The real reason the British government refuses to call Isis's killings genocide

George Osborne announced at a parliamentary reception this week that the Government will increase its support for the Holocaust Educational Trust by £500,000. There will also be funding, he added, for a statue of Frank Foley, a British intelligence officer who helped thousands of Jews to escape from Nazi Germany.

The Chancellor spoke of the horrors of genocide, of taking his family to see the concentration camp at Dachau last month, and praised the courage of those who had helped the refugees at a time of peril. He raised a few smiles saying that some of the money pledged “would come from fines paid by those who fixed the Libor rates – people who showed the worst of values to those who have the best of British values”.

At the time Mr Osborne was speaking at event on Wednesday afternoon to commemorate the life of Major Foley, who has been described as the ‘British Schindler’, there was a Commons debate taking place on the motion that the mass murders of Yazidis, Christians and other minorities by Isis amounted to genocide. The Obama administration, the US Congress, the European parliament and the Council of Europe have all declared that the killing by Isis was genocide. The British government, however, was against MPs voting for the motion.

Foreign Office minister Tobias Ellwood presented – to jeers from all sides of the House – a convoluted argument. He said that he personally accepted that genocide had taken place, but that the matter should be left to the courts to decide

The government trotted out a line about how it has been long-standing practice not to give legal definitions to war crimes. But, in reality, there is wariness about the sensibilities of the Turks who do not want the term genocide introduced too much into international politics because it may be used for the Armenian massacres. Ankara has campaigned long and hard to prevent this from happening and there is a feeling that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan must not be offended while he is being persuaded to stop Syrian refugees coming into Europe from Turkey.

It was left to Frank Foley’s nephew, speaking after Mr Osborne at the Attlee Suite in Portcullis House, to point out to the parliamentary TV monitor covering the debate that an on-going genocide taking place in 2016

Mr Ellwood failed to persuade the MPs. The Commons voted unanimously to recognise that genocide had taken place, but the Government, with its stance, can disassociate itself from the decision.

Major Foley of MI6 carried out his mission to save lives in secret without telling his superiors. From what we know, it is unlikely that he would have received the backing of the Establishment. The journalist and author Michael Smith, who has written an excellent biography of Foley, pointed out that at the time the then head of MI6 was complaining to the Home Secretary that there were too many Jews coming into the country and warned that they were a menace to British society. The British Medical Association, meanwhile, lobbied to limit the numbers of Jewish doctors working here.

After the reception, an elderly Jewish lady described how her family had made their way to England via France. “We have family members who did not get away, some ended up in Dachau, where Mr Osborne had just been to. Yes, there was anti-Semitism and anti-Semitism has not totally gone away,” she said. “I was born in this country, our family found refuge here. But that is something so many of the Syrian refugees are not going to get in the West it seems in the current climate; it’s a great pity.”

What, we wondered, would Frank Foley have made of this?