Yemen

Margaret Ferrier Excerpts

Wednesday 26th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Margaret Ferrier (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (SNP)]

It is almost five months since I successfully secured a Westminster Hall debate on human rights and arms sales to Saudi Arabia. Part of my speech focused on the situation in Yemen, and since then that situation has gotten progressively worse. There is a massive humanitarian crisis as the country heads into winter, and it is also careering towards a famine. Millions of people urgently need food assistance, but unfortunately they are not receiving it due to the lack of unhindered access.

I appreciate that the Government have been making efforts to ensure that aid starts to get through—that has certainly helped the situation—but the war-related damage to Yemen’s infrastructure means that essential supplies are still not getting into the country. Onerous restrictions on humanitarian access have resulted in 1.3 million children under five suffering from malnutrition. Is it going to require images of dead children to make us do more? There will soon be no shortage of them—that fact is heartbreaking and infuriating.

The Department for International Development will no doubt argue that we are already doing our fair share, and of course it is only right that we do so. I am afraid, however, that handouts cannot make up for us arming the forces that are causing a lot of the damage to the country’s infrastructure. Make no mistake: although we are not coalition partners, we are willing accomplices.

[Dr Lisa Cameron (East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow) (SNP)]

rose—

[Margaret Ferrier]

A lot of Members want to speak, so I am sorry but I am going to continue.

I have been calling for the suspension of the sale of arms to Saudi Arabia for more than a year, and I have heard many excuses for not doing so. First, the Government insisted that the Ministry of Defence had conducted assessments of the situation in Yemen and determined that there was no evidence of breaches of international humanitarian law. That was as recently as June, when the then Foreign Office Minister, the right hon. Member for Aylesbury (Mr Lidington), insisted, in response to me in a Westminster Hall debate, that that was the case.

There was then a climbdown when the Government admitted that the MOD had not, in fact, conducted any assessments. The new refrain is that the Saudis should be responsible for investigating themselves, and that is what has started to happen. Although the joint incidents assessment team has investigated relatively few incidents, even it has been forced to admit that the Saudi-led coalition has indeed broken international humanitarian law. That still does not seem to be enough to shame the Government into action. Even the coalition airstrike in Sana’a on 8 October was not enough.

The UN panel of experts on Yemen has condemned the airstrike. It said that the coalition had “violated its obligations” under international law and that it

“did not take effective precautionary measures to minimize harm to civilians, including the first responders”

on the scene. When I tabled a written question to the Foreign Office in June to ask for an assessment of an extensive report published by the panel of experts in January, it responded:

“The UK has supported, and continues to support, the work of the panel of experts commissioned by the UN, but we do not always agree with their conclusions.”

What is totally shameful about that response is that not once have I seen any evidence whatsoever that the Foreign Office has ever disagreed with the conclusions of the Saudi authorities, let alone questioned them. Why is it that the Government seem content to take the word of a participant in the war at face value, yet disregard so readily the findings of the UN panel?

We need to stop arms sales to Saudi Arabia, and we need an independent investigation. It is time for the Government not only to come clean about their role in the conflict, but to start putting things right.