Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what assessment he has made of the compatibility of actions taken by Saudi Arabian and UAE forces in the war in Yemen with international law.

As the then Secretary of State for International Trade set out in her written statement of 7 July 2020, as part of the UK's robust export licencing procedure, the Government analyses allegations of International Humanitarian Law (IHL) breaches in Yemen that are assessed as likely to have occurred, by reference to the relevant principles of IHL and in light of all the information available. An evaluation is then made, in respect of each incident, of whether it is possible that it constitutes a breach of IHL, or whether it is unlikely that it represents a breach (or where there is insufficient information to make this evaluation).