Yemen

Natascha Engel Excerpts

Thursday 12th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Ellwood]

The hon. Lady tempts me. I ask her to join in with the spirit of the debate and try to look at the positives and at what we can actually do. She is focusing deeply on a draft resolution, which, having been involved in the Riyadh talks on 19 December, I can promise Members is now out of date. I will go into more detail in my response, but if she devotes another few minutes to this matter it will be superfluous to the wider debate—the good debate—that we have had in this Chamber.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Natascha Engel)]

Before the hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry) rises, may I remind everyone that we have another debate after this and that it is quite well subscribed? There are perhaps only one-and-a-half minutes remaining.

[Emily Thornberry]

I will not take any more interventions. I will just go straight through the rest of my speech, because I have some important points to make.

The truth is that Saudi Arabia does not want this resolution to be presented. When asked about the UK’s draft resolution in November by an Arab newspaper, the Saudi ambassador to the UN said.

“There is a continuous and joint agreement with Britain concerning the draft resolution, and whether there is a need for it or not.”

The newspaper goes on to say that the Saudi ambassador claimed that the UK draft resolution

“includes an unnecessary text, in addition to having a wrong timing.”

So there we have it in black and white.

Saudi Arabia does not sit on the UN Security Council, but it has been able to veto the UK’s draft resolution without so much as a discussion. Why has it done so? Is it because of clause 4, which calls for

“full, transparent and timely investigation”

of all alleged war crimes? We know that JIAT’s investigations have hardly been full, transparent or timely. Is it because of clause 5, which calls on all sides to negotiate a political solution on the basis of the UN road map? President Hadi has described the road map as

“the betrayal of the blood of martyrs.”

Is it because, just like Assad in Syria, Saudi Arabia sees no value in agreeing a ceasefire when it believes that the rebellion can still be crushed—no matter the civilian casualties, and no matter the humanitarian cost? No matter what Saudi Arabia does, it knows that this Tory Government will remain on its side.

The Foreign Secretary was right last month to call Yemen a “proxy war” and he was right to criticise Saudi Arabia’s “puppeteering”. Although I am happy to applaud his honesty, it is just his hypocrisy that is all the more disappointing. If he knows what Saudi Arabia is really doing in Yemen, he should follow America’s lead and stop selling it arms. If he is worried about the scale of civilian casualties, he should back a proper, independent, UN-led investigation to see whether international laws have been broken. If he wants to see an end to the conflict and get the children of Yemen the humanitarian aid that they need, he should have the guts to stand up to Saudi Arabia and present the UK’s resolution to the UN. It is time for the Government to stop the hypocrisy and the delaying tactics and start doing the decent thing: present the draft UN resolution, end the conflict, demand an independent investigation of war crimes, and send a signal of intent to the Saudis today by supporting this motion.