Boris Johnson’s comments on Saudi Arabia fighting a proxy war in Yemen could wreck everything the UK is trying to do to end the civil war in the country, MPs have been told.



The claim was made in the Commons by the former chairman of the home affairs select committee, Keith Vaz, who also warned that Johnson’s remarks left Britain’s role as an honest broker in Yemen under threat.

The Speaker, John Bercow, granted Vaz permission to demand that the government clarify its support for the Saudi role in Yemen in light of the foreign secretary’s claim that Saudi Arabia was “puppeteering” to fight a proxy war with Iran.

Johnson’s comments last week earned him an unprecedented rebuke from No 10.

Emily Thornberry, the shadow foreign secretary, joined Vaz on Monday in claiming the episode showed how the UK’s support for the Saudi coalition lacked both “consistency and principle”. She said policy was instead driven by “sheer absolute hypocrisy”.

However, Thornberry praised Johnson’s criticism of Saudi Arabia, and condemned Downing Street for forcing the foreign secretary to go to Riyadh at the weekend to explain himself. Johnson has insisted he will continue to be candid with the UK’s allies, and has refused to apologise for his remarks.

Thornberry also demanded to know what was preventing the UK from tabling a UN security council resolution on Yemen, calling for a ceasefire and access for humanitarian aid.

In the Commons, the foreign office minister Tobias Ellwood did not directly address Johnson’s claim of a proxy war, instead insisting that the UK’s support for the Saudis was in line with UN security council resolutions. He said he hoped a fresh ceasefire resolution would soon emerge, and that the delay was caused by the complexity of the political crisis.

Thousands have been killed in the 18-month war in Yemen, and famine has spread across the country, partly due to aid agencies not getting full access to the port of Aden.

But in a fresh sign that the Foreign Office is more willing, under Johnson’s leadership, to challenge aspects of foreign policy in the Gulf, Ellwood revealed he had formally urged all six Gulf states to sign up to the international convention banning the use of cluster munitions.

He said Britain condemned the weapons’ use and that he had personally told the six Gulf foreign ministers at the weekend that they should sign up to treaty. “I absolutely condemn the use of cluster munitions,” he said. “They lay around the battlefield until it turns into a civilian arena, and that is why they cause damage.”

Saudi Arabia has been repeatedly criticised for the use of cluster munitions in Yemen. The weapons leave mini-bomblets that can explode much later, killing civilians.

Ellwood also said he would support an independent inquiry into war crimes by both sides in the Yemen civil war if the Saudi’s own inquiry proved unworthy. But he stressed that Saudi Arabia was a conservative country that was slow to adapt to the rules governing 21st-century sustained warfare.

Ellwood’s remarks on cluster munitions may represent a hardening of the government position. In a letter last month to the Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman, Tom Brake, he appeared more equivocal. “The UK takes the view that cluster munitions are not prima facie illegal and can be used in compliance with international law by states that are not party to to the convention providing they are used in a manner compatible with international humanitarian law including distinction, proportionality and the obligations to take precautions.”

The UK is a longstanding signatory to the treaty.

Johnson himself is likely to appear in the Commons on Tuesday morning after the Speaker granted the former Tory cabinet minister Andrew Mitchell two hours for an emergency debate on the humanitarian crisis in Aleppo.

Pleading for MPs to discuss the crisis, Mitchell cited reports that sarin and chlorine gas have been used in the city, which would constitute a war crime, as evidence of the need for immediate action.

“Many of these terrified civilians trapped in this hell hole, which now resembles Stalingrad at the end of its destruction, are children,” Mitchell said. “They have few places to hide. Tomorrow [Tuesday] night in Aleppo, the temperature is expected to reach minus four degrees.”

Mitchell said MPs should decide “what, in the name of humanity, we the international community will do to save those who today are in such dreadful jeopardy”.

Ministers have ruled out seeking to provide aid without Russian permission, and are now focused on the extent to which the UK should continue to support the forces opposed to the Assad government.