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Cluster Munitions (Prohibitions) Bill [HL]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure and a privilege to follow the noble Lords, Lord Elton and Lord Dubs, whose contributions to this day have already been praised, not just today but in the Queen’s Speech. It has been a privilege to work with them and to contribute perhaps a slightly different slant, as I am a former practitioner who was converted from protagonist to antagonist or proponent to opponent—whichever is the right terminology. Previously, I reminded the House that these weapons were designed for a completely different type of war situation than that which we currently face. They were specifically designed to counter a mass attack by the Warsaw Pact when we were not only outnumbered but outweaponed. Therefore, a weapon which could deliver a mass effect at a fairly short price was to be welcomed. We welcomed not only the fact that the missiles could be fired by shells, but particularly the top-attack weapon, which was able to take the soft engine plates of tanks, which were the most vulnerable parts, quite apart from what was meant to be an airfield attack weapon. I favoured those weapons because, like most of my military generation, I spent a long time in Germany preparing and training for what, thankfully, never happened. However, in my last appointment there I was commander of the 3rd Armoured Division, which was the first division to be given a counterattack role during the whole time that we had been in Germany since the war. This was because we had a new tactic which used ground in a different way. Rather than just sitting and defending it nationally, you used it to attack. When I was forced to try to plan quick shock action, I found that it was inhibited by what we had put on the ground, particularly the cluster munitions—no one knew where they had gone—because they could rapidly destroy any momentum that we wanted to develop. It therefore seemed to me that in that sort of tactic, before the end of the Cold War, cluster munitions were of limited military use if we wanted to both attack and defend. Then the first Gulf War came. The noble Lord, Lord Elton, mentioned the problems of movement on the right flank, but there was also a complete failure to attack Iraqi airfields. Therefore, cluster munitions proved to be militarily inefficient. Indeed, the Iraqis knew that and used to put blobs of sand on the runway, which we took photographs of and assumed that they represented craters from cluster munitions. They did not. The Iraqis had worked out the pattern; the things had bounced off the runway and the Iraqis confused us. After retiring from the Army, when I joined a private security firm involved in post-conflict reconstruction—particularly demining—I came across first-hand the problem of the relics left for future generations by the vast numbers of munitions which lay around in various countries. We came up with the slogan: "there is no development without demining". Demining actually meant clearing away all the detritus of the battlefield. The weapons that were most difficult and caused the most residual problems were the small cluster munitions, because no one knew where they were and there was a huge failure rate. As the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, mentioned, it takes time to clear these things, because you have to go over the ground with a piece of wire to poke and find individual munitions, or you use dogs. There is no mechanical way of clearing them. Therefore, our generation, which employed these things, has stored up a potential threat to life and limb for many innocent people in future generations, and it seems that it is our duty not only to ban their further use but to make every possible effort to clear up the mess that has been created in all the countries that have already been mentioned. I fully respect the view expressed by the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, that there is a need to look after the defensive or other requirements of the Armed Forces, but we are now involved in a rather different type of warfare. These weapons cannot possibly be used in asymmetric warfare or war among the people. When I went to Afghanistan last year, I made a point of asking the military not whether they would have used the M85, which is a shell and a gun, but whether they would have used the M73, which is a helicopter-fired weapon. They said, "On no account. There is no situation that we have come across where this would have been a useful weapon. We are not faced with that sort of mass, and of course we want to use the ground afterwards, as do the Afghan people". Therefore, the military cannot see a use for these weapons in that sort of conflict, and I should have thought that that was a voice worth listening to. The noble Baroness, Lady Northover, quoted an earlier speech of mine. In 2007, a new counterinsurgency manual was published in America, and it is most important because it marks a total change in the American way of waging war. Instead of using overwhelming force, it looks at the needs of the people first. A very important excerpt from this manual endorses the line that I took in 2007: ""The fact or perception of civilian deaths at the hands of their nominal protectors can change popular attitudes from neutrality to anger and active opposition. Civilian deaths create an extended family of enemies—new insurgent recruits or informants—and erode support for the host nation. Counterinsurgents must therefore be strategic in applying force and sensitive to its second-order political and military effects"." To my mind, nothing could be more telling than that last sentence, and I believe that it should be on the desk of anyone, political or military, who is responsible for planning any involvement in counterinsurgency operations. Therefore, I welcome the Bill. I realise that there may be a certain amount of tidying up to do but it is nothing more than that and, like the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, I hope that it gets through. I am concerned about protecting the legal position of the military involved in any operation fighting alongside people who may not, for example, have signed up to the convention. I am interested to see that Clause 9 has two separate parts which refer to operation and co-operation. I do not know many military operations that do not involve co-operation with someone else and I hope that this will not be a problem. I particularly welcome the fact that we are being taken through the Bill by the noble Baroness the Minister, who has a track record on this issue, and I look forward to playing my part in seeing the legislation through to a speedy conclusion.