The Foreign Office has been accused of breaking the ministerial code by taking nearly a month to correct false assurances that Saudi Arabia did not breach international humanitarian law (IHL) when it used British weapons in Yemen.

Internal government emails show ministers were told they had misled parliament by stating in four written answers that the government had made a direct assessment of whether UK weapons were being used in breach of IHL by Saudi. In fact, ministers had made no such assessment, but instead only assessed whether there was a general risk the Saudis had breached IHL.

An internal email chain reveals that it took 23 days to admit the error after officials informed then foreign secretary Phillip Hammond of it on 28 June 2016. The admission was eventually made after Hammond had been replaced by Boris Johnson on the last day of parliament before the summer recess, alongside 30 other written answers.

Hilary Benn, the former shadow foreign secretary, wrote to Theresa May on Tuesday to ask her to investigate whether a breach of the ministerial code had occurred. He called the delay in telling parliament “extended and unacceptable”.

In his letter Benn pointed out that the ministerial code required ministers to correct errors “at the earliest opportunity” as well as not to leave major announcements until the last day of a parliamentary sitting. Benn claimed the emails showed “a flurry of activity until 5 July, and then a large gap in exchanges until July 20”.

The email chain involving Foreign Office civil servants, legal advisers and press officers reveals that Hammond had agreed to the ministerial corrections, but says “there was not time to implement the changes before he left office”.

The final email urging a correction sent to the current foreign secretary states: “In the answers it was implied that HMG [the government] had made assessment of whether the Saudi-led coalition had breached IHL in Yemen. It is important to make clear neither the FCO or MoD reaches a conclusion as to whether or not [a breach of] an IHL has taken place in relation to each and every incident of potential concern that comes to its attention. We are not making an assessment whether or not a sovereign state has or has not acted in breach of IHL, but we are acting to make an overall judgment.”

The email chain was released by the Foreign Office under instruction from the information commissioner, after the FCO delayed responding to a freedom of information request. It is only the second time that the information commissioner has felt forced to issue this kind of instruction under the Freedom of Information Act.

The Foreign Office has heavily redacted the email chain, saying it is entitled by law to protect the confidentiality of legal and policy advice.

The state of government knowledge of the Saudi air campaign in Yemen will be a critical issue in a judicial review brought by the Campaign Against Arms Trade against the government and likely to be heard in the high court next month. The judicial review seeks to show that ministers should not have licensed UK arms exports to Saudi Arabia.



It is likely to be argued that ministers had a duty to make their own inquiries into the threats to international law posed by the Saudi air campaign, given the repeated warnings about the Saudi campaign and the alleged inadequacies in Saudi’s own investigations of errors in it. Judicial reviews often turn on the process by which government reaches a decision, as much as the decision itself.

A Foreign Office apokeswoman said: “The clarifications set out in the 21st July Written Ministerial Statement to Parliament were made to ensure consistency with numerous other Parliamentary responses, and no way represented a change in position. The UK continues to monitor the conflict in Yemen closely.”

