UK Airstrike: Houthi Military Facility

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Wednesday 30th April 2025 Commons Chamber

[John Healey]

Quite right. My hon. Friend will be interested to hear about the work that I and the Chancellor have commissioned together on the barriers in the UK that are holding back private sources of investment in our defence and technology industries. An important part of the defence industrial strategy, which we will be able to publish before too long, will be about how we use the big commitment of this Government and this country to invest in defence and make our armed forces fit for the future, and how we can use that to leverage much more investment from private sector sources so that we can do more, more quickly.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

It is unusual for a terrorist group engaged in a civil war to invite retaliation of this sort by attacking international shipping so comprehensively. Clearly, the Houthis are acting as an agent of Iran. Can the Secretary of State advise us what the Government know about the ability of Iran to keep fuelling the attacks in the Red sea? Now that the domestic ability to manufacture drones in Yemen has been degraded, how easy will it be for Iran to supply them directly to the Houthis?

[John Healey]

The short answer is that we must do what we can with allies to make it as hard as possible for Iran to maintain both its financial support to the Houthis and its logistical, munitions and military support and supplies. We are working on that with allies and, as I said to the House earlier, the straight military action that we were conducting last night is part of the solution for the long term. It is not the whole solution.