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Cluster Munitions

My Lords, I join other noble Lords in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Elton, on having secured this timely debate. I also congratulate the Government on the action that they have taken so far. I want to take part in this debate, not because I have any technical or expert knowledge of the weaponry, but simply because of the lessons that I learnt some years ago when I had the privilege of preceding the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, as president of UNICEF UK. Those were the years in which the world had almost accepted the inevitability of death and injury for adults and, particularly, children who had the misfortune to live in or on the perimeter of battle zones around the world. Even long after those wars were over, abandoned minefields were allowed to remain as though nothing could or should be done about them. The campaigns against landmines culminated in the 1997 treaty, which sought to ban, or at least to control, them. The treaty now has the backing of no fewer than 153 countries. If that treaty was desirable, as indeed it was, it is clear that similar action against cluster bombs is even more necessary. It is obviously so for at least two reasons. First, conventional landmines can at least plausibly be described as defensive weapons when laid out in carefully located ““fields”” to prevent an enemy attack from that direction. Secondly, because of their purpose, landmines are much more easily located, avoided and removed. On the other hand, cluster bombs are exactly the opposite. They are designed for use in attacks, and although intended for the equivalent of military convoys, they can be and are scattered at random over wide and unspecified areas. Each bomb then scatters its own shower of what are usually hundreds of bomblets in an even more random fashion. As we have heard, one bomb can scatter widely enough to cover area equivalent to two, three or even four football pitches. The case for eliminating these horrific weapons really makes itself—to such an extent that our own Government have at last accepted it. They are the first Government to have done so. I warmly congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, on the considerable part he has played in bringing this about with his Private Member’s Bill and much more since then. Last week I was in Scotland, helping to award this year’s St Andrews University environmental prize. A fellow trustee, Anita McNaught, is a young freelance journalist who recently went to south Lebanon to make a programme about cluster munitions for CNN. The DVD of her interviews with disposal experts and people injured by these lethal weapons was all too explicit. The life of a young motor mechanic has been ruined after, among other injuries, half of his hand was blown off so that he can no longer continue in any form of work. There is an account of a young woman whose father brought a munition into their house. She picked it up, whereupon it detonated and injured three other members of the family in the same room. Somehow they survived and there is some hope, but one really wonders about the futures they face. Apparently something like a quarter of all the agricultural land is out of production, but still of course producing victims in the form of children for all the reasons outlined by the noble Lord, Lord Elton, and others. Thankfully, a huge international co-operative operation is under way, which hopes to make the land safe by the end of this year. We must hope that the effort succeeds. Indeed, the only good thing I could find in the whole scene in southern Lebanon is that some young Lebanese women, unable to find employment elsewhere, have become trained disposal experts. Apparently it is quite a well-paid job, and one hopes that it may prove useful for any future educative programme the country may hope to run, both for itself and perhaps for other countries. How the bombing in Lebanon could have been anything other than a quite cynical operation on the part of Israel—the raids taking place as they did during the final week of the peace negotiations—really is hard to believe. But the fact is that it didtake place, and of course it is not just Israel. Sadly, many countries have used cluster munitions when they felt that it would be to their advantage against the enemy. All this illustrates the importance of facing up to the whole situation and banning these weapons once and for all. We have heard the good news that earlier this year the UK Government committed themselves at the Oslo conference, "““to complete by 2008 a legally binding international instrument to ban cluster bombs””." Her Majesty’s Government have already banned two of their three cluster munitions, but apparently not the M85. I could not put the case against the position more clearly than it has been put by Handicap International, which has stated that the Government have retained the M85, a rocket-launched submunition, on the grounds that it is smart due to its self-destruct device. It is manufactured by IMI, an Israeli company, which claims that it has a 0.06 ““hazardous dud rate””. Handicap International works in Lebanon clearing mines and munitions in the region and can testify that this claim is dangerous nonsense. Israeli forces used the M85 in huge numbers just before withdrawing from Lebanon. Failure rates were huge and wide areas have been left with deadly unexploded submunitions. This munition is the ““exception”” which the UK Government currently plan to retain in their armoury on the basis that it is smart. I want to quote what was said to me by Rae McGrath of Handicap International. He said: "““I will gladly take the Minister to Lebanon to show him just how smart it is””." If the Minister has any remaining doubts at all about the proper way forward, I hope very much that he will indeed take up that offer. It is for these reasons that I join the noble Lord, Lord Elton and others, many of whom have spoken passionately about this issue, in pressing the Government to go as far as they possibly can—in other words, the whole way. They must take the positive position they adopted in Oslo to the Lima meeting next week and make a clear commitment to an across-the-board ban on the production, transfer or use of all cluster munitions, without any exception in favour of so-called smart versions.