that just shouldn\u2019t be done…it\u2019s not just a question of courtesy.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
British secretary of state for international development Priti Patel has apologised for holding several secret meetings with Israeli officials during a family holiday in August, in which she discussed a number of issues, including India. \u201cThis summer I travelled to Israel, on a family holiday paid for myself. While away I had the opportunity to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9639,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9638"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9638\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9640,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9638\/revisions\/9640"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}