---

Cluster Munitions

rose to call attention to the proceedings of the Oslo Conference on Cluster Munitions on22 and 23 February; and to move for Papers. The noble Lord said: My Lords, the Oslo conference was on cluster munitions. During the few moments that it will take the Chamber to empty of those who do not share our aims and ambitions, I will read to your Lordships an eyewitness account of a raid using cluster munitions: "““As they descended, the outer casings were released allowing a number of small anti-personnel bombs to be scattered over a large area …. Some exploded on impact with the ground, some landed in the trees and were suspended by their ‘wings’ on the branches of trees, others caught on guttering, telephone wires, chimney stacks ... The public was asked to report any sighting but under no circumstance attempt to move them ... There was complete terror among the population of the town for many months””." That town was Grimsby in the United Kingdom. The raid took place in 1943—this is not a new phenomenon. Some of your Lordships will remember, as I do, the leaflets that were stuck up in the streets and handed round in the schools telling one what these things looked like and not to touch them. They will also remember, if they were my curious age at the time, how keen they were to discover one for themselves. Since then, both we and these weapons have grown up. For the sake of those reading this debate, I should say a little about what modern cluster munitions are. They can be launched by aircraft, rocket or artillery. They contain large numbers of submunitions, or bomblets, which are released over a target area within which enemy soldiers or equipment are thought to be. The submunitions carry a shaped charge of high explosive, intended to explode on impact, driving a bolt of molten metal through whatever it hits, whether it is a tank, a bus, a person or simply a house or field. The field can be the size of a football pitch if an air-launched weapon is used, carrying anything from 147 to650 submunitions. A single strike by a multi-launch rocket system would saturate all the ground between Vauxhall Bridge and the Oval with thousands of them. These submunitions are lethal when they detonate. They are more lethal when they do not, because they are apt to go off if disturbed. Our troops do not like them because, if they have to move across the ground on which they have been used, they are in fact walking into an unmarked minefield. Civilians do not like them because many of those killed or maimed after a war are civilians. There are up to 100 civilian casualties every year in Vietnam from a war that finished more than 30 years ago. Handicap International keeps a fully authenticated register of injuries from cluster weapons, which, as of last week, amounted to 11,044. The organisation accepts that only a fraction of such injuries are recorded in this way and believes the total to be nearer 30,000 civilian casualties. Your Lordships will therefore join me in warmly congratulating the Government on withdrawing two of the three types of weapons that we hold. However, there is a third still in service and ready to use—the M85 155 millimetre artillery shell containing49 submunitions, which it spreads over an area of roughly 50 metres square. I fear that the Minister holds the view, imparted it to him by his advisers, that this is an acceptable weapon because it has a self-destruct mechanism designed to destroy it 15 seconds after impact if it has not already gone off. The manufacturer, Israel Military Industries Ltd, has published claims about this weapon that the Minister may well have read. The company states: "““Our testing suggests that the M85 cluster device has hazardous dud rate of 0.06%””." It goes on to claim: "““Our M85 devices are the most environmentally friendly in the world because they leave no environmental hazards behind and only minute numbers of hazardous duds””." I have seen a video of a 50 metre-square field in the Lebanon with 20 unexploded submunitions of exactly that type in it. If only two rounds were fired at the same spot, very wastefully, that is a failure rate of over 20 per cent. The probability is nearer 40 per cent. Noble Lords do not have to trust me about that; they may trust instead the United Nations Mine Action Coordination Centre in south Lebanon. Of the use of the same munitions there, the centre says: "““We can state categorically that we are finding large numbers of unexploded M85 submunitions that have failed to detonate as designed and failed to self-destruct afterwards. In effect these submunitions have failed twice. These M85 submunitions are even more dangerous than other types because the self-destruct mechanism makes them more problematic to deal with””." Those who want to continue using those weapons say that most of these duds are ““non-hazardous””. There is no such thing as a non-hazardous dud. The bomblet is designed to explode when a metal striker hits a fulminate of mercury cap inside the weapon. In transit, a metal bar separates the two so that nothing can happen. When the vicious little thing leaves its pod, it begins to spin because of the ribbon on its back. The spin withdraws the bar arming the main detonator by flicking that bar away. The same movement causes a small mechanism to ignite a fuse made of old-fashioned gunpowder and