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Cluster Munitions (Prohibitions) Bill [HL]

My Lords, like many others in the House, I welcome the Bill and I thank the Minister for her Written Statement yesterday and for taking us through the Bill so clearly today. I also congratulate civil society and Members of both this House and the other place for keeping up pressure on this Government and others to ensure that we could receive the Bill. I look forward to its smooth passage through both Houses and hope that it is passed before the general election. Cluster bombs are hell from above. The initial bomb is about two feet long, but when it explodes a very large number of bomblets are released. These bomblets are time-delayed and sometimes do not explode for a year or two. Deployed bomblets kill and maim children, livestock and women, although these are not what the bombs are aimed at initially. I have seen what happened in Lebanon and I have read about Afghanistan, Iraq and Georgia. Children and women are maimed and the land cannot be used for a long time. This is terrible for a society, and it normally affects the poor. I would like to see pressure put on the main countries that continue to wish to use cluster bombs, such as Israel, and on the way it uses them on the countries around it. Others are Russia, the United States of America, China, India and Pakistan. In June we had the G20 conference, while in July there was a meeting of G8 Foreign Ministers in Trieste. I ask the Government to start working with the Sherpas for both the G20 and G8 so that this issue can be put on the agenda and not put to the side. Then we can start working with these countries to ensure that cluster bombs are eliminated. We have only to look at what they do and will continue to do to people long after this legislation has been passed. Furthermore, I am not sure whether it is possible, but I would like to see if we could speak to the Treasury. We have managed to bail out a number of financial institutions over the past year, including banks. They know well some of the people who invest in the relevant companies, and that is our money being invested. I know that it is not part of the Bill and I shall not put down an amendment on this, but I would like it to be noted and hope that the Treasury can put pressure on the banks. In the end it is the financial institutions that make it possible for these bombs to be made and for those who invest in them to make large sums of money.