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Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan and Pakistan

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles), and may I offer the congratulations of the House on his recent civil partnership? I am disappointed that he did not invite me to the event: after all, we share offices in Norman Shaw North and Leicester is not that far from Grantham—I would have made the journey. I say to the hon. Member for Bromsgrove (Sajid Javid) that I am glad, as I think is the whole House, that Abdul Ghani decided to stay in Britain rather than go back to Pakistan. The hon. Gentleman made a forceful and important contribution, and throughout the entire year of his being a Member I am sure his constituents have been extraordinarily proud of his contribution. I always use opportunities such as this to talk about Yemen, and I make no apology to the House for doing so. I was born in that country and chair the all-party group on Yemen. I always start my contributions to such debates by saying that Yemen is in crisis, but it really is in crisis. There is a deep humanitarian crisis affecting Yemen. Some 40% of the country live on under £1.25 a day, one third of its people are unemployed and 7 million literally cannot find anything to eat each day. The situation that led to the uprising has caused the displacement of 330,000 people in the north of the country. As a matter of urgency, therefore, we need to continue the work that was started under the previous Government, through the Friends of Yemen procedure, and to give Yemen the support that it needs. I am delighted to see the Secretary of State for International Development here today. I have known him for 35 years, and he is responsible for giving me my first political speech when he presided over the debating society that we both belonged to; he probably regrets it now. In the work that he has done, he has been an outstanding International Development Secretary. I know that there are many countries and that the budget is limited, but it is very important to focus on Yemen, which is one of the poorest countries on earth. It does not have the political capacity to punch above its weight as other countries have done, and it does not have the focus of the international community. That is why it is important that we should give it as much help as we can. On the political side, tomorrow there will be a mass demonstration in Sana'a, and the predictions are that even more people will die unless there is restraint on all sides. So far, 170 people have been killed in the uprising. When I spoke in an Adjournment debate on Yemen a few weeks ago, I believed that we were near a solution, and I think that that was the Foreign Secretary's view as well. The Gulf Co-operation Council had negotiated an agreement with President Ali Abdullah Saleh that he would stand down in 30 days. That agreement was also adhered to by the opposition. Everyone agreed that there was a process for the resignation of the President, with all the dignity of a person who has occupied that post for 32 years, and that a new Government would take over. This did not happen. It is vital that we provide not only humanitarian relief but political support. I have urged on the Government and the Prime Minister the need to appoint an envoy who will be able to bring all sides together; it could be an EU envoy or someone from the United Nations. After all, we are proposing to do this in other countries. I believe that Yemen is a country that can be saved from civil war if we are able to provide that political support. Why is it in our interests to support Yemen? Why do we want to keep the country as one? The reason is the power that al-Qaeda has in Yemen. A lot of reference has been made to the death of Osama bin Laden, but the head of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Anwar al-Awlaki, is still in Yemen. Though born in the United States, he is of Yemeni descent. According to the Pentagon, he is more dangerous, as a person, than Osama bin Laden was. It is therefore in our interests to ensure that the country remains stable and united, that humanitarian support is given, and that the security situation in that whole area is not infected by the break-up of this impoverished country.