Tom Brake – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Tom Brake on 2016-06-07.

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, which sources independent of the Saudi government are assessed by the UK Government regarding the alleged use of cluster munitions by the Saudi led coalition in Yemen.

Mr Tobias Ellwood

The UK Government considers a range of information regarding the conduct of the Saudi Arabian-led Coalition in Yemen. This includes UN sources, INGO reports, open sources such as social media, and our internal government sources which includes UK Defence Intelligence reports. This comes from government sources, foreign governments, the media and international non-governmental organisations. The UK ratified the Convention on Cluster Munitions on 4 May 2010 and, in line with our obligations under the Convention, we have always made it clear to the Saudi Arabians that we cannot support the use of cluster munitions in any circumstances and we continue to encourage Saudi Arabia, as a non-party to the Convention, to accede to it.