Cameron: no change on UK government position on arms exports to Israel
Foreign secretary David Cameron has been asked two questions in Washington by a BBC reporter. The first was when the government might publish legal advice it has received about whether Israel is in breach of international humanitarian law, and a second to ask if Cameron still believes some earlier words he has said about Donald Trump that he is “xenophobic, and misogynistic”.
He said the UK government position on arms exports to Israel is unchanged, but it continues to have concerns about the level of humanitarian aid entering Gaza.
He said Israel is an ally and a key defence partner. He says “we don’t publish or comment on legal advice, but we are a government that acts under the law” and keeps the situation under review.
He goes on to say the UK and US have worked for decades to keep the world safe, and that the great lesson from Nato is about sticking together.
He has side-stepped specific words about Trump but he says he sometimes drops diplomatic niceties.
“We had a good meeting” he said about meeting Trump. “We respect the electoral process and work with whoever is elected for the benefit of both our countries.”
Cameron also insisted his meeting with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago was entirely within the protocol of senior politicians meeting a potential incoming administration, just as Blinken had met Labour leader Keir Starmer recently. Cameron said the conversation with Trump was private and did not elaborate on details of the discussions.
At the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry on London Alan Bates, the most prominent victim and campaigner on the scandal, gave evidence saying that it was a “fundamental flaw” of Government is that it cannot deal with issues such as the Horizon scandal “easily and sensibly”. He accused the Post Office of spending two decades “denying, lying, defending and attempting to discredit and silence me”.
Rachel Reeves has said Labour’s spending plans will make a “massive difference” to the lives of people, promising two million additional appointments a year in the NHS, 700,000 emergency dental appointments, free breakfast clubs in all primary schools as well as investment in scanners and new technology in hospitals. She said it would be funded by a crackdown on tax avoiders worth £5bn to public services.
Rishi Sunak hosted president of Rwanda Paul Kagame in Downing Street, and a No 10 spokesperson said that both were looking forward to deportation flights to Rwanda in the spring for asylum seekers who had reached the UK.
Sunak also criticised on social media a protest about Gaza and climate change which appeared to have taken place outside Starmer’s house, saying “We cannot and will not tolerate this”
Former armed forces minister James Heappey has said the Conservatives and Labour should both commit to spending 3% of GDP on defence in their election manifestos.
Junior doctors, consultants and specialists have suspended industrial action in Wales after agreeing to formal negotiations about pay with the Welsh government.
Humza Yousaf has cautioned that a vote for the Greens by Scots in the next general election would be a “wasted vote”.
Ireland’s Dáil has confirmed Simon Harris’s nomination as the new taoiseach.
Labour’s shadow foreign secretary has criticised Cameron’s decision not to publish legal advice on arms sales to Israel.
David Lammy said: “This simply is not good enough. David Cameron is still hiding from scrutiny by stating that arms sales will continue without even publishing a summary of the legal advice or offering any rationale behind his decision.
“The foreign secretary should come to the Bar of the House of Commons on its return to take urgent questions from MPs on the content of the Foreign Office’s legal advice, the time period of the advice he is referring to and what impact political pressure from other members of the Cabinet had on his decision.”
David Cameron has confirmed the government will not suspend arms exports to Israel after the killing of seven aid workers in an airstrike on Gaza last week, as he insisted the UK would continue to act within international law.
The foreign secretary said that he had reviewed the most recent legal advice about the situation on the ground but this left the UK’s position on export licences “unchanged”.
But Lord Cameron said ministers had “grave concerns” about humanitarian access in Gaza as he urged Israel to turn its commitments on aid “into reality” at a joint press conference with his US counterpart, Antony Blinken.
Downing Street has come under mounting pressure from senior Tories to suspend weapons exports in light of the growing humanitarian crisis in Gaza, and after the deaths of three Britons in the strike on aid group World Central Kitchen.
Rishi Sunak has condemned pro-Palestine protesters who have staged a demonstration outside Keir Starmer’s house.
The demonstrators called on the Labour leader to support an arms embargo on Israel. The group, called Youth Demand, hung a banner outside Starmer’s home that read “Starmer stop the killing” surrounded by red hand prints, and laid rows of children’s shoes at his front door.
The protesters said in a video on X that weapons being manufactured in the UK were being “used to cause genocide”.
The Metropolitan police said three people were arrested on Tuesday under section 42 of the Criminal Justice and Police Act 2001, a power designed to “stop the harassment of a person at their home address”.
Sunak, whose home in North Yorkshire was targeted by climate protesters last year, said such incidents would not be tolerated. In a post on X, the prime minister said: “I don’t care what your politics are, no MP should be harassed at their own home.
