Alec Shelbrooke
Main Page: Alec Shelbrooke (Conservative - Elmet and Rothwell)Department Debates - View all Alec Shelbrooke's debates with the Ministry of Defence
(5 months ago)
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James Heappey
These are not conversations to which I am directly privy, so I am loth to offer detail that I do not have. Suffice it to say that the debate is more nuanced than the hon. Gentleman implies in his question, but I suspect he knows that. When we proscribe an organisation such as the IRGC, which is so integral to the Iranian state, we can make it quite hard to have any sort of communication with the Iranian state, but those are matters for colleagues in the Foreign Office. I will bring his question to their attention, and encourage them to write to him or seek to respond in some other way.
Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)
I very much welcome my right hon. Friend’s comments about insurance for shipping in the Black sea to encourage grain exports. Can I ask him if the British Government intend to carry on doing everything they can to make sure that those exports happen? He will be aware that Lebanon relies on those grain exports, and with the current situation in that region, we must ensure that starvation does not become another factor in an already exceptionally tense situation.
James Heappey
There is lots in my right hon. Friend’s question—on all of which he is entirely right. First, many countries around the world are dependent on grain exports from Ukraine. It is a source of constant frustration to me and Government colleagues who go overseas on diplomatic missions to find that the Russians try to claim that somehow Ukraine is using food as a weapon of war, when it is they who are seeking to limit those crucial exports. Secondly, the more that Ukraine is able to export, the more that the Ukrainian economy survives and, potentially, grows. One consequence of the insurance initiative, alongside the military success or the naval success that the Ukrainians have had in the western Black sea, is that shipping from Odesa is growing, which is encouraging. It is a sign that the new front in the Black sea is succeeding not only militarily but economically.