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Cluster Munitions (Prohibitions) Bill [Lords]

That is not entirely true, because in some cases people working in non-governmental organisations, charities and development organisations in other parts of the world have been affected. However, the hon. Gentleman makes a fair point. Sometimes, we think that there has been peace because there has been peace in our backyard, but some of the most prolonged usage of cluster munitions was in Europe's backyard—in Kosovo. We have to be vigilant and ensure that we do not think that by completing this legislative process in the next few weeks, we have solved the problem. Some countries will still have not ratified the convention, some have not signed up to it, and some are still stockpiling and using cluster munitions. I shall run through the process that led to the Bill. By the beginning of the 21st century, everybody had started to recognise the significant problem in terms of fairness and equity with the use of cluster munitions in warfare. For a long time, it has been recognised that everything in war is not always fair. In 1868, the St. Petersburg declaration renounced the use in time of war of explosive projectiles under 400 grams in weight. That was the first piece of legislation agreed by the great world powers of the time that stated categorically any limit on what should or should not be used in war. The banning of explosive or fulminating devices on the grounds of equity and fairness in war was a very important first principle that led to the Hague conventions of 1899 and 1907, the first of which banned hollow-point bullets and chemical warfare, and continued with the 1925 Geneva protocol to the Hague convention, which, in response to the use of mustard gas during the first world war, banned all chemical and biological warfare. The process continued all the way to the Landmines Act 1998, which banned the use of anti-personnel land mines. There has been a constant process of attempts to refine our view of a just way of waging war, compared with an unjust way. In February 2007, the Norwegian Foreign Secretary issued the Oslo declaration, urging the countries of the world to bring forward by the end of 2008 a convention to prohibit the use, production, transfer and stockpiling of cluster munitions. It is a tribute not only to the work of the Norwegian Government but to the international community that by 30 May 2008, at the Dublin diplomatic conference, it was possible to agree the convention that we seek to put into legislative form today. Two elements were important in achieving that so speedily. First, there had been a long discussion about whether only so-called smart cluster munitions should be banned, or whether both smart and dumb cluster munitions should be banned; it was concluded that it was the use of cluster munitions in themselves that was the problem. That was the right conclusion, and it is good that we reached that accord. Secondly, the UK rightly had a change of policy. I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister for effectively brokering the deal in Dublin and ensuring that we reached agreement on the convention that has now been signed up to and ratified by more than 30 members. The last two members to ratify did so only a few weeks ago. Having brokered the deal, we were keen to move forward as swiftly as we could in the UK to ensure that we relinquished and destroyed our remaining stockpile of cluster munitions as fast as possible.