Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, whether any progress has been made on facilitating prisoner exchanges between the respective parties in the Yemen conflict.

The UN Special Envoy, Martin Griffiths, informed the UN Security Council on 19 February that progress has been made towards releasing the first batch of prisoners and we welcome this. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Houthis have also already released small numbers of prisoners as signs of goodwill while discussions continue on a broader exchange of prisoners. We welcome these steps – a key confidence building measure – and have seconded a UK expert to the UN to support the UN’s work to facilitate the prisoner exchange agreement.