'We are being misled!' Richard Tice accuses UN of ‘lies’ after conducting first-hand inspection of Gaza border

Claiming that he had unique access "right into the heart" of the humanitarian aid on the Kerem Shalom, he recounted: "I saw trucks and trucks, dozens of trucks arriving.

"I was right in the centre of it, seeing more pallets of fruit and flour and bananas and avocados and onions and sugar than I've ever seen before."

"I saw Palestinian forklift trucks and forklift truck drivers, unloading them onto the distribution lorries that go across the border, moving at great speed.

"I spoke to two very senior people involved in the logistics exercise of this, and there are hundreds of trucks going across every day.

"And do you know what I learned? It's the UN trucks, primarily from UNWRA that are the slowest to get distributed," he told Martin.

He further expressed deep concern that "we are being fed misinformation deliberately" by "vested interests with a very different agenda".

He further claimed that what is "actually happening" is that Hamas and gangs are stealing the food from the international charity.

"Those are being essentially put on the market at black market prices. The profits of that essentially fund Hamas - and they all know this, but they won't tell us the truth."

Mr Tice said that these charities do not provide Israel with the appropriate vetting information of their employees and then, not complying with the rules, that Israel is not permitting the charities to carry out their job.

"Yes, the poorest in Gaza clearly are finding it difficult to get food because of the black market prices," the Boston and Skegness MP said.

"It's not about the quantity of food that's available. It's about the price that Hamas and the gangs are putting it on the market at," he explained, adding "that is the thrust of the hunger issue".

"But we are being misled," he alleged.

Those who believe that there is a famine, he said, "think of what pictures we see in Ethiopia and Sudan".

"Frankly, that is a lie," he declared, adding: "And the UN is lying and it needs to be called out and I'm calling it out. I've been there, I've seen it, and it's very different from what we're doing."

Speaking more about what he had seen, Mr Tice shared video footage as well as photos of what he witnessed first-hand.

Talking through the images, the Reform bigwig said: "So there is there are dozens and dozens, hundreds of pallets of fresh fruit. There's onions, there's bananas, there's avocados. There's tins and tins and tins. More tins there.

"You've got huge quantities of flour and sugar and rice and the like."

Last month, the World Health Organisation (WHO) announced that more than 500,000 people in Gaza are "trapped in famine, marked by widespread starvation, destitution and preventable deaths", according to the analysis, and figures were only expected to deteriorate.