Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shots, the Spectators Daily Politics Podcast. I'm Isabar Hardman,

and this is the Sunday Roundup. This week, Donald Trump calls on allies to help him keep the

Strait of Hormuz open as countries all over the world brace for the impact of

soaring energy prices. On Sky News this morning, Trevor Phillips asked Energy Secretary Ed Miliband

how the government would respond to the President's request for Allied warships to be sent to the

area. Well, it is very important that we do get the strait to reopen because the spike in oil and gas prices that

we're seeing is caused by the closure of the strait. And obviously we are talking to our allies,

including the US. The Prime Minister spoke to European leaders at the end of last week.

Ivet Cooper, the Foreign Secretary, was in Saudi Arabia talking to Gulf countries.

So it is important that we work with our partners to seek to reopen the strait,

and that is something we're intensively working on.

Well, what will we do?

Do we have the capacity to deploy drones?

I gather that we have both naval drones and aerial interceptor drones.

Would we, in principle, be ready to support deploying them in the strait?

Well, we do want to work with our allies to seek to get the strait reopened. And as you say, there are a range of things that we can do,

including autonomous mine hunting equipment.

And that's something we're obviously looking at.

I'm not going to obviously speculate on this on this program.

Well, look, you know, it's in all of our interests to get the straight reopened.

I will also say that we also need to de-escalate this crisis because the best and most conclusive

way to get the straight reopened is to get this conflict to come to an end. But absolutely it's something we're working with our partners on.

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