timed to reach the same detonator 15 seconds later. If the striker has not fired the detonator, the fuse will—so long as the gunpowder has not got damp. If the bomb has armed correctly but the striker has malfunctioned and the powder trail has got damp, you have a bomb waiting for a sufficient jolt to bring the striker down on the cap and blow it up when it is kicked—for instance, by a schoolboy. It is striking that by far the largest number of casualties are boys of an inquisitive age. It may be, of course, that the bomb is blown out of a tree or is run over by a lorry. If, on the other hand, the bomb has not armed because, say, it did not spin when released, what you have is a pretty little toy with a ribbon on the end—a little yellow toy with a little beige ribbon—just the nice sort of thing to whirl round your head if you are a child, and by far the greatest number of casualties are children. That, of course, is spinning it; it is arming the machine. Then, in just 15 seconds, both the bomb and your head will go off. Such weapons are an affront to humanity and are properly the subject of United Nations interest. The arm of the UN known as the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons was set up to establish international agreement on the use of such weapons. These weapons first came before it in 2001. It has met twice a year since and has made absolutely no progress towards any limitation of the use of these weapons. The Norwegians in particular became exasperated by this lack of progress and on this, their national day—I declare an interest as the son of a Norwegian mother—I am glad to congratulate them on inviting to Oslo any countries prepared to commit to signing an international treaty to limit the use of these weapons by an agreed date. Forty-nine countries, including the United Kingdom, went to Oslo. It was fascinating and depressing to listen to the discussions and to talk to our delegation until almost the last moment when, gloriously, the United Kingdom joined 45 other countries in committing to a treaty by 2008. That was a wonderful surprise and I thank and congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Triesman, for his part in securing it, which I believe has been considerable behind the scenes. What the Government signed up to commits the participating states—I abbreviate the following—to conclude by 2008 a legally binding international instrument that will prohibit the use, production, transfer and stockpiling of cluster munitions that cause unacceptable harm to civilians. It goes on about dealing with the aftermath. I worry about the phrase ““cause unacceptable harm to civilians””, because that is a huge area for debate. I suspect that the MoD would like us to think that its B45 falls outside that definition. Can we please assure it that we do not? I have read out the manufacturer’s blurb and the United Nations’ damning contradiction of it. Can we therefore please impress on the Minister, as a matter not just of common humanity but of practical politics, the need to get rid of this weapon? We should use what diplomatic wiles we can to get there. Let me add a few words, as I think that I have inadvertently turned over two pages and have more time than I thought. I pause to commend the Government for the way in which they have committed themselves to clearing mines. On 16 April, the Secretary of State for International Development announced at col. 3WS of Commons Hansard that £6.5 million has been spent on demining in Afghanistan, halving—please note that—but not concluding the continuing rate of civilian casualties. I do not think that we can have used mines in Afghanistan. Did we not sign the Ottawa convention banning them before we invaded? Are we to take it then that this money has been spent on destroying failed British cluster munitions? If so, how many did we fire? I apologise for not giving the noble Lord notice of this question. He may want to fill out whatever he has to say here on paper. For instance, did we fire on the scale that we did in the first Gulf War, where we fired 3,516—think how many submunitions there were in those—or in Kosovo, where we fired 2,168? How much more land remains to be decontaminated and why are we surprised if the farmers of those fields do not regard us as their saviours and friends? What matters these days is not what wars you fight, but how you fight them. These weapons make enemies of the very people whom we most need as friends. As the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Bramall—Field Marshall Lord Bramall—said: "““If you liberally employ munitions that were designed for entirely different circumstances but which under modern conditions of conflict are more notable for the appalling and ""abiding legacy of death and mutilation that they provide for our own follow-up troops and even more the countless innocent civilians in the area, you would be making substantial inroads into any moral high ground and greatly weaken the chances of achieving your all-important political aim””." That says it all. We are using weapons that create more enemies than they kill. I ask your Lordships to send to the conference next week at Lima, to which I shall go, a firm message embracing whatever the noble Lord says at the end of this debate, because this is a human catastrophe that we can avoid. I beg to move for Papers.