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Conventional Weapons

My Lords, the more I thought about this debate and the more work I did for it, the more I felt that in summing up I would discover that everything that should have been said probably had been said. Often when people say that, there is a degree of sadness in their voice, but that is not the case this time because everything has been said better than I could possibly have said it. The description given by the noble Lord, Lord Elton, of the rather Byzantine and realpolitik nature of the negotiations that are currently going on seems to anyone who has done any negotiating, at however junior a level, so accurate that it cannot be describing anything other than what is happening. I have seldom heard such a successful hatchet job on an argument than that executed by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, on the issue of utility. We are talking about a weapon which is directly counter-productive for those who might use it: you cannot move forward because you have laid your own minefield that will blow bits off your own soldiers. Why on earth would we even consider using a weapon such as that? The noble Lord referred to a weapon designed for static defensive posture, whereby you would be concerned only with stopping someone coming towards you or making them do it so slowly that you could counter-strike with weapons, possibly at a distance. There is logic there. I hope that the noble Lord will not tell us that there is some plan to reinvent the Cold War with the threat of mass attack by army or any other troop movement. However, if the type of warfare that we are involved in now is one in which we must move forward, chase down and counter-attack our opponents, such as in Afghanistan, the Taliban would probably want us to use this weapon. If we inflicted some casualties but mainly missed, the Taliban would have a safe haven to which they could withdraw. If we fired in a direct line, they would have a slight advantage in that they would be able to get away from us. Surely there can be no grounds for the use of this weapon in military terms. The Americans have said no to the doctrine of overwhelming strike or overwhelming incapacity, as the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, said. Surely there can be no military argument. If the military argument does not exist, why are we waiting for the rest of the argument? It makes agricultural ground unusable until it is properly cleared using either intensive manpower or technical means—I am not an expert—but the fact that it is difficult, takes time and costs money puts an economic damper on the areas we go into, which is not our aim in most of the places we are operating in. Having been a disability spokesman for many years, I did not realise how well that brief would prepare me to understand the effects of these weapons. It has been difficult enough in this country, which probably has the most advanced disability legislation, to ensure an infrastructure that helps those who are movement or sight impaired. In a developing country or one that is recovering from warfare, we should consider the economic damper we are imposing on high numbers of people who are wheelchair-bound, or who have lost an upper limb, sight or hearing. I am talking not just about the human effect; their economic capacity will be dramatically reduced, far more so than in a technologically advanced society where there are metalled roads. What level of technical support is required to enable people in those terrains to move around if they have lost a limb, let alone two? Think of the extra cost that we are piling on to huge sections of these societies. It is almost unimaginable that we should carry on doing this. As noble Lords have said, the Government have moved a long way. I hope that they will move further, and the Minister can tell us about their plans and the guidance they will give. We have lots of these weapons in the stockpile but presumably the military will not be required to use them if they are militarily inappropriate. I take that as a given, although a confirmation would not hurt. To make sure that we have no such weapons, and, I hope, will not be producing them for people, where do we go from here? Will the Government give another undertaking to place a ban on these weapons because we cannot find a use for them and because they are against our objectives? I did a small calculation. If 4 million weapons have been dropped on Lebanon and there is a 5 per cent failure rate, according to my maths, 200,000 weapons are lying across that comparatively small area of land. If we drop them in an area that has softer ground and more trees, there will be more. It is impossible for smart weapons to function fully for the simple reason of the stress such devices go through in delivery. They are fired from a large piece of artillery or dropped from a plane, so there will be damage. We are still digging up the occasional live bomb from World War II. Weapons have always failed. Seventeenth century mortar shells landed on battlefields and did not go off, which we read from accounts of military history. I believe that a bomb went through this Chamber in World War II and did not go off.