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Cluster Munitions

My Lords, the timeliness of this debate can hardly be questioned. Both the need for and the possibility of banning cluster munitions by international law have moved sharply up the agenda. We are on the eve of the next in a series of international meetings designed to muster support for the negotiation of a legally binding international instrument by next year. Those are the words of the communiqué issued after the most recent such meeting in Oslo in February. It would be good if this House, through today's debate, were to send the strongest possible message of backing to the conference in Lima. We should pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Elton, who has initiated today's debate, and the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, whose Private Member's Bill pointed the way forward, for the example that they are setting and the work they are doing. As the chair of the United Nations Association of United Kingdom, I declare an interest, because my organisation is taking part in that campaign. It is only fair at the outset to commend the Government's role in this matter during the past three months. Until then, like many other Governments, they still tended to fend off the pressure to ban such munitions but at Oslo they shifted the British position significantly. I pay tribute to the Minister's role in bringing about that shift. Since that meeting, by announcing their intention not to use what are called dumb cluster munitions—those which do not self-destruct—the Government have set an example for other countries which, it must be hoped, will be followed. Having gained the initiative in that way, they need to keep it, not get lost in a rearguard action to protect the use of what are, in a rather Orwellian phrase, known as smart munitions. It would be good to hear from the Minister how the Government intend to proceed. Cluster munitions are only one of the more recent in a long line of developments in military technology that made the 20th century unprecedented in world history for the multiplication of the killing power of weapons. Like many other of those developments, they can impact disastrously on civilian populations and have done so. That was seen in Lebanon last summer and previously in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Vietnam. That list is not exhaustive. As warfare changes from high-intensity clashes between the armed forces of sovereign states to what General Sir Rupert Smith has called ““war among the peoples””, the risk—indeed, the certainty—of increased civilian casualties for the use of such munitions can only continue to grow. That prospect is surely unacceptable to any country, such as ours, which is a signatoryof the Geneva Conventions. Other noble Lords,much more knowledgeable than I on matters legal, have referred to those conventions. They prescribe proportionality: attacks must balance military advantage with civilian impact. They prescribe distinction: attacks must distinguish between military and civilian objects. They prohibit indiscriminate attacks. They require feasible precautions to avoid civilian injury. It is frankly not easy to see how a number of recent uses of such munitions can be said to have met any of those criteria. Perhaps the Minister will comment on that. Appalling though the record of the 20th century was in the development of lethal technologies, it was not without some achievements in banning them. That should encourage those campaigning for a ban on cluster munitions. Poison gas was banned after the horrors of the First World War, and all forms of chemical weapons were banned at the end of the century, as were biological weapons; so, more recently, were landmines. Moreover, moves to ban categories of weapons or munitions have proved to be particularly successful when the humanitarian and legal arguments against them were matched by the utilitarian doubts of military practitioners about their usefulness on the battlefield. That is precisely what is now happening with cluster munitions. Others with much more experience than I have of the military arguments will speak later in the debate and will provide solid evidence of the narrowing of that gap. That should give the campaign even greater encouragement and credibility. It is clear, of course, that the campaign will be faced with the all too familiar ““half a loaf or no bread”” arguments. These will come in two forms. The first, as has already been noted, is the distinction between dumb and smart cluster munitions. No doubt attempts will be made to limit any ban to the former. I question whether that distinction holds water, particularly given the evidence of the dumbness even of smart munitions and the changing nature of warfare towards wars among the peoples. The second will be the quandary of whether to proceed even if some perhaps militarily very important countries refuse to sign up to any international legal instrument. I trust that we will not abandon or seek to undermine the objective of a ban on all cluster munitions without exception, even if it may prove necessary to proceed in stages, with dumb munitions being banned first. We really must not accept that smart cluster munitions are somehow okay. I am sure we will have to accept less than global membership in the early stages of any ban, as we have in the ban on landmines, but there must be plenty of naming and shaming and of compelling the recalcitrants to explain and defend their position; we must not simply allow them to get away with it as unavoidable. In our debate on Trident renewal a few months ago, I asked the Government to give us an overall picture of British policies on arms control and disarmament. What we have at the moment is a thing of shreds and patches: a little arms trade treaty here, a little nuclear non-proliferation there and a step forward now on cluster munitions. We lack an overall view and a broad strategy for achieving our objectives. What are we doing to get the whole European Union to sign up to those objectives? What are we doing to get the European Union to throw its not inconsiderable weight in international negotiations behind them? How much use are we making of our relationship with the United States, which, under the present Administration, are often the back markers on these matters? Are we and the European Union beginning to establish a dialogue in these fields with China, which looks set fair to be an awkward customer in the future? Our debate today needs to be part of a mosaic, not just a one-off episode.