Strait of Hormuz Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
Lincoln Jopp
Main Page: Lincoln Jopp (Conservative - Spelthorne)Department Debates - View all Lincoln Jopp's debates with the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
Strait of Hormuz
Lincoln Jopp Excerpts(1 day, 14 hours ago)
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Stephen Doughty
It is my understanding that Ministers were not consulted or indeed advised on that attendance. The issue has been ongoing since, I think, 2015, and was likely to have been under the previous Government as well.
Lincoln Jopp (Spelthorne) (Con)
The Minister has come here to give us a pretty vague response of, “We’re in discussions with allies about making a plan,” and does not want to give us any more detail than that; I can potentially see why. When he has those discussions with allies, will he please remember that the British taxpayer kindly gifted two Sandown class minehunters to the Ukrainian navy and that we have trained up their crews, who are now at a NATO standard? The Defence Committee visited them in Portsmouth, and they were proud of those credentials. We have heard from my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) that Ukraine seems to be leaning into supporting allies in the Gulf. Therefore, when the Minister is having discussions with allies about making a plan, will he bear that in mind? Of course, those craft cannot deploy back to the Black sea because of the Montreux convention, and I believe the crews are there and ready to operate.
Stephen Doughty
The hon. Gentleman asks an important question. I am not, for obvious reasons, going to get into the detail of individual pieces of kit and equipment, but I welcome the fact that Ukraine has engaged with Gulf partners on the lessons it has learned, particularly in relation to drone technology. That is important. It is, of course, absolutely right that Ukraine’s focus remains on its needs and defending itself against Russia’s barbarous aggression, and I can assure him that our commitments to Ukraine remain absolutely iron-clad in that regard, but I do not want to get into commenting on individual pieces of kit and equipment.