The High Court has quashed a decision of the Foreign Secretary refusing to help a family of six Palestinians leave Gaza. Mr Justice Chamberlain’s significant ruling requires the Foreign Secretary to “think again” and make a new, lawful decision on the family’s request for help.

The family were represented by Ben Bundock (One Pump Court), led by Tim Owen KC (Matrix) alongside Tim James-Matthews (Matrix), instructed by Jenni Whitaker and Liz Barratt of Bindmans, supported by trainee solicitor Shivani Soni.

The family – a father, mother, and four children (two young adults, two children) – have been living in extreme peril and deprivation. One of the children was recently hit by shrapnel from a tank shell when seeking food at an aid distribution site. Despite holding conditional entry clearance to join their British relative in the UK since January 2025, the family have been unable to leave Gaza. Israel controls the movement of Palestinians out of Gaza and will only currently look at requests for people to leave if they are made by another state.

Mr Justice Chamberlain found serious flaws in the Foreign Secretary’s decision-making. First, the FCDO had not properly grappled with whether the Claimants’ entry clearance, granted on the basis of a close family connection to a British citizen, meant they should be provided with consular assistance. Secondly, the FCDO had severely limited the people they would help leave Gaza due to concerns about opening the ‘floodgates’, but had not actually considered the number of people in Gaza in the same position as this family – people in Gaza with entry clearance to the UK – revealed during at the hearing to be just 38. Thirdly, the FCDO had said asking Israel to let the family leave would spend “political and diplomatic capital” with Israel, but had treated it as irrelevant that senior members of the Israeli government have made statements suggesting that they want Palestinians to leave Gaza if another country is willing to accept them, and that the Israeli authorities had written to the FCDO inviting them to put forward names of Palestinians for evacuation.

The Foreign Secretary initially argued that the family’s claim was ‘non-justiciable’ because it intruded into a “forbidden area” of foreign affairs, meaning that the courts should not entertain it. By the time of the hearing, the Foreign Secretary accepted that the claim was justiciable in full, a position which Mr Justice Chamberlain noted was “correct”.

David Chirico KC, also instructed by Bindmans, acted for the family in their successful appeal to the Upper Tribunal. Rachel Francis, instructed by Wilsons, is acting in a number of claims against the Foreign Secretary on behalf of other families in Gaza, with co-junior Asma Nizami (Doughty Street) and led by Amanda Weston KC (Garden Court). Catherine Robinson has also been working on these claims.

The clients remain in Gaza at extreme risk, and members of chambers continue to carry out urgent work seeking to secure their exit.

Read the full judgment here.

Read the press release from Bindman’s here.

Read BBC news coverage here.