Question to the Department for International Development:

To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what steps the Government is taking to strengthen the UN Verification and Inspection Mechanism for Yemen.

The UK is providing £1.3 million this financial year to the UN’s Verification and Inspection Mechanism (UNVIM) to facilitate commercial shipping and assure the Coalition that weapons are not coming into Yemen on large commercial ships docking at the large Red Sea ports. We have also deployed UK maritime experts to Djibouti to further boost the inspections process, helping increase the proportion of ships physically inspected almost ten-fold (from 8% to 77%).