Yemen — House of Commons, 2017-03-28
Topic: International Affairs
Tobias Martin Ellwood (Conservative, Centre-right): Let me briefly make the point that I wish there were more time to respond to this very good debate, as I have only eight minutes in which to do my best to do justice to it. It has served as a reminder that the House takes these matters very seriously. I join Members in paying tribute to the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) and the others who tabled the motion. I will do my best to rattle through the points and, as usual, I will write to right hon. and hon. Members with more details. Again, I make the point that I find it bizarre that we are stopping in order to have an Adjournment debate of an hour and a half, when such debates normally last only 30 minutes I will focus on the points made by the right hon. Gentleman, who made a comprehensive speech in summarising the challenges that Yemen faces. The scale of the tragedy is well known to us all, with 70% of the population now needing humanitarian assistance. In answer to the right hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry), let me say that Britain continues to play a leading role, unswayed by the prejudice or interest of any other country. As she says, we are the pen holder, and we are determined to do that job without prejudice and without influence from other nations, doing what we see is best. We show leadership at the United Nations and in the new Quint, which involves nations from around the middle east that are looking at this and which met in February, along with UN special envoy Ismail Ahmed. I met him two weeks ago, when we discussed what parameters we need to get in place in order for a ceasefire to work and then for a UN Security Council resolution to be supported Many right hon. and hon. Members have mentioned the importance of the port of Hudaydah, and that must not be underestimated. Yemen has two critical access points, one being the port of Aden, in the south, and the other, halfway up the Red sea, being Hudaydah, with a population of 3 million. If the civil war moves into that area, it will devastate that city, probably displacing about half the people who live there—1.5 million people—and causing mayhem. Not only will it further the prospect of famine and lead to a refugee crisis, but it will flatten the port itself. We may be frustrated with the amount of aid getting through the port at the moment, but the situation will be even worse if the battle commences in that populated urban area. We therefore call on the coalition and the Houthis to recognise that the world is watching and that they need to come back to the table. This will be sorted not by a military solution, but by a political one, and it is very important that that is recognised A lot has been said about the cranes, but let me make it clear that the old cranes were bombed a number of years ago and the new cranes are sitting in Dubai. They have been moved there to keep them out of harm’s way; no one knows exactly what is going to happen to the port of Hudaydah as it is unclear where the battle is going I reiterate how unhelpful and wrong it would be for us not to work towards a peaceful solution. The right hon. Member for Leicester East rightly said that this problem is not intractable—there is a path to peace. An awful lot of plates are spinning in the middle east, but I genuinely believe that Yemen is one problem that can be solved—to do that, however, we also need the will of the Yemeni people My right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell), for whom I have a huge amount of respect, made a helpful visit to Yemen, although such travel is not endorsed. In his own inimitable way, he went there and he has shared his findings. He paid tribute to the UN agencies—I join him in doing so—and spoke about there being perhaps a difference in strategy between different Departments. I make it clear that we have one clear strategy, but I can see the dilemma in that on the one hand the Department for International Development is determined to get aid into the country, whereas on the other we are dealing with this protracted war, which this coalition is pushing, and it is not doing a particularly good job of it. I have been critical about its actions before; it is not used to sustained warfare and it has made mistakes, which we have debated here. We have made it clear to the coalition that, as I have just said, the war will not be ended in this way We certainly support Saudi-led efforts to restore stability and check the advance of the Houthis, because that started all this in the first place. Let us not forget that the Houthis pushed through Sana’a and would have taken over the port of Aden had a coalition not answered the call by President Hadi to stand up for his legitimacy.