Emily Thornberry
Main Page: Emily Thornberry (Labour - Islington South and Finsbury)Department Debates - View all Emily Thornberry's debates with the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
(7 years, 11 months ago)
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Bob Stewart
As ever, it is the little people who are suffering in this war. Apparently, 7,000 people have died. To me, that chimes with the number of people killed at Srebrenica, which I was kind of involved with all those years ago. When Srebrenica occurred, the world suddenly got its backside in gear and sorted it out. I return to my original point: let us hope that 2017 sorts this situation out. It is clear that a political solution must be had, some way or other.
First, the protagonists from both sides have to meet. They have tried, and it is very difficult, but that is the only way forward. The diplomat from Mauritius, Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, seems to be respected on all sides. The first thing we require is a chairman or chairwoman who is respected, and that man is respected. Let us hope he can work it.
My second point about the steps towards resolution is that the people negotiating must be protected, because they should be able to negotiate in safety. They have had some problems in the Gulf, so perhaps they should move to Geneva, the traditional place for negotiations, if necessary.
Thirdly, there must be a ceasefire that will hold. We must recognise that although ceasefires are written down on paper, they inevitably will not hold. They will never be perfect. We should almost expect that if there is a ceasefire, it will be breached. We have to live with that.
Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)
Has the hon. Gentleman seen the text of the resolution that the British have drafted but not yet put before the Security Council? Clause 1 of that resolution calls for a ceasefire and references the UN road map. Does he agree that that might be the basis for negotiations?
Bob Stewart
I have not read it, but it sounds very sensible and logical. Everything to do with sorting out problems has to be sensible and logical.
Fourthly, I have already alluded to the fact that AQAP and Daesh are not local to the region. The one thing all the protagonist share is that they hate these people who have come in from outside. AQAP and Daesh are part of the enemy and should not be involved.
Fifthly, there should be a withdrawal of armed forces from Sana’a and other towns. It will be very difficult, and it will probably involve UN peacekeepers of some sort. I always think of the model of the British going into Rhodesia and separating people, which was good. We cannot do it; whoever the peacekeepers are, they should probably be from an Islamic state. Good military officers and good military troops should go in, if there is to be some kind of resolution. The UN will have to grip this one.
Sixthly, a political solution is obviously the objective, and I very much hope that this year we will get one. For goodness’ sake, if Yemen is a forgotten war, let us make it not forgotten, and let us then make it a forgotten war by next year because it is over.
Tom Brake
I had anticipated the hon. Gentleman’s line of inquiry, but the focus of my remarks is on what the Saudis are doing, the use of cluster munitions and whether there is sufficient evidence to call for a suspension of arms sales and sufficient support for an independent inquiry, which the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) called for in his opening remarks. I believe that there is.
Will the Minister explain the basis on which the Saudi Arabians refused in 2010 to swap their cluster munitions for the more precise Paveway III bombs? I understand that the Ministry of Defence offered a free swap with no cost implications, so what is the Government’s understanding of why the Saudis refused to take up that offer?
My final point relates to the joint incidents assessment team, to which, as I made clear in an earlier intervention, the Government have provided advice on how to investigate matters of international humanitarian law. One of the JIAT members is Mansour al-Mansour, a Bahraini judge who played a significant and unfortunate role in a series of trials in Bahrain about which it has been said:
“A pattern of due process violations occurred at the pre-trial and trial levels that denied most defendants elementary fair trial guarantees.”
Does the Minister think that that person and, possibly, other members of the JIAT are suitably qualified to adjudicate on the issue of civilian casualties in Yemen? Clearly, the credibility of the JIAT must depend on the credibility of its individual members.
Emily Thornberry
Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that Mansour al-Mansour is known in Bahrain as “the butcher”?
Tom Brake
I thank the hon. Lady for putting that on the record. Clearly, there are significant concerns about his role and, therefore, his suitability for sitting on the JIAT.
In conclusion, there is a huge amount of evidence that suggests that the UK should suspend arms sales. I want to finish on the first point that was made in this debate, which is that there is now an overwhelming case for an independent inquiry into Saudi activities in Yemen. I fail to understand why the Government do not show the same enthusiasm as they did when they rightly made a very strong case for a similar independent inquiry in Sri Lanka.
Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)
Let me start by echoing everything that my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) and Members from both sides of the House have said today about the humanitarian crisis in Yemen. I congratulate him on securing this important debate. Let me also make it clear at the outset that we agree with the principles behind UN resolution 2216. We all want to see Yemen restored to the control of a legitimate, stable and democratic Government, capable of peacefully leading the whole country, and we all want to see the Houthi rebels held to account, both for their illegal coup and for the atrocities they have committed during this war. But with all due respect to those on the Government Benches and to some Members on my own Benches, may I say that it is possible to agree with the principles of the UN resolution while disagreeing profoundly, first, with the way in which this has been enforced and the way alleged violations of international law are being investigated and, secondly, with the abject failure of the British Government to bring this war to an end?
First, let me deal with the investigation of alleged war crimes. [Interruption.] If Government Members will give me a moment, I will be going into details, as I have 10 minutes. First, let me turn to the investigation of alleged war crimes committed by both sides, coalition and Houthi. Labour Members have said many times, just as the UN, all leading human rights groups and a number of Select Committees of this House have, that the only way to ensure the comprehensive, thorough and impartial investigation of those alleged crimes is to commission an independent UN inquiry. In response to our call, the Government have been consistent, saying that the Saudi-led coalition must be left to investigate themselves. Let us see how that is going, shall we?
In October, I revealed at this Dispatch Box that of the 3,158 documented airstrikes against civilian targets up to the end of August 2016, the coalition’s joint incidents assessment team had issued reports on just nine—a pathetic 0.002%. How many more reports has it completed since? It has completed just four. Of that total of 13 “investigations”—I use that word advisedly—there are just three in which the JIAT has found any culpability on behalf of the coalition. In the other 10 cases, comprising 241 civilian deaths and the bombing of four food trucks, three medical facilities, one school, one wedding, one cattle market, one food market and one food factory, the JIAT has found—surprise, surprise—that the coalition has done nothing wrong. This is the investigatory body into which the Government have put all their faith to ensure that the coalition is not violating international law.
Let us look at the man in charge of the JIAT, Colonel Mansour al-Mansour—or, as he is known by some in Bahrain, “The Butcher”. In 2011, while Bahrain’s popular uprising was being brutally supressed and martial law was being put in place, Colonel al-Mansour was the military lawyer who presided over the kangaroo court that was set up to jail and execute the protestors, activists, Opposition politicians, teachers, doctors, religious clerics, journalists and human rights campaigners—in fact, anyone seen as a threat to the Bahrain regime. Hundreds were jailed or sentenced to death under his orders, yet this is the man in whom the Government have put all their faith to investigate alleged war crimes in Yemen. What are we to make of that? The Government are being either extremely naive or extremely negligent, but either way it is not good enough.
I thought it very telling when on Tuesday the Minister said of the Saudi coalition:
“It is having to provide reports when it makes mistakes, and it has never done that before. It has no experience of even writing reports.”—[Official Report, 10 January 2017; Vol. 619, c. 145.]
That much is obvious, given that it has produced only 13 reports in eight months. What is more telling is the Minister’s implication that the JIAT’s role is just to identify mistakes.
Emily Thornberry
The Minister shouts from a sedentary position that that is not its role, but he said on Tuesday—I am simply quoting him—that it is having to provide reports when it has made mistakes. If it has only to identify mistakes, contrary to everything the Government have claimed, the JIAT is not investigating whether international law has been breached; it is just being taken on trust. All the JIAT is doing is looking at a handful of high-profile incidents and in one or two cases saying that a mistake has been made. Again, that is not good enough—[Interruption.] If the Minister wants to intervene on me, he is welcome to, but if he is just going to sit there and heckle, I am afraid he is not doing his cause any good. What I have described is not good enough as an investigation and it is certainly not good enough as the basis for confidence that our arms laws are not being breached. It is not good enough for this to be investigated by al-Mansour in the way that it is being investigated. Thirteen reports in eight months is not good enough.
I turn to the role that Britain must play in bringing an end to the conflict and, again, I go back to what the Minister said on Tuesday. The House may remember that I asked why the UK had not presented its resolution to the Security Council, and the Minister explained that
“we will not get a Security Council resolution passed until we get the cessation of hostilities in place.”—[Official Report, 10 January 2017; Vol. 619, c. 142.]
If that is the case, why does clause 1 of the UK’s draft resolution demand an immediate cessation of hostilities? Why would the very first line of the resolution demand something that is already in place?
