The government has suspended or refused more than 80 export licences for items that could be used by the Israel Defence Forces in Gaza, nearly three times the number announced when restrictions were introduced in September 2024.
Around 30 licences were suspended at that time but since then more than 50 new applications have been refused, the JC has learnt.
The government continues to approve licences that meet its “Strategic Export Licensing Criteria”, with all licences kept under review.
Middle East Minister Stephen Doughty said further measures introduced on September 8, when the Labour government announced sanctions against the West Bank and classified the occupation as illegal, had tightened restrictions on exports to Israel.
“We have suspended or refused over 80 licences now. The new decisions that we took on September 8 mean there's effectively now a double lock of arms exports.
“They have to be considered both in relation to the existing conditions that we set in relation to international humanitarian law violations but also now we have to consider the unlawfulness of the occupation. So that's a very significant step forward,” the minister went on, stating a more hardline stance on exports to Israel under Andy Burnham’s premiership.
Doughty said he had “personally gone through every single licence” to ensure that licensed exports were not being used in weaponry used in Gaza.
He warned that there was “a lot of misleading information around there about licensing”, noting, during a Labour Party conference session organised by the Council for Arab-British Understanding (CAABU), that some licences covered medication for cystic fibrosis and body armour for journalists and NGOs.
But he said he believed the UK “could be doing more” to restrict exports to the Jewish State.
When the initial suspensions were announced in September 2024, then foreign secretary David Lammy said they covered around 30 of the UK’s 350 arms export licences to Israel.
UK components supplied to the international F-35 fighter jet programme were almost entirely exempted, something that anti-Israel campaigners at the time criticised.
Doughty defended the continued supply of British-made components to an international programme of parts as essential to the security of Britain and its allies.
“We've stopped direct exports of F-35s to Israel. But the spares that we produce are going to the global spares report, if we were to pull those that would potentially have very serious implications to the whole programme. It's crucial to our security and that of our allies. It's been extensively litigated, including in the courts,” he said.
But Emily Thornberry, chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, suggested that the UK could continue supplying the programme while stipulating that British parts must not be used in aircraft in Israel.
“I don't think this is a matter of legality, it's a question of politics,” the former shadow foreign secretary said during the CAABU panel.
Thornberry called for boxes of components sent to the US to be marked with instructions barring their use in aircraft sent to Israel.
“What you don't want to do is to get in the way of F-35s being built, especially since we rely on F-35s being built,” Thornberry said.
“What we could do is the same as the Dutch have done, which is they provide parts of the F-35s, and what you have to do is send the parts off to America, and America use those parts to build the F-35.
“What the Dutch have done is they have put them in boxes, which they've written ‘not to be used in Israel’. That is what we should do.
“We should just say, well, of course we will provide the parts that will be put into this chain, but they are not to be used on any plane that is being sent to Israel.
“There's been a legal challenge in Holland as well. It is a red herring. It is a political decision, and I personally think we should do that,” she went on.
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