Pat McFadden, Labour’s national campaign co-ordinator, said: “The fact it was left to William Wragg to resign is another indictment of Rishi Sunak’s weakness.
“His MPs were left yet again being sent out to defend a position that has collapsed.
“Rishi Sunak puts party management first every time – and he can’t even do that properly. It is no way to run a country.
“Britain deserves so much better than this endless Tory chaos. the only way to get it is to vote Labour on May 2.”
Kristyan Benedict, Amnesty International UK’s crisis response manager, said: “It’s sadly predictable that David Cameron still insists that there are no grounds for the UK to suspend arms transfers to Israel even after Israeli forces have killed thousands of civilians, including aid workers in Gaza.
“The foreign secretary ought to have told his counterparts in the US administration that the UK will immediately suspend arms transfers to Israel, including the supply of components for US-made F-35 bombers which are being used by Israeli forces in Gaza with such horrendous consequences for Palestinians.
“This was yet another missed opportunity from David Cameron to move himself and other UK officials away from their current complicity in Israeli war crimes, apartheid and possible genocide.”
Senior MP William Wragg has resigned the Conservative whip after he admitted giving politicians’ phone numbers to a suspected scammer.
The party’s whips office said he was “voluntarily relinquishing the Conservative whip” after he had already stepped back from his roles as vice-chairman of the backbench 1922 Committee and chairman of the Commons Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee.
The Hazel Grove MP had previously announced his intention to leave Parliament at the next election and will now sit as an Independent.
Wragg admitted last week that he had given colleagues’ phone numbers to someone on a dating app amid fears that intimate images of himself would be leaked after he was targeted in a parliamentary sexting scam.
The government should stop pursuing carers with huge fines until it investigates whether it is to blame for overpaying them, according to a former Conservative work and pensions secretary, writes Eleni Courea and Josh Halliday.
Iain Duncan Smith called on the department to stop hounding people for the repayments and investigate its own responsibility for the errors, some of which have left unpaid carers with criminal records and deep in debt.
Duncan Smith told the Guardian: “We don’t want people being forced into very serious difficulty. My advice is to pause this and review very carefully what’s been going on.”
The Guardian has revealed that carers are being forced to pay huge sums to the government and threatened with criminal prosecution after unwittingly breaching earnings rules by just a few pounds a week.
Julia Rosell Jackson, senior humanitarian advocacy adviser at charity ActionAid UK, said: “We are deeply alarmed to see David Cameron press ahead with arms sales to Israel that could be in flagrant disregard to international humanitarian law.
“It’s deeply disappointing that he has decided to continue providing arms to Israel for a conflict which is disproportionately killing women and children.
“Earlier today, the foreign secretary claimed that the UK is being ‘transparent’ over its arms sales to Israel, but in truth we’re left none the wiser.
“With the UK potentially complicit in selling arms that killed aid workers last week in Gaza and the majority of the British public supportive of an arms embargo, we urge him to come clean and publish the legal advice the Foreign Office received on its arms sales to Israel.”
The UK’s foreign secretary has said the government position on arms exports to Israel remains unchanged but it continues to have concerns about the level of humanitarian aid entering Gaza.
David Cameron confirms no change to UK arms exports to Israel – video
Rishi Sunak has welcomed the Rwandan president to Downing Street amid signs that ministers are struggling to find an airline or housing in Kigali to carry out the flagship deportation plan.
The meeting on Tuesday was overshadowed by the former home secretary Suella Braverman’s criticism of fallen expectations over the policy, which aims to forcibly send people seeking asylum 4,000 miles to central Africa.
The two leaders discussed the £500m plan before Sunak’s safety of Rwanda bill returns to the Commons on Monday – exactly two years after Boris Johnson announced the plan to deport “tens of thousands” of people arriving across the Channel in small boats. So far, none have been sent.
Government insiders said Sunak and Paul Kagame remain confident that the bill will pass by the end of April after another round of parliamentary ping pong between the House of Commons and the House of Lords, and that flights will take off “in the spring”.
After David Cameron said the UK will not suspend arms exports to Israel following the killing of seven aid workers in an air strike last week, aid organisation Care International UK said the statement appeared to contradict the precedent set in 2014 when the government said it would suspend some licences as a “precautionary step” if it could not “clarify if the export licence criteria are being met”.
Care’s head of advocacy and policy, Dorothy Sang, said: “The Government’s criteria for arms exports are clear that licences should not be granted where there is a clear risk that the items might be used in violation of international humanitarian law.
