Yemen: UK Arms Sales to Saudi Arabia

Lord Purvis of Tweed Excerpts

Wednesday 20th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fairhead]

I thank my noble friend for that question and for chairing the committee. It is, as the Secretary-General of the UN has said, one of the worst humanitarian crises. We keep export licences under close and continual review, and we undertake to continue to do that. In terms of the peace process, we are doing all we can to find an end. Our Foreign Secretary and US Secretary of State Pompeo co-hosted a meeting of the Yemeni quad. Our commitment to a peace process, which is at a critical juncture, is absolute, and we are putting our full weight behind the UN peace process, including additional contributions to support the facility. We have also been active in lobbying the international community on rapid, safe, unhindered humanitarian access to the ports, as my noble friend asks.

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

My Lords, I have the pleasure of serving on the committee under the noble Lord, Lord Howell, and I returned from a visit to the wider region yesterday. Since the war began there, the UK has sold £5.5 billion-worth of arms to the coalition, which includes training in targeting and weapons use. I visited Sudan, where there have been an estimated 14,000 militia—including, the UN has verified, nearly 1,000 child soldiers—in the conflict. It is simply not acceptable for the United Kingdom to be satisfied that we are even narrowly on the right side of international humanitarian law. The situation is so severe and the situation is now so tense with the peace process that, for the United Kingdom to give the moral leadership which we currently do by humanitarian assistance and diplomatically, we can no longer effectively turn a blind eye to the need for a pause on arms exports to Saudi Arabia and the Emirates. That will provide the moral leadership so that we can be fully on the right side of international humanitarian law.

[Baroness Fairhead]

I can assure the House that we are taking this extremely seriously: this is a really significant issue. In terms of the information and assessments we use, we regularly look at various strands and all the analysis to make our judgment. The noble Lord referred to targeting. We are also ensuring that advice is there so that the lessons we have learned from previous conflicts are used and civilians are not targeted. I can assure the House that we will be doing everything we can to continue to support the peace process and the much-needed humanitarian aid. We have already contributed £570 million since 2015. We have just committed to a further three years of almost £100 million to support child malnutrition. We understand the seriousness of this, and we are actively working at all levels.