Israel lobbyist in House of Lords claims thousands of pounds in public money
Lord Polak has said he was urged to ‘stand up for Israel’ in parliament by David Cameron.
Stuart Polak is a Conservative peer. (Photo: Rwandan government / Flickr)
A leading lobbyist who described being made a member of House of Lords as a “once in a lifetime opportunity” to advocate for Israel is claiming thousands of pounds in public funds for his parliamentary work.
Stuart Polak, who led the Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI) for 25 years, has claimed almost a quarter of a million pounds since he was made a peer by then-prime minister David Cameron in 2015, according to analysis of his expenses by Middle East Eye and Declassified UK.
Polak’s expenses as a member of the House of Lords are entirely legitimate. Members do not receive a salary but can claim a non-taxable daily attendance allowance of £361 (£342 prior to April 2024), although they can also choose to claim a reduced allowance or no allowance at all.
But Polak’s place in parliament, and his entitlement to draw on public money while continuing to advocate for Israel, has been called into question at a time when Israeli leaders face accusations of genocide and war crimes over the conduct of the war against Hamas in Gaza, during which more than 38,000 Palestinians have been killed.
Concerns about CFI’s relationship with the Conservative Party were also raised this week by Alan Duncan, a former foreign office minister who on Tuesday said he had been cleared of antisemitism by a party disciplinary panel and suggested there had been a “witch hunt” against him.
The case against Duncan came after an interview he gave to LBC radio in April, when he said that CFI was “doing the bidding” of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
He also accused Polak of “exercising the interests of another country, not that of the parliament in which he sits,” and called for him to be removed from the House of Lords.
In a strongly worded statement on Tuesday, Duncan claimed that an improper relationship existed between the CFI and the top of the Conservative Party, and called on the party to “decouple itself” from the lobby group.
A Conservative Party spokesperson said Duncan’s claims about links between the party and CFI were “false and entirely unfounded”.
MEE and Declassified UK approached Lord Polak and CFI for comment but had not received a response by the time of publication.
Standing up for Israel
Polak stepped down as the head of CFI to take his place in the UK parliament’s unelected upper house as a Conservative peer in 2015.
But he remains the lobby group’s honorary president and a registered director, and is still considered to be one of the most important pro-Israel voices in Westminster.
Of the 40 questions he has asked since he became a Lord, only seven have not related to Palestine, Israel or the Middle East.
Polak has already made three trips to Israel in the first quarter of this year.
The first trip, in January, was described by CFI as a “special solidarity visit” by Conservative parliamentarians which included a meeting with Israeli President Isaac Herzog.
The trip was funded by the European Leadership Network (Elnet), which was createdto “counter the widespread criticism of Israel”. Elnet has described South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice as “politically motivated and legally tenuous”.
In February, Polak joined a CFI delegation of Conservative parliamentary candidates visiting the country, and in March he was part of a House of Lords delegation which met “Israeli politicians, religious leaders, Palestinian civil society and the British Ambassador to Israel”, according to the House of Lords register of interests.
Polak has made no secret of his determination to use his place in the Lords to continue speaking up for Israel.
At the time of his appointment, he said: “The Prime Minister has given me a once in a lifetime opportunity to enter the House of Lords which will enable me to continue to advocate for Israel.”
In an interview in 2022, he described how Cameron had urged him to continue “to stand up for Israel”.
“When David Cameron invited me to go to the Lords… he said I hope you will continue to stand up for Israel, these were his words. To stand up for Israel in the House of Lords,” Polak said.
Jonathan Purcell, senior public affairs officer at the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP), said: “Time and time again, Lord Polak has said it’s a ‘great honour’ to speak up for Israel in the House of Lords. But the duties of politicians are simple. MPs should serve their constituents, and peers should serve the country more generally. This should be the focus of any and all politicians.”
Private meetings
Polak briefly came to public attention in 2017, when he was criticised for organising private meetings between then development secretary Priti Patel and senior Israeli officials.
The incident forced Patel’s resignation from cabinet yet Polak escaped the scandal with almost no scrutiny and has continued to enjoy access to senior Conservative politicians.
