Arms Export Licences: Israel Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for Business and Trade
Kate Osamor
Main Page: Kate Osamor (Independent - Edmonton)Department Debates - View all Kate Osamor's debates with the Department for Business and Trade
(4 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Kate Osamor (Edmonton) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry South (Zarah Sultana) for securing this important debate and for her powerful opening speech.
I will start by paying tribute to my constituents who have been calling for a peaceful settlement in Gaza. More than 2,000 of them have contacted me since the war began, and many of them are families who have been out in support of those suffering in Palestine. Sadly, I believe that the UK Government are instead complicit in the mass slaughter in Gaza, as well as the ongoing ethnic cleansing in the west bank. The Government are aware that MPs have raised concerns about arms exports before and during the current conflict. Only on 30 November 2023, the Secretary of State for Business and Trade said in response:
“Export licences are kept under careful and continual review as standard, and we are able to amend licences or refuse new licence applications if they are inconsistent with the strategic export licensing criteria.”—[Official Report, 30 November 2023; Vol. 741, c. 1049.]
To my understanding, if there is a risk that arms exports may be used in internal repression or breaches of international law, or the arms may threaten regional peace and security, those licences can be revoked. It is quite clear that those benchmarks have been met.
The Secretary of State has it within her power to instruct the export control joint unit, which is responsible for processing licence applications. For clarity, that unit sits within the Department for Business and Trade, and it draws expertise from the FCDO and the Ministry of Defence to look at clear breaches. Why is that not being acted upon?
Only this week, Omer Bartov, an Israeli-born historian and professor of holocaust and genocide studies at Brown University, warned that
“Israel now has been conducting a war for weeks and weeks in which it has killed thousands and thousands of Palestinians. It has moved them to a very small part of the Gaza Strip. It has destroyed their property and not even made a commitment to allow them to return.”
That has been done with the support of the US and UK supplies.
We need a peaceful solution. We need the Government to stop being complicit in the murder and the movement of people away from their homes into a space where there is no humanitarian hope, no space for them to live, and they are dying. The numbers have been quoted, and loads of children have died. We need to stand up and be critical of the UK Government’s friendship with Israel, and point out where they are clearly in breach of international law.