Stephen Doughty
Main Page: Stephen Doughty (Labour (Co-op) - Cardiff South and Penarth)Department Debates - View all Stephen Doughty's debates with the Cabinet Office
(10 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)
The Prime Minister has heard the support for limited, targeted action against the Houthis, and I listened carefully to what he said about the efforts to prevent civilian casualties, which was unfortunately an issue I had to raise many times in relation to the previous conflict in Yemen. Can he say a bit more about what we are doing practically to ensure that strikes are tightly targeted against Houthi military capabilities? He rightly made the point that they were being done to protect civilian shipping, but can he say more about what we are doing to prevent civilian casualties?
The Prime Minister
Obviously, the hon. Gentleman will respect the fact that we do not comment in depth on the choice of targets, but we do use carefully calibrated intelligence, in conjunction with our military partners. The targets were selected specifically to degrade military capabilities and narrowly focused on taking out military hardware that could be used to attack commercial shipping. I can reassure him that every effort was made to minimise civilian casualties, and our initial assessment says that has been successful.