The hosts announced some important breaking news.

Eamonn Holmes and Ellie Costello halted GB News for a huge breaking story (Image: GB News)

GB News presenters Eamonn Holmes and Ellie Costello halted their breakfast show to bring the breaking news that the Royal Navy is preparing for deployment as the Middle East crisis continues. Holmes cut to the channel’s home and security editor, Mark White, who was in the studio to explain the situation.

“Some breaking news we can bring you. We’ve been talking so much about the fact that there is no British naval presence in the eastern Mediterranean, or indeed in the Persian Gulf. Well, we can now confirm that the Navy is readying one of our landing ships, RFA Lyme Bay, which is currently in Gibraltar,” he said. The show cut to images of the ships as he elaborated. “You’re looking at the Bay Class ships. They are absolutely designed for the task that we believe this ship is going to be embarking on, which is contingency to evacuate some of the many thousands of British nationals who are still stranded out in the Middle East/news/world/2180182/foreign-office-update-middle-east-flights-iran-war region in the Gulf because of what’s happening there.

“They’re big ships. They are landing docks, of course, a primary purpose is to take vehicles and Royal Marines in any kind of incursion.

“That’s not what they’ll be used for, though they’ll be used instead to evacuate…some of the many thousands of people should…the British government [not be able to] to get them away on the likes of scheduled or chartered flights.

“We know that there’s still big problems with the airspace around there. Dubai Airport was struck just a couple of days ago,” he continued.

White acknowledged the ship was vulnerable but said that would be the same for any vessel going into that region. “But if we got to the point where it was asked to help out in the evacuation of citizens from a country, there would be some naval support,” he said.

GB News Mark White explained the Roayl Navy is deploying ships to the Middle East (Image: GB News)

“There’s no doubt there are other ships from other countries in the region as well so and it does have some self defence capabilities on board,” he confirmed. “In fact, we understand that a Royal Marine detachment is heading out there to Gibraltar to join the ship along with some medical personnel, because it does have a small sort of medical facility on board this vessel as well.”

The government have come under fire for their delay in responding to the conflict, which began 10 days ago when America and Israel launched strikes on Iran and White acknowledged this.

“There’s a lot of…questions that need to be answered in terms of the government’s response. Not necessarily [to] joining the war. They’ve made it very clear that they don’t want to take part in events, offensive operations to bomb Iranian missile launchers for instance, at source in Iran itself.

“But there are big issues about the level of support we’ve been able to supply to guarding allies in that region as well that could really have done with help from us,” he concluded.