David Lammy told MPs on Monday that one British national has been injured as a result of Iranian strikes on Israel.
Without giving further details as to when they were injured – and without naming the individual – Lammy said the government had “reached out to offer consular support”.
Updating Parliament following this weekend’s strikes by the US on Iranian nuclear facilities in Isfahan, Fordow and Natanz, the foreign secretary also confirmed that an RAF plane containing 63 British citizens had jetted off from Ben Gurion airport to Cyprus, “from where they will be brought home this evening”.
The JC understands that Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis and former Labour MP Dame Louise Ellman were among those evacuated.
“Further such flights will take place in the next couple of days, security allowing”, Lammy added.
The Foreign Office has been criticised, including by a former Labour minister, for the response to Brits stranded in Israel as a result of the conflict with Iran.
Shadow Foreign Secretary Dame Priti Patel, who did “note the progress” in the announcement of flights, asked Lammy: “Why does it seem like the US and other European countries were ahead of us in their operational planning to bring back their citizens?”
Lammy told MPs that 4,000 Brits had registered with the Foreign Office and that he expected that just over 1,000 would take up the offer of repatriation back to the UK.
Since the strikes by the US in the early hours of Sunday morning, ministers have struggled to articulate whether they thought Donald Trump’s decision to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities were right, but have been keen to emphasise the UK’s lack of involvement in them.
“Britain was not involved in these strikes… But Britain has long had concerns about Iran’s nuclear programme. Iran can never have a nuclear weapon. The US has now taken action to alleviate that threat. A nuclear armed Iran would endanger the immediate region”, Lammy told MPs.
He went on to say that the government did not have a full picture of quite how damaging the attacks were to Iran’s nuclear ambitions: “We don’t yet know precisely how much the US strikes have set back Iran’s nuclear programme.”
On Monday morning, Armed Forces Minister Luke Pollard was asked by broadcaster Nick Ferrari on LBC seven times whether the government backed the US strikes, which he struggled to give a clear answer to.
Later on, a Downing Street spokesperson told reporters that the government was “very much of the view that we don't pretend that the prevention of Iran getting nuclear weapons isn't a good thing for this country.”
However, he then argued in favour of a non-military outcome: “We see the best route out of this now as a diplomatic solution, and that involves Iran getting back round the table, as the US has presented them with the option to do so.”
This point was echoed by Lammy in the Commons, who told Iran to “take the off-ramp and negotiate with the US seriously and immediately. The alternative is an even more destructive and far-reaching conflict.”
Veteran Conservative MP Sir Julian Lewis challenged the government to articulate a view on whether they thought the action by the US was legal.
“How many times must a terrorist-funding, fanatical regime threaten to wipe another country off the face of the earth, before a government, advised by Lord Hermer of Chagos [said in reference to the agreement between the UK and Mauritius over the future of the Chagos Islands] acknowledges that military action to delay and degrade its nuclear weapons programme is both ethically and legally justifiable”, teased the MP for New Forest East, who is Jewish.
It has been reported that Hermer, the attorney general, has advised against British involvement in US strikes for fear they may be illegal.
By a longstanding convention, the contents of the legal advice by the attorney general to the government is not usually made public. Lammy responded by saying that he did not “recognise the caricature that I’ve heard”.
Responding to the foreign secretary’s announcement, the Liberal Democrats were far more critical of both Trump and Israel’s prime minister.
“Trump and Netanyahu’s unilateral actions have increased uncertainty and the risk of a full-scale regional war”, the party’s foreign affairs spokesperson Calum Miller told MPs.
He added: “Their belief that might is right both further erodes the rule-based international order and undermines the prospect of containing Iran and other rogue states in the long term. This is not in the UK’s interests.”
