Professor Nick Maynard, who relayed his experiences in evidence to the High Court as part of the legal challenge brought over UK arms exports to Israel, said he had brought laminated photos of injured children to try to get his point across, but to no avail.

“I had a very limited time to speak, but there was no question that the foreign secretary was given the information detailing the indiscriminate mutilation and killing of children in Gaza,” he wrote in a witness statement of the February 2024 meeting.

“I left the meeting with no confidence that the information would be acted upon, and in my view the information we gave them was ignored.”