COME clean about British arms to Israel, more than 60 parliamentarians have told the government after an illicit shipment of weaponry was seized by authorities in Belgium.

The seizure included fire control systems and spare parts for military aircraft on their way to Israel, which is continuing its aggressions in Gaza and Lebanon.

The MPs, led by Labour’s Steve Witherden, wrote to Business Secretary Peter Kyle demanding to know when the government had  “first become aware that UK-origin arms were being illegally transshipped to Israel via Belgium.”

The MPs wrote that Belgium had been tipped off about the illicit shipment by campaign groups including Declassified UK and the Palestinian Youth Movement in March this year.

They also want Mr Kyle to reveal if there have been discussions since with “the Belgian authorities, the arms manufacturers involved and the cargo carriers responsible for transporting the goods and, if so, when and at what level.”

The arms companies concerned, the MPs urge, should be subject to “an Export Control Joint Unit compliance visit, in order to assess whether they are fully complying with arms export regulations and, where appropriate, to restrict or suspend licences, particularly open licences which require a high level of trust and compliance.”

They further want the government to determine whether major cargo companies, including UPS and Challenge Airlines, are abiding by arms export restrictions and “where they are not, to exclude them from public procurement processes.”

The revelation of the seizure will embarrass the Labour government, which claims to have suspended all arms export licences to Israel which could be used in its continuing genocide, although it has refused to ban all arms sales completely.

MPs signing Mr Witherden’s letter are drawn from Labour, the Scottish National Party, the Liberal Democrats, the Greens, the Independent Alliance and Your Party. Former Tory Party chairwoman Baroness Sayeeda Warsi also signed.

Mr Witherden, MP for Montgomeryshire, said: “I’ve written to the Secretary of State for Business & Trade, backed by 60 colleagues, demanding answers after Belgian authorities seized two shipments of UK military equipment bound for Israel in March. 

“We need an arms embargo on Israel and full transparency on export controls.”

There was no immediate response from Mr Kyle or his department.