Yemen — House of Commons, 2016-10-26
Topic: International Affairs
Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson (Conservative, Centre-right): I am afraid that I must make some progress, as many Members wish to speak in the debate The Saudi Government have thus far approached the matter with the great seriousness it deserves—I think that those who have had the chance to interrogate the Saudi Foreign Minister in this House would agree. However, the House should be in no doubt that we are monitoring the situation minutely and meticulously, and that we will continue to apply our established criteria for granting licences with fairness and rigour and in full accordance with UK law Those who say, as apparently the Opposition now do in their motion, that we should simply disregard those legal procedures should be in no doubt that we would be vacating a space that would rapidly be filled by other western countries that would happily supply arms with nothing like the same compunctions, criteria or respect for humanitarian law. More importantly, we would, at a stroke, eliminate this country’s positive ability to exercise our moderating diplomatic and political influence on a crisis in which there are massive UK interests at stake To the hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury, who sought to draw ill-informed and inapposite comparisons, in what I thought was a singularly inappropriate analogy, between what is happening in Yemen and what is happening in Syria, I respectfully say that all wars are horrific and involve loss of innocent life, but important distinctions need to be made with the carnage taking place in Syria, where poison gas and barrel bombs are being used on the civilian population in a campaign of barbarism that has cost 400,000 lives and driven 11 million people from their homes. She should not let analogy replace analysis in what she says Britain is at the forefront of efforts to hold the Assad regime in Syria to account, and we are at the forefront of delivering humanitarian aid to the entire region. We can be proud of our efforts to address the humanitarian crisis in Yemen—the whole House can be proud of what we are doing. As the hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury said, some 7 million people in Yemen face severe food shortages. Last month my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Development hosted an event in New York that raised $100 million for the people of Yemen, on top of the £100 million contributed by the people of this country. We in Britain stand ready to do whatever we can to alleviate the suffering of the innocent, and the best service we could perform would be to help them secure a peaceful settlement The Government’s position is clear: the conflict in Yemen must end; and a political agreement between the Yemeni parties must be found. I agree with the hon. Lady: for that, we need a durable ceasefire and a return to negotiations. I agree with what she says, in that we should do everything we can to support the UN envoy, Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed. But in the end, it is the Yemenis themselves who must also compromise. Peace is what the Yemeni people need and deserve, and that can only come from a political and a diplomatic solution. In helping to bring about that political and diplomatic solution, I believe this country, once again, is helping to show the way.