Defending the UK and Allies

Lord Soames of Fletching Excerpts

Monday 15th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is an extraordinarily important player and actor in the field. The Prime Minister had a constructive and useful meeting there when he visited the region last year. He was very well received, as is my noble friend the Foreign Secretary when he goes there for grown-up, constructive, thoughtful talks about how we may secure long-term peace and prosperity for an area of the world where there should be peace and prosperity for all. That is our hope. We have agreed with the Government of Saudi Arabia to co-ordinate action on supporting regional security. The Prime Minister also discussed humanitarian aid for Gaza. My noble friend is absolutely right that the Gulf countries are important for our interests, particularly trade and investment, and energy and climate change. I can assure him that those dialogues continue.

[Lord Soames of Fletching (Con)]

My Lord, I join other noble Lords in congratulating the pilots of those four Typhoons, who undertook an astonishing, skilful and very courageous mission—an eight-hour return flight, including what must have been a very difficult attack. It is clear that the Houthis still retain a substantial store of potentially extremely dangerous and hazardous missiles. My noble friend has already quite properly said that he cannot forecast what might happen, but it is clear that we will not have done that much harm to their residual stocks.

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I think the Houthis have fewer missiles than they had before this operation took place, but my noble friend is absolutely right. Again, I am not going into operational matters and would not want to give the House any impression of what might or might not follow in any eventuality, but it is clearly a good thing if the Houthis’ capacity to take action is degraded. The real thing is that the Houthis should simply stop these attacks. Those who have influence over them—notably the Iranian Government, who support them—should tell them to stop, and they have been told that they should tell them to stop. That may be a naive aspiration, but that is the way to deal with the problem: stop it.