Yemen

George Kerevan Excerpts

Wednesday 26th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Boris Johnson]

I will give way in a moment.

President Hadi had formally requested military action to restore his Government, while the Arab League and the Gulf Co-operation Council had both called for

“all means and measures to protect Yemen and deter Houthi aggression”.

Their fears have plainly been borne out: mortar bombs and rockets have frequently been fired over the frontier and into Saudi territory. Only two weeks ago, the Houthis launched a Scud missile which flew 300 miles into Saudi Arabia, exploding outside Taif, a city the size of Birmingham that has a population of 1.2 million and lies close to Mecca. The last time Saudi Arabia came under bombardment from Scud missiles, the weapons were fired by Saddam Hussein.

As the House will readily appreciate, this conflict has wider regional and global ramifications. Yemen sits beside the Bab el-Mandeb straits, running between the Red sea and the Indian ocean. On the same day as the Scud was fired at Saudi Arabia, the Houthis launched two other missiles at an American destroyer passing through the Bab el-Mandeb. On earlier occasions, they had fired missiles at civilian vessels plying this vital shipping lane. Every trading nation in the world, including this one—particularly this one—has a vital interest in safe passage through those straits.

[George Kerevan (East Lothian) (SNP)]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. He is laying out his case in a forensic manner. Does he recognise that the argument from these Benches is not that there was not a legitimate political and strategic security crisis in Yemen, but that the reaction of Saudi Arabia and the coalition forces is out of all proportion to the crisis with which they were trying to deal?

[Boris Johnson]

It was absolutely right to support President Hadi and to recognise the scale of the crisis that Yemen faces. As I have been explaining to the House—I am glad that the hon. Gentleman accepts that I am laying out the case in a forensic manner—Britain has important interests at stake. By the way, it is right that we should be discussing this subject this afternoon. Furthermore, I can assure the House that, over the past few months, this country has been leading the way in a sustained diplomatic effort to try to settle that conflict.

--- Later in debate ---

[George Kerevan (East Lothian) (SNP)]

The hon. Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski) accused the SNP of grandstanding and of denying Saudi Arabia the right to self-defence. Our argument is rather that the Saudi intervention in Yemen is disproportionate; that is the key. Several legitimate and well-respected human rights organisations have used open source material to try to count the number of airstrikes in Yemen since March of last year, when the Saudi coalition began the bombing. There have been at least 8,600 airstrikes, and that is disproportionate. There are not enough targets for the Saudi coalition to go on bombing as they have done. One of the findings from that open source material is that at least one third of the airstrikes have resulted in civilian casualties. That is the issue.

[Dr Cameron]

Does my hon. Friend agree that funding what appears to be indiscriminate bombing is undermining the excellent work that the Department for International Development is doing in humanitarian aid?

[George Kerevan]

I would not only accept that, but go further and say that it is undermining the Saudi case for trying to create a stable Government and a stable political position in Yemen.

The hon. Member for Reigate (Crispin Blunt) introduced a new doctrine: the doctrine of intent. He said that we should look at the intent of the Saudis and, since they say they are doing good things and they want peace and security, we should consider that to be enough. Let us look at the intent of the Saudi Government. They have not signed up to the international convention on cluster weapons. If they do not want to use them, I would have expected them to sign up to it. In fact, as we all know, they have been using them—air-launched and ground-launched cluster weapons. I know that the Houthis on the other side are using them as well, but we are talking about a massive, western-funded, western-armed coalition versus a small group of rebels. That is disproportionate.

If we look at which cluster weapons have been found by human rights organisations across Yemen, we can see that they are not just the BL755 cluster weapons manufactured in Britain, but the CBU-105s, CBU-87s and CBU-58s manufactured in the United States. They have been found to have been used in at least five provinces in Yemen. Here is the thing: the American cluster weapons were sold to Saudi Arabia 20-odd years ago. I do not know how they got there or who used them, but it is surprising that all the types of cluster bomb weapons supplied to the Saudis about 20 years ago—in the 1980s and 1990s—have been found to have been used comprehensively and across the whole of Yemen. That deserves an investigation, which is what our amendment asks for.

The test of what Saudi Arabia is doing is not intent, but whether there is on balance a risk that humanitarian law has been broken. I put it to the House that there is ample evidence of that. How do we get the attention of the Saudi regime? That is at the core of the proposal in the SNP amendment, which has not been selected, to call for an immediate withdrawal of current sales of weapons to Saudi Arabia.

To respond to the hon. Members for South Ribble (Seema Kennedy) and for Fylde (Mark Menzies), our proposal is not to stop all arms sales in perpetuity. We are trying to get the attention of the Saudi regime, which cannot put its own ground troops into Yemen. The real secret is that the regime cannot trust to using its own ground troops—it keeps them at home to protect the regime, which has no democratic legitimacy—so it uses its air force, which has very close links to the royal family, in a consistently indiscriminate way.

Hon. Members have repeatedly mentioned the bombing of the funeral. It was the funeral of a leading Houthi Minister and a lot of Houthi Ministers were expected to be at it, so one suspects that it was not quite the accident that it has been made out to be. There have been repeated cases of civilians being killed in missile and bomb attacks in places where Houthi leaders were expected. My point is that calling for an investigation and for a halt to arms sales in the short term is a way of getting the attention of the Saudi regime to ensure a ceasefire and a permanent solution to this crisis.