Israel: Arms Sales

Lord Howard of Lympne Excerpts

Thursday 5th September 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

My Lords, the UK remains and will always be committed to supporting Israel’s security and wider regional stability. The Foreign Secretary reaffirmed this with his Israeli counterparts on a recent visit to Tel Aviv on 19 August with the French Foreign Minister, and our position has not changed in this respect. We continue to support Israel’s right to defend itself and to take action against terrorism, provided it does so in accordance with international law.

[Lord Howard of Lympne (Con)]

My Lords—

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

My Lords—

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)]

My Lords, we will hear first from the noble Lord, Lord Howard, and then from the noble Lord, Lord Purvis.

[Lord Howard of Lympne (Con)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord. The Foreign Secretary in his Statement said that the commitment to comply with international humanitarian law is not the only criterion in making export licensing decisions, and he justified the decision to exempt the F35 equipment on other criteria. So does it not clearly follow from that the Government could, had they wished, have decided against a ban on the ground that Israel is acting in self-defence against an organisation committed to its destruction and recognised by our own Government as a terrorist organisation? In the light of that, will the Minister now accept that when she told your Lordships’ House on Tuesday that the Government were required to suspend certain export licences, what she said was both factually inaccurate and grossly misleading?

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

No, I do not accept that. The legal test we have is that there is a clear risk, and the advice we received was that in the case of these 30 licences it could present a clear risk—not that it has done, not that there is a breach, but that there is a clear risk. This is not an embargo on sales of arms to Israel. I am fairly confident that the noble Lord will know that the case of the F35s is different. We supply components which are part of a global supply chain, and stopping those components being provided could cause very difficult disruption and there would be an impact on global security.