Government thinks British arms exported to Israel not at risk of being used in serious breach of humanitarian law, MPs told

Dan Sabbagh

Victoria Prentis, the attorney general, told the Commons that Britain continues to view its arms sales to Israel as legal a day after US president Joe Biden warned he would pause the delivery of bombs because they had been previously used to kill Palestinian civilians.

During questions in the Commons, the government’s chief law officer was pressed on the legal position governing the UK’s arms sales, which the law says should be halted if there is a “clear risk” they could be used by the buyer to commit war crimes, in breach of international humanitarian law (IHL).

Responding to Brendan O’Hara of the SNP during questions, Prentis said while she couldn’t share specific legal advice, she could state the current position taken by Lord Cameron, the foreign secretary:

I can say that the foreign secretary has reviewed the most recent advice from the IHL cell, and that has informed his decision that there isn’t a clear risk that the items exported from the UK might be used to commit or to facilitate a serious violation of IHL. That leaves our position on export licences unchanged, but that position is kept under review.

Overnight Biden confirmed the US had paused the delivery of 3,500 2,000lb and 500lb bombs in response to Israel’s threat to attack Rafah, in southern Gaza, where around 1 million people are sheltering and explained he did not support an attack on the city.

“Civilians have been killed in Gaza as a consequence of those bombs and other ways in which they [Israel] go after population centres,” Biden said, a rare acknowledgment of the humanitarian impact of the supply of such weapons.

Britain is a relatively modest arms supplier to Gaza, supplying £130m worth of arms during the last five years according to official data, although that does not include any supplies since Hamas’s attack on Israel on 7 October. The US has transferred at least $23bn in arms since that date.

The size of the waiting list for routine hospital treatment in England was unchanged in March, following five consecutive monthly falls, PA Media reports. PA says:

An estimated 7.54 million treatments were waiting to be carried out at the end of March, relating to 6.29 million patients, the same numbers as in February, NHS England said.

The list hit a record high in September 2023 with 7.77 million treatments and 6.50 million patients.

The figures also show that in March there were were still 50,000 people waiting more than 65 weeks for a treatment, even though NHS England was supposed to eliminate waits of more than 65 weeks by March 2024.

Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary, said:

The Conservatives have failed to meet their pledge to end waits of more than 65 weeks and waiting lists are not falling. Rishi Sunak has broken every pledge he’s ever made on the NHS, causing patients to wait for months in pain and discomfort as a result. The crisis in the NHS will only get worse if the Conservatives are given another 5 years.

Ben Houchen, who was the Conservative to win a metro mayor electoral contest last week (he was re-elected as Tees Valley mayor), has said that the route to Tory electoral recovery is “getting narrower by the day”.

In an interview with BBC Radio Tees, he said:

Things don’t look great for the Conservative Party at the moment … There is still a way through but that way through is getting narrower by the day.

Asked if Rishi Sunak was to blame for the party’s problems, Houchen replied:

Ultimately it always rests on the shoulders of the leader, all responsibility goes back to the top, it’s the same in my job as well. Ultimately, you’re the one responsible for it.

But there are lots of people who are involved in the problems with the Conservative party. It’s a bit of chaos at the minute, right, isn’t it?

There’s lots of people fighting with each other in the Conservative party, there are defections going on and ultimately the public do not vote for parties who are not united and are not presenting a united front and also aren’t talking to the public.

If they’re fighting with each other like rats in a sack instead of saying to the public ‘this is what we’re going to do for you’, that doesn’t win elections.

Obviously, it ultimately lies with Rishi but there are lots of people that need to get their act together, stop messing about and start talking to the public about what they can offer them, rather than just fighting with each other.

University vice-chancellors need to “show leadership” in response to student protests over Israel’s military action in Gaza, Gillian Keegan, the education secretary has said. Eleni Courea has the story.

Nadhim Zahawi, a former chancellor under Boris Johnson, has become the latest Conservative MP to announce he will not be standing again at the general election, Ben Quinn reports.

Good morning. Defections are supposed to damage the party losing the defector, not the one welcoming them, but almost 24 hours after Natalie Elphicke’s ultra-surprise conversion to the Labour cause, at PMQs yesterday, it is starting to look as thought this might cause more bother for Keir Starmer than for Rishi Sunak. As the Guardian reports, the decision to admit the Boris Johnson-supporting rightwinger has gone down badly with Starmer’s MPs, and presumably with Labour members more widely.