In January, Polak sat next to then-prime minister Rishi Sunak at the CFI’s annual business lunch, which was attended by “200 Conservative Parliamentarians, 20 Cabinet members and four former UK Prime Ministers”.
On Wednesday it was widely reported that Patel planned to stand to replace Sunak as Conservative leader following the party’s general election defeat by Labour earlier this month which saw it reduced to just 121 MPs.
Several other likely leadership contenders have links to CFI. The group has paid for Robert Jenrick and James Cleverly to visit Israel, while Kemi Badenoch said she was “really, really proud to be a supporter of CFI” when she addressed its “legendary” parliamentary reception last year.
Polak also has connections to the Israeli government. Last year he hosted then-Israeli intelligence minister Gila Gamliel at an event at the House of Lords in which Gamliel called on the UK government to proscribe Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp (IGRC) as a terrorist group.
Chris Doyle, director of the Council for Arab-British Understanding (Caabu), said that while Polak was fully entitled to claim the daily House of Lords allowance there were questions to be asked about why he had been made a member in the first place.
He also called for greater scrutiny of Polak’s interventions in the Lords, citing hiscriticism in March 2023 of the previous UK government’s policy of non-engagement with Israel’s far-right security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.
“He is going in there with a very blinkered view that is polarising and unhelpful,” said Doyle.
“While he is entitled to put his views, the record will show he is prepared to uphold and promote views which I would like to think our politicians should be staying well away from.”
As a member of a parliamentary group supportive of the Abraham Accords, Polak has used his position to promote closer ties between the UK and Arab states that have normalised relations with Israel including the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco.
Last year, Polak was among a group of peers who visited the city of Laayoune in Western Sahara during a trip to Morocco and the disputed territory as guests of Morocco’s government.
The UK government does not recognise Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara and regards its status as “undetermined”. But Polak was reported as saying that Israel’s decision to recognise Morocco’s claim to the territory was “the right thing to do” and pledging to encourage the UK government to do the same.
Polak has fostered close ties with Bahrain, meeting its crown prince at the Royal Windsor Horse Show in May alongside former prime minister Theresa May.
He visited Bahrain three times between 2022 and 2023 as a guest of the Gulf state, according to the House of Lords register of interests, and again in February 2024, according to Bahrain’s foreign ministry.
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The House of Lords expenses system effectively means UK taxpayers are subsidising Polak’s lobbying activities. Analysis of official records, which have only been published up to December 2023, show he has claimed £235,000 ($304,000) in daily allowances since becoming a peer.
When data from this year is released the total will likely be closer to a quarter of a million pounds, based on claims Polak has made in previous years for his parliamentary time.
The financial records appears to indicate that Polak is more active in Parliament during CFI campaign periods. These included the group’s flagship policies to ban Hamas in its entirety, and the Lebanese Hezbollah movement.
While Hamas’s military wing has been proscribed in the UK since 2001, both Labour and Conservative governments had avoided outlawing the group’s political wing, recognising that its important political role running Gaza’s civil administration could be complicated by a ban.
But in November 2021, Patel, who had returned to government as home secretary under Boris Johnson, announced the government’s intention to ban Hamas in its entirety. Five days later, the ban was passed without even a parliamentary vote.
The Hamas ban coincided with one of Polak’s busiest months in Westminster, which saw him attend parliament on 14 days and claim an allowance of £4,522 in public funds.
Polak voted on four days that month, and spoke in the Lords on three occasions, including a six-minute speech, in which he called for a boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics because of China’s persecution of the Uyghurs, the day after Hamas was banned.
He put in a similar expenses claim in February 2019 when Hezbollah was banned by then-home secretary Sajid Javid, another senior Conservative politician who has met Polak while on holiday in Israel.
The Hezbollah ban was debated in the Lords that month, with Polak describing the move as “the right one and long overdue”. The group’s proscription passed without a vote. Polak claimed an allowance of £4,575 for 15 days in parliament that month.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Phil Miller is the editor of Declassified UK. He is the author of Keenie Meenie: The British Mercenaries Who Got Away With War Crimes. Follow him on Twitter at @pmillerinfo
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