Back in October, the UK’s ambassador to the UN said:
“We have decided to put forward a draft security council resolution on Yemen calling for an immediate cessation of hostilities and a resumption of the political process”.
In other words, the resolution was designed to be the driving force behind a ceasefire and peace talks, just as one was with resolution 1860 on Gaza, resolution 2174 on Libya, and resolution 2254 on Syria. For the Minister to claim now that we must have the ceasefire before we can have the resolution makes no sense. So what is the real explanation for the delay?
Mr Ellwood
I do not know where to start with this. Perhaps I should begin by saying that when a draft resolution is put together—when the words are formed and so on—we do not air it in public because it is very likely that the details will change. The hon. Lady needs to hold on until the actual UN resolution comes about, and then we can absolutely debate it. I pose a question to her, as I am supposed to in an intervention: has she read UN Security Council resolution 2216? I ask because it calls for exactly the same thing. She is asking for a ceasefire, but that is already inherent in UN Security Council resolution 2216.
Emily Thornberry
I am very interested to hear what the hon. Gentleman says, and I will listen with some care to his speech. I know that the Government have said on many occasions that the Saudi-led intervention in Yemen is backed by the UN, and that they rely on the same resolution. I would be interested to hear where that is in the resolution, and how it can be claimed that Saudi intervention in Yemen is—[Interruption.]
Keith Vaz
I do not think that there is a huge gap between what my hon. Friend and the Minister are saying. When I was at the Security Council, what was in the draft resolution was certainly common knowledge, and every member of the Security Council spoke in favour of the ceasefire. Given that everyone knows what is in the draft resolution—it is in the public domain—there is no reason why this cannot be tabled.
Emily Thornberry
I respectfully agree. For 50 days, we have all known what is in the draft resolution, and we wait and wait for the British to put the resolution on the table. There is support for it, and it has a number of elements in it. During the rest of my speech, I wish to explain why the British are not putting it on the table. I will take interventions as necessary if the Minister wishes to explain.
Mr Ellwood
The hon. Lady tempts me. I ask her to join in with the spirit of the debate and try to look at the positives and at what we can actually do. She is focusing deeply on a draft resolution, which, having been involved in the Riyadh talks on 19 December, I can promise Members is now out of date. I will go into more detail in my response, but if she devotes another few minutes to this matter it will be superfluous to the wider debate—the good debate—that we have had in this Chamber.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Natascha Engel)
Before the hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry) rises, may I remind everyone that we have another debate after this and that it is quite well subscribed? There are perhaps only one-and-a-half minutes remaining.
Emily Thornberry
I will not take any more interventions. I will just go straight through the rest of my speech, because I have some important points to make.
The truth is that Saudi Arabia does not want this resolution to be presented. When asked about the UK’s draft resolution in November by an Arab newspaper, the Saudi ambassador to the UN said.
“There is a continuous and joint agreement with Britain concerning the draft resolution, and whether there is a need for it or not.”
The newspaper goes on to say that the Saudi ambassador claimed that the UK draft resolution
“includes an unnecessary text, in addition to having a wrong timing.”
So there we have it in black and white.
Saudi Arabia does not sit on the UN Security Council, but it has been able to veto the UK’s draft resolution without so much as a discussion. Why has it done so? Is it because of clause 4, which calls for
“full, transparent and timely investigation”
of all alleged war crimes? We know that JIAT’s investigations have hardly been full, transparent or timely. Is it because of clause 5, which calls on all sides to negotiate a political solution on the basis of the UN road map? President Hadi has described the road map as
“the betrayal of the blood of martyrs.”
Is it because, just like Assad in Syria, Saudi Arabia sees no value in agreeing a ceasefire when it believes that the rebellion can still be crushed—no matter the civilian casualties, and no matter the humanitarian cost? No matter what Saudi Arabia does, it knows that this Tory Government will remain on its side.
The Foreign Secretary was right last month to call Yemen a “proxy war” and he was right to criticise Saudi Arabia’s “puppeteering”. Although I am happy to applaud his honesty, it is just his hypocrisy that is all the more disappointing. If he knows what Saudi Arabia is really doing in Yemen, he should follow America’s lead and stop selling it arms. If he is worried about the scale of civilian casualties, he should back a proper, independent, UN-led investigation to see whether international laws have been broken. If he wants to see an end to the conflict and get the children of Yemen the humanitarian aid that they need, he should have the guts to stand up to Saudi Arabia and present the UK’s resolution to the UN. It is time for the Government to stop the hypocrisy and the delaying tactics and start doing the decent thing: present the draft UN resolution, end the conflict, demand an independent investigation of war crimes, and send a signal of intent to the Saudis today by supporting this motion.
