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Cluster Munitions

My Lords, I add my thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Elton, for initiating the debate and for his part in the campaign against these dreadful weapons; I was with him in Oslo. I also thank Landmine Action and Norwegian People’s Aid, which have both been extremely active in providing information and campaigning against these weapons. Pressure clearly works as far as the Government are concerned. I welcome the statement of the Secretary of State, Des Browne—surely encouraged by my noble friend on the Front Bench—that the Government should move on this. If pressure works, then more pressure will clearly go on working, which is why we are here today. We know the case against cluster bombs and munitions. It is similar to the case against anti-personnel landmines: they are a danger to innocent civilians months and years after the conflict. Children playing, farmers working, people collecting firewood, tending livestock or fetching water: all these most innocent of activities are liable to lead to a loss of limb or life in areas where these weapons are being used. The second argument is that they are relatively indiscriminate weapons when used during a conflict. These days, there are seldom targets with no civilians around. I have seen films, shown at Oslo, where civilians in Serbian streets and towns were maimedas a result of cluster bomblets descending uponthem. We must help to ensure that existing cluster bomblets are cleared. To do that, we must know more about where they have landed. At the Oslo conference, we learnt that in Serbia, where NATO had used cluster bombs, it had not provided the Serbian clearance teams with the co-ordinates of where they had been targeted. Similarly, the Lebanese clearance teams have not been able to obtain the co-ordinates of the Israeli cluster munitions used in the recent conflict in Lebanon. All we can do is ask the Government to press Israel to provide this information on humanitarian grounds. I urge my noble friend to ensure that this happens, a simple step which can be taken. A further tragedy of the recent Lebanon conflict is that both sides used these weapons. Their use by Hezbollah is the first time that a non-governmental organisation has deployed them. All of this strengthens the case for banning them. On Serbia, I recently asked a question in the House and my noble friend Lady Amos wrote to me with further information on 15 May: "““I can confirm that NATO is coordinating Alliance data from Operation Allied Force 1999 and will, in due course, hand over this information to the Government of Serbia. You will appreciate that, because the operation was a NATO campaign, the coordination of this data is a complex process and has yet to be completed. But I can confirm that UK data has been collated by the Ministry of Defence and has been passed to NATO””." We are talking about 1999, and this is 2007. NATO is supposed to be a modern, effective organisation, and our motives in the war in Serbia were surely humanitarian. In Oslo, I talked to a man who had lost both legs trying to clear bombs in Serbia, and he emphasised the difficulties. I cannot for the life of me see why NATO cannot get a move on rather than waiting eight years before it is almost ready to provide information that was surely available the moment the cluster bombs were launched. I shall turn briefly to the argument about smart and dumb cluster munitions, which has already been mentioned, and whether smart bombs are smart enough. It is, of course, a welcome change on the part of the UK Government, but it still means that M85 sub-munitions will be used. The Government have given us various figures—I am not sure which are the authoritative figures—but my right honourable friend Adam Ingram in answer to Questions between 2003 and 2006 mentioned a maximum failure rate of 2 per cent, a failure rate of 1 per cent and a 95 per cent success rate with M85s. I am not sure what a 95 per cent success rate means, unless it means that 5 per cent of them failed. Given the number that has been used in, say, the Lebanon, that represents a large number of people. The tests that have been used to establish the failure rates are undertaken in ideal conditions. They do not take account of different ground surfaces, soft ground or the effect of buildings or trees. We do not yet have the accurate information to allow us to say that smart weapons are smart enough, and, as has already been said, if the self-destruct mechanism does not work, it poses an even greater danger to the brave individuals putting their lives at risk to clear these weapons. They sometimes suffer appalling injuries or die. I have been invited to visit the Lebanon within the next few weeks to see the clearance work on the ground and the effect of the use of such weapons, and I am sorry that I was not able to go before this debate. My last point is about whether there is any real military justification for these weapons. I am not an expert; I am a lay person. However, I have talked to a lot of people who are experts, some of whom are Members of this House. I think the case for having these weapons is pretty weak. It may have beenvalid years ago when we were faced with the prospect of large Soviet armies with thousands of men concentrated in small areas, but that is not the nature of the conflict that we now face. I would like better military justification before the Government go ahead and say that smart bombs will continue to be used. I shall conclude with four brief points. First, we need international agreement. Even if the British Government do what we ask them to do, other countries are still using these weapons, so an international agreement is crucial and I hope that significant progress will be made at the forthcoming conference in Peru. Secondly, we need to ensure that, in all areas where cluster munitions and cluster bombs are being used, proper information is provided about the co-ordinates. Thirdly, all possible help must be given to those countries to enable the weapons to be cleared. Finally, we still need to admit that smart weapons are dangerously dumb.