Yemen: Giving Peace a Chance (International Relations Committee Report)

Baroness Smith of Newnham Excerpts

Monday 1st April 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, I am delighted to follow the noble Lord, Lord Luce, and the noble Baroness, Lady Amos, who bring such expertise about both the region and the UN. I have the pleasure of serving on your Lordships’ International Relations Committee, and the noble Lord, Lord Howell, as chairman, has introduced the report very effectively. I thank him for chairing this short report. As a committee, we are still relatively new. We have had some long reports but we have also tried in a few shorter reports to bring issues of urgent importance to your Lordships’ House. This report was printed only in mid-February, so it is a great opportunity to be able to debate it today. I am grateful to the usual channels for allowing the debate to come forward in such a timely fashion.

As the noble Lord, Lord Luce, intimated, there is a danger at the moment that we in the United Kingdom spend so much time focusing narrowly on our future relationship with the European Union that we do not have time to think about the wider world. While we focus on whether or not we have a relationship with the European Union that is about a customs union, a free trade area or anything else, millions of people are facing starvation in Yemen. There is a man-made catastrophe; some 24 million people are in need of aid—three-quarters of the whole population. The noble Baroness, Lady Amos, indicated just how many individuals are facing starvation and medical need. She also pointed out that each one of those statistics is a human life.

The situation in Yemen is of grave concern, but it is not sufficiently on the front pages of our newspapers. In the years since the crisis began five years ago, GDP per capita has gone down 61% and fuel and food prices have gone up 98% and 110% respectively. They are dramatic figures that we need to think about, because each further day of this conflict means more children dying, not only as civilian casualties but through starvation, which should not and need not be happening. There is food in the ports, but is it getting to the people concerned? There are clearly issues about how far food is able to get through. What reassurances can the Minister give that British aid is getting through? We were given evidence that 99% of food is getting through, yet suggestions from Saferworld and other organisations indicate that it is perhaps not that much. What is happening on the ground? Can the Minister reassure us?

We have already heard that Her Majesty’s Government have made significant humanitarian aid available to Yemen—and that is true—but we are looking at figures of £170 million in aid, alongside arms exports to Saudi Arabia in the same amount of time of £4.7 billion. Surely something is going wrong when the countries involved in the conflict, whether as part of the coalition or supporting the coalition, are engaged in serious arms exports and arms trading while, at the same time, giving humanitarian aid at a much lower level.

The United Kingdom is the fifth-largest donor of humanitarian aid to Yemen at present, after the United States, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. If the war stopped, we could begin to focus on ensuring that the humanitarian situation is not just mitigated but resolved. As the noble Lord, Lord Luce, suggested, perhaps we need to think about more than simply reviewing our arms export licences to Saudi. Is the Minister satisfied that the United Kingdom is currently on just the right side of humanitarian and international law, as the former Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson, believed, or may we have tripped over to the wrong side?

This was a short inquiry, consisting of one evidence session. However, it was a rich evidence session because the key evidence giver was the former Minister of State, Alistair Burt, who brought a great deal of wisdom and expertise. We are most grateful to him for his evidence and he will be greatly missed as a Minister. He reminded the committee that Her Majesty’s Government’s position is that we cannot resolve the situation in Yemen through military means or external action; it needs to be resolved by the Yemenis.

Our conclusions included the suggestion that Her Majesty’s Government need to do more to resolve the situation rather than simply trying to mitigate the crisis. What do they propose to do to enable us to go beyond the conflict and the Yemenis to take control of their own future? The visit of the Foreign Secretary to Yemen and the surrounding region is important. How far will he be able to take a lead in working beyond the Stockholm process to ensure that we do not face another five years of conflict in Yemen but will be able to resolve the issue and work together with the international community to overcome the crisis, rather than simply coming back in a year’s time, for example, and bemoaning the difficulties that the international community has been unable to resolve?