Mr Ellwood
If there is time at the end of my speech, I will give way, but I am under pressure from Madam Deputy Speaker as there is another debate after this.
That informal group of key players is known as the Quad, and subsequent meetings have expanded to include the UN special envoy for Yemen, Ismail Ahmed, and representatives from other Gulf countries.
The last Quad meeting I attended was in Riyadh on 18 December, and we agreed to urge all the Yemeni parties to engage with the UN process and put the needs of Yemen’s people first. We will continue to engage directly with the parties and with our partners in the region to support the UN’s proposals for peace. I spoke to President Hadi on 6 January—just a week ago—to emphasise the urgent need to find a way forward in the political process. We clearly have a transition, and in America, Rex Tillerson will take over from John Kerry. He is familiar with the area, having lived and worked in Yemen for about three years during his career.
Mr Ellwood
No. I will give way at the end, as I need to pay tribute and comment on other contributions.
The hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby paid tribute to the humanitarian work that has been done, and I am pleased to see my hon. Friend the Minister of State, Department for International Development, in his place. He has been very engaged with this matter, and the work that Britain does is recognised across the Floor of the House. The role that we play not only internationally, but in respect of this conflict, marks our place on the Security Council.
Mr Ellwood
The Defence Secretary made a point about that. The hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty) knows me; I have done my best to be as transparent as possible. Those Opposition Members who have ever been Ministers will know that we have one of the best civil services in the world, dealing with thousands upon thousands of written answers.
Mr Ellwood
No, I will not. I will finish my point. Occasionally mistakes are made, and we put our hands up and say that they have been made. I am sorry that there was a delay. At the time, I think we were in the middle of the Brexit piece as well. As soon as we realised that one error was made, we did an investigation and found that, out of almost 100 parliamentary questions answered, there was one clerical error, which continued on; I think there was a handful of them.
Mr Ellwood
Six, yes. In six out of almost 100 the wording was incorrect. We then did an investigation that took some time. I tell the House now, as I did before, that I apologise for that. There is no conspiracy. It was an error that I take on my shoulders. Yet again, I apologise to the House. I will now move on.
Mr Ellwood
I will not because I want to mention the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), who made some important points about the conflict being a forgotten war. Today’s debate is doing well to ensure that we have not forgotten about it here. He mentioned the urgency of a ceasefire, which gives me licence to talk about the pending UN Security Council resolution—it has not yet been completely written, but is in the process of being written. It is based on the road map, which was discussed on 19 December, and includes seven steps. I will elaborate a little on those steps so that hon. Members can see how complicated it is to get a consensus on them.
The measures include: the sequence of security steps for the withdrawal of equipment; the agreed roles and appointments of who is going to run a transition process; the resumption of consultations in accordance with the GCC negotiations, the partnership and peace agreement, and UN Security Council resolution 2216; the additional withdrawals; the signing of a detailed agreement; and a potential donor conference, which we need a commitment for. All that leads up to an electoral road map. That is complicated business, and that is why a UN Security Council resolution is not going to be a draft coming straight out, because that one is out of date.
Mr Ellwood
I will not give way to the hon. Lady—I have actually made that clear.
My hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) made an important point, which came up at Foreign Affairs—
Emily Thornberry
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. In your absence, there has been a bit of backwards and forwards between the Front Benches, and I gave way on several occasions to the Minister. He is now making it clear that he will not allow me to intervene at all.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Let us just be clear about this. It is up to the Member, the Minister or the shadow Minister whether they give way or not—those are the rules of the House. The other point is that I understand this debate was meant to finish at 3.30 pm. We are now running over. The fact is the Minister does not wish to give way—that is his choice. It is no use getting uptight about it—that’s life.
Mr Ellwood
I am grateful for your guidance, Mr Deputy Speaker. I understand that, with the remaining two minutes—
Mr Deputy Speaker
Order. This is not a continuation, I hope. Let us get to the end of the debate. There are people who want to go on to the next debate. Please, I want to look after all Members of this House and all Members who wish to speak in the next debate, but they will not do so if we run on a lot longer over time. Please, let us get to the end, because I do want Mr Twigg to come in next.