Foreign Secretary David Cameron described Britain’s system and scale of arms exports to Israel as completely different to that of the United States, saying the sales it licences are relatively small and policed by strict procedures, Reuters reports.

Cameron was responding to a question on whether Britain would follow the US after it warned that it would withhold weapons from Israel in case of a major invasion of Rafah.

“There’s a very fundamental difference between the US situation and the UK situation,” Cameron said after a speech.

“The US is a massive state supplier of weapons to Israel … we do not have a UK Government supply of weapons to Israel, we have a number of licences, and I think our defence exports to Israel are responsible for significantly less than one per cent of their total.”