Yemen

Debate between Crispin Blunt and Graham P Jones

Tuesday 11th September 2018 Commons Chamber

[Crispin Blunt]

My right hon. Friend’s military analysis, which is based on his experience, particularly in the National Security Council—I am sure he learned a great deal with the Royal Tank Regiment, but obviously he has had access to Government briefings on this matter—will bring enormous comfort to the Houthi forces who are defending Hodeidah. I happen to disagree. Hodeidah is the vital ground in this conflict. If we had believed him, the Emirati-led forces would never have taken Aden. It took them seven days once they had taken it to get shipping going back into Aden to bring supplies back into Yemen to help relieve the famine.

The failure of the international community to support the coalition to take Hodeidah back is continuing the conflict and continuing the opportunity for forces such as al-Qaeda and ISIS to take advantage of the situation. The failure to take Hodeidah means that the international community puts support into the country through Hodeidah and the Houthis who control it charge the forces of the international community an excessive tax for the privilege of getting aid into Yemen. That sustains the Houthi rebellion. That is how they are earning their money, quite apart from the support they receive from external parties such as Iran.

[Graham P. Jones]

What has changed about UN resolution 2216, which has been ratified? It calls for a ceasefire. What has changed today about our calling for a ceasefire? It calls for the Houthis to relinquish all the power they have taken, because they have taken it illegally, and it calls for an embargo on all arms going into Yemen. What has changed today about UN resolution 2216?

[Crispin Blunt]

I am minded to agree with the hon. Gentleman, who has made a number of useful interventions in the debate. Given the success of the Emirati side of the coalition, which has rolled up the southern part of the country with remarkable success, bringing its land forces to the gates of Hodeidah, where the Saudi part of the coalition has maritime investment and total air supremacy, I do not believe that it is a military impossibility to displace the Houthi forces that occupy Hodeidah. What is needed is absolute resolution and an understanding that this is the vital ground. Already, the main supply line of the Houthis to Hodeidah port is in the process of being cut by the coalition forces, on behalf of the international community.

Of course, we need to look at the conduct of the whole operation, but we must remember that this is the first time that Saudi Arabia has led a coalition of this kind. We have talked about the awful event on 9 August, with the destruction of a bus containing wholly innocent people, but the British and American contribution to Saudi accountability and Saudi targeting has at least meant that within 22 days, the coalition accepted responsibility, apologised and said that it would pay compensation to the victims. That is a significant improvement on the situation at the beginning of the conflict. We have seen the quality of the targeting and the conduct of the operation improve as the Saudis gain experience, with the assistance of their international allies.

Let us not think that we are immune from this. I was in this House on 15 April 1999, when a NATO spokesman had to defend the killing of 70 wholly innocent people when an American plane flying at 15,000 feet bombed a convoy of refugees in Kosovo. Jamie Shea said on that day:

“He dropped his bomb in good faith”.

That sounded pretty dreadful then and, quite rightly, people made a great deal of it. We are entirely right to make a great deal of what happened on 9 August and in all the other incidents. It is right to hold the coalition to account to the highest possible standards, but we must remember that this coalition is, in effect, our coalition. It has been unanimously endorsed by the international community through the UN Security Council.

If we accept the rather pessimistic analysis of my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield that nothing can be done and that there is no way Hodeidah can be taken off the Houthi rebels, it is a counsel of despair and a policy that will continue the illegal usurpation of power in Yemen.

[Crispin Blunt]

I want to continue my train of thought, because the failure to deliver the vital ground in this conflict has two critical consequences. It means that the international community cannot get the scale of aid that is required into Yemen because it does not control the port. Even if the port facilities are destroyed, the international community would be able to put back together sufficient port facilities to get—

[Graham P. Jones]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Crispin Blunt]

I will not, if the hon. Gentleman will forgive me.

This is the vital ground to get supplies into Yemen and to stop the Houthis earning their income off the imposts that are levied on the good people of the world through their development programmes that are trying to get supplies into Yemen. When Hodeidah is added to Aden—Hodeidah is the key port in Yemen, being much the biggest and the most important—this conflict will be on the way to being settled. Once it is taken, I think we will find that the Houthis are rather keener to attend peace talks and to engage in a political process that will bring this wretched tragedy to an end.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Crispin Blunt and Graham P Jones

Tuesday 29th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Crispin Blunt)]

The resource budget for the National Offender Management Service for 2011-12 is £3.679 billion, £2.181 billion of which relates directly to expenditure incurred in prisons.

[Graham Jones]

If, as the Secretary of State predicted in The Daily Telegraph on 11 February, crime increases under his Government, will he reverse his prison closure policy and undo the scaling back of the prison building programme? If not, what will he do with the criminals?

[Mr Blunt]

I am not entirely sure that my right hon. and learned Friend’s comments bear that interpretation, but what we have to do in the Ministry of Justice is ensure that we successfully imprison those people sentenced to prison by the courts and not get ourselves into the state of affairs that occurred under the previous Administration, whereby people had to be let out early because they had run out of space.