Arms and Military Cargo Export Controls: Israel

Ellie Chowns Excerpts

Monday 2nd June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Steve Witherden]

I agree with the hon. Member that all countries have the right to defend themselves. I have condemned the vile events of 7 October in other places, and do so again here. All countries have the right to defend themselves, but no country has the right to commit war crimes.

Despite the International Court of Justice’s ruling that there is a “plausible risk of genocide” in Gaza, the UK continues to authorise arms exports to Israel, making us in potential breach of our obligations under the genocide convention, the Geneva conventions and the arms trade treaty.

In the hearing of Al-Haq v. Secretary of State for Business and Trade, it was revealed that the Government decided there was no serious risk of genocide back in July 2024, yet in Parliament we are told that the Government are waiting on a court determination. In court, we are told that it is not for the courts to decide, as those treaties are not incorporated into domestic law and are Parliament’s responsibility. If it is not Parliament or the courts, who are the Government accountable to for the decision to continue to transfer arms to Israel, potentially breaching international law and facilitating a genocide? Will the Government publish their most recent assessment of the risk that Israel is committing genocide?

[Ellie Chowns (North Herefordshire) (Green)]

I thank the hon. Member for his very powerful speech, and I echo his call for the Government to publish their most recent assessment of the risk of genocide. Does he agree that it makes a mockery of our obligation under international law to prevent genocide if our Government say that they can only judge it after genocide has been conclusively proven in court to have happened? Does our obligation to act to prevent genocide not mean that we should stop all arms exports to the Israeli Government now, in the face of the clear evidence of war crimes and, indeed, genocide occurring in Gaza?

[Steve Witherden]

I am in especial agreement on the importance of preventing those things. I am very eager, as I am sure the hon. Member is, to hear from the Minister in relation to those comments.

Let us turn to the Government’s own assessments. In the same hearing, it was revealed that by September ’24, Israel had launched tens of thousands of air strikes and killed more than 40,000 Palestinians in Gaza. The public are being told to trust our judgment on the weapons that this country is sending to a state conducting a genocide. This is the same Government who, after reviewing 413 incidents, determined that only 0.5% of them potentially violated international humanitarian law. Not a single incident involving only the deaths of Palestinians was deemed even possibly unlawful.

While the Foreign Secretary repeatedly talks about the UK’s “robust” licensing regime, the reality is that British export data is notoriously opaque. Can the Government confirm whether they have reached a new assessment since September? If so, can they disclose it to the public? If the Government are truly confident in the legality of their exports, will they publish custom codes, product descriptions and a full paper trail from sender to end user? Would this level of opacity be tolerated if it were British civilians under the rubble?

We are repeatedly told that the UK arms exports are “defensive in nature”, reduced to nothing more than “a helmet or goggles”, but let us be clear: the Government have never defined what “defensive” means, especially when exports include components for F-35 fighter jets capable of dropping 2,000-lb bombs on densely populated areas. Since September 2024, there has been no evidence that UK exports were limited to non-lethal equipment or that they were not intended for use in Gaza. The Government do not claim that it is too difficult to track where these weapons end up; instead, they invoke vague concerns about “international peace and security”, as though suspending exports to Israel would somehow endanger global stability, including support for Ukraine, but that is a false dichotomy. Palestinian lives are not less valuable.

The F-35 programme is one of the most sophisticated supply chains on earth. If we wanted to, we could track every part. The real question is: do we want to? How do the Government define a weapon as defensive? What precisely makes an F-35 component defensive? Is it the Government’s position that the need to continue to supply F-35 components outweighs the risk of genocide? If so, is there any circumstance that would lead to the UK stopping that supply? The Government have claimed that there are red lines that would trigger a halt to exports, but Gaza is already a slaughterhouse. Children are emaciated or dying of hunger, hospitals have been intentionally destroyed and Israel’s leaders vow to wipe out Gaza, and still the weapons flow, so finally, Minister, where is our red line? I call on this Government to suspend all arms exports to Israel, to ensure that no British-made weapons are used in Israel’s brutal plans to annex, starve and ethnically cleanse the Palestinian population. The credibility of this House depends not just on what we condemn, but on what we enable, and history will remember that we enabled too much.