Yemen

Andrew Mitchell Excerpts

Wednesday 21st November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I completely understand why the hon. Gentleman asks that question, but may I gently say to him that if we did as he is proposing, he needs to ask how that would help people who are starving in Yemen today? Their situation is absolutely desperate, but far from helping them, there would have been no visit by the UK Foreign Secretary to Saudi Arabia last week, no opportunity to have a frank and sometimes difficult conversation with the Crown Prince, no trip to Tehran—because Iran’s reason for talking to us is that we have a relationship with the Saudis—and no support across the table for a Security Council resolution. British influence, far from being able to bring both sides together, would reduce to zero. That is why the right thing for us to do on arms sales is to follow the incredibly strict arms control regime introduced by a Labour Government in 2000—one of the strictest in the world—which has objective measures to make sure that we do not export arms to places where there is a high risk of violations of international humanitarian law.

[Mr Andrew Mitchell (Sutton Coldfield) (Con)]

The urgently needed change of policy, which people across this House have been calling for for more than two years now, on Yemen is greatly to be welcomed, and it coincides with the arrival of the new Foreign Secretary at the Foreign Office. Does he understand that the condemnation of violence and of the horrendous suffering in Yemen must be even-handed if Martin Griffiths and his colleagues are to succeed in negotiating a cessation of warfare and meaningful talks? I say to the Foreign Secretary, with the deepest possible sadness, that it comes to something when Britain lags behind the moral curve set by the Trump White House.

[Mr Hunt]

I welcome my right hon. Friend’s comments and his expertise, but I do not agree with his last comment at all. The UK has actually been in the forefront of trying to broker a solution. He is absolutely right that there will be a solution to this only if there is an even-handed approach to the problems. That is exactly the approach that Martin Griffiths is taking, and that is why we are supporting his work. At every stage of what we do, we are listening very carefully to what he says because he has dialogue not only with the Saudis and the Emiratis, but also with the Houthis.

The difficulty, in terms of the historical situation, is that we all have to remember that this really started on 21 September 2014, when the Houthis, who represent less than 25% of the population of Yemen, ejected the legitimate Government of Yemen. That was the start of this conflict. We now need to get all sides together and of course listen to all legitimate concerns, but we do have to remember the historical context.