The government has announced a Cabinet committee on antisemitism ahead of Rosh Hashanah, as ministers prepare to sanction the West Bank in the coming days.
Angela Rayner, Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, announced the committee during a round-table meeting between the Prime Minister and Jewish communal leaders at Number 10 on Thursday afternoon.
It comes as the government is poised to announce sanctions.
The JC understands Andy Burnham first raised the imminent measures with communal leaders, who offered him a “robust and clear” response about how the “demonising” of Israel has an “impact” on British Jews.
The government is expected to announce the sanctions as early as next week, the JC understands, with measures expected to go beyond targeting individual violent settlers.
During the 75-minute meeting, communal figures raised concerns about what one Jewish leader described as “exceptionalism” towards Israel.
The Prime Minister said the government’s approach was driven by a conviction in the two-state solution, rather than a desire to appease Labour backbenchers.
It is understood that Burnham suggested pro-Palestine protests could intensify if the government did not take action over the West Bank.
The meeting was the first between the new prime minister and Jewish communal representatives.
Burnham said he knew “how much the community is struggling.”
“Right now, the levels of anxiety are really quite high and probably never higher in terms of a sense of people's personal safety,” he said.
Burnham and Rayner both spoke about the impact of the Heaton Park terror attack, in which Adrian Daulby, 53, and Melvin Cravitz, 66, were killed.
The prime minister and Rayner and committed to making meetings between the government and Jewish communal representatives a twice-yearly occurrence.
Rayner said the new Cabinet committee would help ensure that the government’s response to antisemitism was coordinated across departments.
She said she would be “making sure that we have a Cabinet committee on antisemitism to really make sure that every single one of our departments… [is] doing everything we possibly [can] to ensure there is no gaps and that it is a coordinated effort to give you all the support that you need, not just now but into the future.”
Rayner said the government recognised the fears and concerns facing the Jewish community and wanted to take a more "proactive" approach.
“I wanted to recognise fear and the concerns that people have got and that we want to work proactively.”
Referring to the memorial event for the Heaton Park attack on Monday, Rayner said: “I don't want to come to events like a memorial and for us to say the words that we mean and we mean deep at the bottom of our heart, but I want to be more proactive and I know that the Prime Minister and other government departments want to listen."
She cited the work of the Department for Education as an example of a more joined-up approach across government.
Burnham said his previous engagement with the Jewish community in Manchester was "really close" and "mattered hugely to me".
"We always had the closest to dialogue, mainly agreeing, sometimes we [had] differences, but we've always thought to work things through," he said.
The twice-yearly meetings, he suggested, could provide a framework for that relationship.
"I wanted to propose that we diarise this as a scheduled meeting,” Burnham said.
Among those around the table were Phil Rosenberg, President of the Board of Deputies; Debbie Fox, interim chief executive of the Jewish Leadership Council; Marc Levy, chief executive of the Jewish Representative Council of Greater Manchester; Dave Rich, director of policy at the Community Security Trust; Danny Stone, chief executive of the Antisemitism Policy Trust; Lord John Mann, the government’s advisor on antisemitism; and leaders from organisations including the Union of Jewish Students, Interlink, Jewish Women’s Aid and Holocaust Educational Trust,
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