Elphicke’s move is widely seen at Westminster as unprincipled, and it is assumed that her support for her new party is not sincere. For once, the Daily Express has a splash headline that many Labour MPs probably agree with.

The defection is also a bonus for other progressive parties competing with Labour. The National in Scotland summarises the SNP’s view.

Anneliese Dodds, the Labour chair, was doing an interview round this morning and she had the awkward job of defending the decision to admit Elphicke. One of the most tricky moments came when she was asked to explain why Elphicke is now a member of the parliamentary Labour party, but Diane Abbott isn’t. Dodds did not have a particularly convincing answer.

Abbott, of course, was suspended more than a year ago after writing a letter to the Observer that suggested that antisemitism was not as serious as racism directed towards black people. Abbott has apologised, but the disciplinary inquiry into what she said is still going on, there is no sign of when it might end, and Abbott has concluded that that she is not being treated fairly.

In an interview on the Today programme, Amol Rajan asked why Elphicke was in the PLP but not Abbott. He said:

It’s taking a hell of a long time in the case of Diane Abbott, isn’t it [to resolve the inquiry]. So Diane Abbott – here’s someone who has given her adult life to your party. She was elected in 1987 as the first black woman MP, who has apologised unreservedly unreservedly for remarks she she made last April, but who it seems can’t be a Labour MP while Ms Elphicke can. Are you sure you’ve got your priorities straight?

And Dodds replied:

I have enormous respect for Diane Abbott and she was an absolute trailblazer. We set out those proposals for a new Race Equality Act some weeks ago and I was really privileged to be able to discuss them with her.

But we have got a process [for investigating complaints], there is an independent one that does operate without fear or favour, that is quite right. And it’s not one that’s subject to political influence, nor indeed should it be.

Asked why the inquiry into Abbott was taking so long, when the party had been “very quick” to admit Elphicke, Dodds said she could not go into details of the complaints process. “That wouldn’t be appropriate,” she said.

Dodds made a similar point about the importance of Labour having an independent process for dealing with complaints when Rajan asked why Elphicke was in the party but not Jamie Driscoll, the former North of Tyne mayor who quit Labour after the party banned him from standing to be North East mayor because he had shared a stage at an arts festival with the leftwing film director Ken Loach.

Referring to Elphicke, and one of her previous comments about the England footballer Marcus Rashford and his campaign for free school meals, Rajan said:

So it’s okay to venerate Boris Johnson, denigrate Marcus Rashford, which is what Natalie Elphcike has done, but not to share a stage with Ken Loach if you want to be a leading light in the modern Labour party. Is that right?

Dodds replied:

My understanding is that Natalie, I think, rightly apologised for those unacceptable comments about Marcus Rashford. But I would say it’s very important that every political party has a robust mechanism for dealing with complaints. We have applied that without fear or favour.

In a separate interview on BBC Breakfast Dodds dismissed claims that Elphicke’s previous comments showed she did not belong in the Labour party, saying “people can change their minds”. She told the programme:

I can see that in [Elphicke’s] statement that what she set out is absolutely fundamental to the Labour party … making sure that we have a country that is secure, making sure that we’re delivering on those issues of security, and also making sure we’re delivering on housing as well.

People can change their minds and, as I said before, Natalie Elphicke is not the first Conservative MP to take this decision.

Here is the agenda for the day.

9am: Rishi Sunak and Gillian Keegan, the education secretary, meet university vice-chancellors in Downing Street to discuss protecting Jewish students.

9.30am: NHS England publishes its monthly waiting time figures.

11am: David Cameron, the foreign secretary, gives a speech at the National Cyber Security Centre. At Patrick Wintour reports, he will “warn that the west is not learning the lesson of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, that authoritarian adversaries will only be spurred on if the west shows hesitation or caution”.

11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.

Noon: John Swinney takes first minister’s questions at Holyrood for the first time as FM.

If you want to contact me, do use the “send us a message” feature. You’ll see it just below the byline – on the left of the screen, if you are reading on a laptop or a desktop. This is for people who want to message me directly. I find it very useful when people message to point out errors (even typos – no mistake is too small to correct). Often I find your questions very interesting, too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either in the comments below the line; privately (if you leave an email address and that seems more appropriate); or in the main blog, if I think it is a topic of wide interest.