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Conventional Weapons

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Elton, on bringing this subject to your Lordships' House for a second time. It deserves a second hearing. I congratulate, too, the Government on a slightly crabwise but none the less forward movement on cluster munitions over the past year or so. I hope to show that with only a little further movement the Government could put themselves in a position in which they felt genuinely comfortable and could play a leadership role on an issue of great public and humanitarian concern. We have alas to accept that there will continue to be conflicts in the years ahead—often unjustified, often preventable, always nasty. That is a depressing but realistic conclusion. But even recognising that, we can and must take action to mitigate the worst consequences of conflict, and that means in particular the effect of conflict on innocent civilians and especially on women and children. That is why action has been taken against landmines—I join the noble Lord, Lord Elton, in congratulating Landmine Action on the work that it has done and continues to do—and that is why action is needed now to ban cluster munitions, weapons which, as the noble Lord explained, are lethal, horrible and do untold damage to innocent people in the months and years after conflicts have gone and sometimes after the original purpose of that conflict has been forgotten. As I say, I welcome the Government’s move recently towards a ban on cluster munitions. I welcome the decision to work for a ban on so-called dumb munitions and to withdraw the United Kingdom's stocks with immediate effect. I welcome the Government's commitment to the Oslo process and I understand their desire to work in parallel through the Convention on Conventional Weapons to engage those countries whose position is less forward than our own. But despite the stance taken by the Government, and despite, as I understand it—perhaps the Minister can confirm this—the strong position taken by the European Union at the meeting in Geneva, the outcome was weak and disappointing. It is clear that working through the CCW is going to be, at the very best, a long process. The Oslo process therefore remains the key. What the whole issue now requires is firm and moral leadership, and the prospect of such leadership from the United Kingdom seems tantalisingly close. The Prime Minister said in his Mansion House speech, as the noble Lord, Lord Elton, said, that he would work towards, "““a ban on the use, production, transfer and stockpiling of those cluster munitions which cause unacceptable harm to civilians””," echoing the words of the UN Secretary-General. But the inescapable truth is that all cluster bombs cause unacceptable harm to civilians regardless of whether they are dumb, not dumb, smart or not very smart. Surely these are semantic and ignoble distinctions to make. All cluster bombs or bomblets that do not explode may kill or maim innocent people, and very many of them do. I found the figures which the noble Lord mentioned horrific. Even if only 2 per cent—and that is way below the estimates—of the bomblets used in Lebanon in 2006 did not explode, that means that there are tens of thousands of bomblets waiting to trap innocence people. The only possible justification for accepting that those should continue is if we believe that the military use of these weapons is so overwhelmingly important that it outweighs the unquestioned humanitarian cost. I very much look forward to hearing the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, speak on that point. I find that case very hard to believe and I hope that the Minister will not seek to advance that argument when he responds to the debate. As I said, there is a need for moral leadership here. The Foreign Secretary, when Secretary of State at Defra, showed such leadership in putting forward the draft Climate Change Bill, which I strongly support and which I look forward to debating in the House later this month. Will the Minister use his undoubted expertise and influence to persuade the Foreign Secretary that a decision now to work for a legally binding instrument to ban all cluster munitions and to withdraw our stockpiles of all cluster munitions with immediate effect would be a similar act of statesmanship, which would be strongly welcomed by very many people in this country and abroad and would have a real chance of saving many innocent lives in the years ahead?