Yemen — House of Commons, 2018-09-11
Topic: International Affairs
John Michael Howell (Conservative, Centre-right): I congratulate the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg), who brought forward this important debate. He will recall, as will the House, that over the past year I have asked various Ministers a lot of questions about Yemen. One of the themes that I have brought out is how we can ensure that our aid workers are kept safe in what is effectively a proxy war, though he does not like the term, between Iran and Saudi Arabia, and I will stick to that theme My hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Victoria Prentis) said a lot about humanitarian aid; let me set out what it is achieving. A number of people have mentioned the £400 million that has been made available since 2015. In the 2018-19 financial year, I think we have added an additional £170 million—the Minister is nodding—which is a great achievement A number of people have mentioned the incidence of cholera, but that says nothing about what we have done on it. We have funded and provided a tremendous amount of vaccine and have provided a whole lot of things that keep people safe, such as chlorinated water. We have helped to restore medical facilities in the country, too. I think that we are all agreed that it is unacceptable that millions of vulnerable Yemenis are at risk because aid is being blocked. We should all do whatever we can to help get it through, but we should not in any way diminish the amount of humanitarian aid that is being provided The influence of Iran has been only partly mentioned. The Iranian regime is an active sponsor of international terror groups. It operates a complex network of weapons smuggling in defiance of not one but four UN Security Council resolutions. The question we have to ask is: what pressure can we bring to bear on Iran to stop funding the Houthis? That is a question I have asked in previous question sessions in this House A good starting point would have been the nuclear arms deal, which we conducted with Iran. Unfortunately, however, it is completely silent on this important point. It is one of the great lacunae in that agreement, because it provides no mechanism to stop released funds from reaching the Houthis. It provides no mechanism for us to put pressure on Iran to stop funding the Houthis. If we just think about it, just a fraction of the £100 billion that was there as part of the sanctions that have now been released, would triple or more the amount of funds that are reaching the Houthis If we want to look at that in more detail, we need to look at the Government’s position on Iran. I am very pleased that the Prime Minister said in 2017 that her aim is to "reduce Iran’s malign influence in the Middle East" That is an accurate description of Iran’s influence. She went on to say: "we must also work together to push back against Iran’s aggressive regional actions, whether in Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, Syria or in the Gulf itself." That is an important list of areas where Iran is trying to establish its own arc and explains why there is such antagonism from the Saudis to taking that and not fighting back. Can we work with the Saudis and are we having success with them? I would say that on this particular issue our continuing closeness with the Saudis is having an effect on what we can say to them and on what we can get them to do. The failure to look at it in that way goes to the heart of one the things that was mentioned at the beginning of the debate, which is missing the wider context of this terrible fight in Yemen. Missing the wider context ignores one of the main players and makes it appear as though this is nothing more than a Saudi attack on Yemen, without any possible additional influence.