“Gaza is experiencing a manmade humanitarian crisis. Over 33,000 Palestinians and 200 aid workers have been killed during this conflict. Famine is imminent if not already present in the north of Gaza.
“The UK Government must now follow its own advice and suspend arms export licenses to Israel.”
A British embassy spokesperson said David Cameron would not be meeting Republican House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson due to scheduling issues, Reuters reports.
David Cameron has said he doesn’t think it is right to publish legal advice about the Israel-Gaza war at the moment, and that there is no change on the UK’s position on arms export to Israel. Speaking in a joint press conference with US secretary of state Antony Blinken in Washington the former prime minister said “no like-minded countries have taken the decision to suspend existing arms export licences to Israel,” and that “We don’t publish legal advice, we don’t comment on legal advice, but we act in a way that’s consistent with it. We’re a Government under the law and that’s as it should be.”
Cameron also insisted his meeting with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago was entirely within the protocol of senior politicians meeting a potential incoming administration, just as Blinken had met Labour leader Keir Starmer recently. Cameron said the conversation with Trump was private and did not elaborate on details of the discussions.
At the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry on London Alan Bates, the most prominent victim and campaigner on the scandal, gave evidence saying that it was a “fundamental flaw” of Government is that it cannot deal with issues such as the Horizon scandal “easily and sensibly”. He accused the Post Office of spending two decades “denying, lying, defending and attempting to discredit and silence me”.
Rachel Reeves has said Labour’s spending plans will make a “massive difference” to the lives of people, promising two million additional appointments a year in the NHS, 700,000 emergency dental appointments, free breakfast clubs in all primary schools as well as investment in scanners and new technology in hospitals. She said it would be funded by a crackdown on tax avoiders worth £5bn to public services.
Rishi Sunak hosted president of Rwanda Paul Kagame in Downing Street, and a No 10 spokesperson said that both were looking forward to deportation flights to Rwanda in the spring for asylum seekers who had reached the UK.
Sunak also criticised on social media a protest about Gaza and climate change which appeared to have taken place outside Starmer’s house, saying “We cannot and will not tolerate this”
Former armed forces minister James Heappey has said the Conservatives and Labour should both commit to spending 3% of GDP on defence in their election manifestos.
Junior doctors, consultants and specialists have suspended industrial action in Wales after agreeing to formal negotiations about pay with the Welsh government.
Humza Yousaf has cautioned that a vote for the Greens by Scots in the next general election would be a “wasted vote”.
Ireland’s Dáil has confirmed Simon Harris’s nomination as the new taoiseach.
The Sunlost £66m last year and its online audience dropped by 4 million readers as the newspaper continued to grapple with the fallout from the phone-hacking scandal.
Here are some fuller quotes from what foreign secretary David Cameron has just said in Washington, via PA Media:
We’ve seen a welcome increase in trucks, with as [US secretary of state Antony Blinken] said perhaps as many as 400 going in yesterday, the highest since 7 October and of course public commitments from Israel to flood Gaza with aid.
These now need to be turned into reality. Our position is in line with our international partners.
So far, no like-minded countries have taken the decision to suspend existing arms export licences to Israel, and I’d add that Israel remains a vital defence and security partner to the UK.
We don’t publish legal advice, we don’t comment on legal advice but we act in a way that’s consistent with it. We’re a Government under the law and that’s as it should be.
Israel has previously repeatedly claimed that it was not obstructing the aid flow into Gaza, but that NGOs and governments weren’t able to supply as much aid as Israel was able to process. Aid officials have referred to the situation being a “man-made starvation”.
David Cameron has said he doesn’t think it is right to publish legal advice about the Israel-Gaza war at the moment, and says when the UK government has published similar advice in the past it has been when British troops are directly involved.
Cameron: no change on UK government position on arms exports to Israel
Foreign secretary David Cameron has been asked two questions in Washington by a BBC reporter. The first was when the government might publish legal advice it has received about whether Israel is in breach of international humanitarian law, and a second to ask if Cameron still believes some earlier words he has said about Donald Trump that he is “xenophobic, and misogynistic”.
He said the UK government position on arms exports to Israel is unchanged, but it continues to have concerns about the level of humanitarian aid entering Gaza.
He said Israel is an ally and a key defence partner. He says “we don’t publish or comment on legal advice, but we are a government that acts under the law” and keeps the situation under review.
He goes on to say the UK and US have worked for decades to keep the world safe, and that the great lesson from Nato is about sticking together.
He has side-stepped specific words about Trump but he says he sometimes drops diplomatic niceties.
“We had a good meeting” he said about meeting Trump. “We respect the electoral process and work with whoever is elected for the benefit of both our countries.”
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