UK to spend £140m on aid to Yemen to help ‘most desperate people in the world’, deputy foreign secretary says
The UK will spend £140m next year helping starving people in Yemen who are suffering one of the most “acute humanitarian crises in the world”, the deputy foreign secretary has said.
Speaking exclusively to Sky News, Andrew Mitchell raised the plight of the Yemeni people, whom he said were living “on the margins of subsistence” following nearly a decade of civil war.
Mr Mitchell promised that the UK’s bilateral support for Yemen would increase by 60% and that any money provided would be designed “directly to help people who are in a very perilous humanitarian position”.
“It is Britain doing good, going to the rescue of the most desperate people in the world and helping them,” he said.
The deputy foreign secretary’s intervention comes following months of reporting from Yemen from Sky News’ special correspondent Alex Crawford, who has detailed how the war in Gaza has had an adverse impact on the Yemeni people.
Yemen’s Houthi militants, backed by Iran, have targeted ships in the Red Sea region which they claim are linked to Israel or helping its war effort.
The repeated missile and drone attacks by the Houthis since November have forced international cargo ships to be re-routed and take longer, more costly journeys around the Cape of Good Hope that has pushed up the price of goods in Yemen – already one of the poorest countries in the world.
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The Houthi actions are wreaking havoc on global shipping routes but has seen them surge in popularity at home.
However, the Houthis’ actions, while condemned by the West, have prompted demonstrations of support in the streets of Yemen, where solidarity is expressed with Palestinians in Gaza.
Mr Mitchell said 70% of the food that gets into Yemen goes through ports used by international shipping and was therefore being put at risk by the Houthis’ actions.
“It is often impeded in getting there by what the Houthis are doing in disrupting the flow of international shipping,” he explained.
“So that is very bad – and, an example of the terrible effect of the Houthis are having on their own people as well as on the wider international community.”
Read more:
Babies are starving as Yemen teeters on brink of collapse
Alex Crawford: Inside Yemen – the forgotten war
Asked what the international community was doing to bring about peace in Yemen, Mr Mitchell replied: “Well, Britain holds the pen, in the jargon of the trade, at the United Nations. So we lead on Yemen.
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Sky’s special correspondent Alex Crawford and her team report from Yemen.
“And, recently we’ve been trying to make sure that the negotiations, which the UN special representative has been involved in, are successful.
“There’s a very different situation now from what there was a couple of years ago with the Saudis. And there is a peace process that is there for the taking.
“We urge all the different parties who are involved in Yemen to get involved in that peace process, to bring an end to a terrible situation, which, above all, millions of ordinary people in Yemen are suffering from.”
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Politics
Reform UK overtakes Conservative membership – Nigel Farage calls it ‘historic’, Kemi Badenoch says numbers are ‘fake’
Reform UK now has more members than the Conservative Party and is “the real opposition” according to Nigel Farage, while Kemi Badenoch has called his numbers “fake”.
According to a digital counter on the party’s website, Reform UK had gone past 131,690 members – the amount the Conservative Party declared before its leadership election in the autumn – just before midday on Boxing Day.
Mr Farage, party leader and MP for Clacton-on-Sea, hailed the “historic moment” and said on X: “The youngest political party in British politics has just overtaken the oldest political party in the world. Reform UK are now the real opposition.”
But Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch accused the party of issuing misleading figures: “Manipulating your own supporters at Xmas eh, Nigel?. It’s not real. It’s a fake… [the website has been] coded to tick up automatically.”
Posting on X, she added that the Tories had “gained thousands of new members since the leadership election”.
Reform UK also shared a video of the membership tracker being projected on to the Conservative Party headquarters in London overnight.
Zia Yusuf, party chairman, also said “history has been made today” and that the Tories’ “centuries-long stranglehold on the centre-right of British politics” has “finally been broken”.
Mr Farage hit back at Ms Badenoch, who strongly contested Reform UK’s figures. He claimed to have proof and posted a screenshot of an online register reportedly showing ‘active memberships’.
“We understand you are bitter, upset and angry that we are now the second biggest party in British politics, and that the Conservative brand is dying under your leadership. However, this not an excuse to accuse us of committing fraud,” he wrote on X.
Mr Yusuf added to the debate by appearing to goad Ms Badenoch about an audit: “We will gladly invite a Big 4 audit firm to verify our membership numbers on the basis that you do the same.”
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Nigel Farage said Reform UK is ‘now the real opposition’ after the ‘historic moment’. Pic: Reuters
The Conservative party membership figure – shared after Kemi Badenoch was announced as the new leader on 2 November – was the lowest on record and a drop from the 2022 leadership contest, when there were around 172,000 members.
In response, a Conservative Party spokesman said: “Reform has delivered a Labour Government that has cruelly cut winter fuel payments for 10 million pensioners, put the future of family farming and food security at risk, and launched a devastating raid on jobs which will leave working people paying the price.
“A vote for Reform this coming May is a vote for a Labour council – only the Conservatives can stop this.”
According to research from the House of Commons Library, there is no uniformly recognised definition of party membership and no established method or body to monitor the number of members each political group has.
Reform UK was also originally set up as a limited company, but Mr Farage said he would change the party’s structure to be member-owned in September.
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It comes after Mr Farage offered to help Lord Mandelson, the new ambassador to the US, negotiate with president-elect Donald Trump’s incoming administration.
A long-time associate of Mr Trump, he has been seen at several Republican events during and after the presidential election.
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