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Cluster Munitions (Prohibitions) Bill [Lords]

It gives me great pleasure to contribute to this debate on an important piece of legislation that enables us to play our part in delivering on the 2008 convention on cluster munitions and, as the United Nations Secretary-General has said, helps to demonstrate""the world's collective revulsion at the impact of these terrible weapons"." That has already been referred to by my hon. Friend the Minister. I have been very concerned for a number of years about the deaths of and injuries to innocent civilians during and after conflicts where cluster munitions have been used. I have tabled a number of parliamentary questions and early-day motions on the issue, and I became the Member in charge of Lord Dubs' Bill on this subject when it reached this place. The Government are to be congratulated on the leading role that they have played, especially in the final conference in the Oslo process, which was held in Dublin in May 2008. I agree with the Minister that the Prime Minister's personal efforts at that time have been acknowledged by all close observers of that process, but it was not always thus. The Minister said that if we had been having this debate some five years ago, it would have been a very different debate, but I should tell him that that would have been the case three years ago—I know that because I secured an Adjournment debate in this Chamber on 23 November 2006. In that debate, I made the case for our Government to renounce the use of cluster munitions, destroy the stockpiles and take a lead in the international community in seeking a global ban—that is, in effect, what this Bill will help to achieve. I did so because of the danger to civilians that such weaponry presents. That danger first occurs at the time of attack when the weaponry is used in residential areas; the bomblets from the main bomb carpet-bomb an area about the size of three football pitches, tearing to bits everybody in that area, military or civilian. We know that the UK only ever used these weapons against military targets, but we also know that sometimes they have been used in densely populated residential areas, with the inevitable loss of life and injury to innocent children, women and men. Some other countries have used cluster munitions without discrimination and without concern for the humanitarian consequences. As the Minister and others have said, the initial impact is not the worst aspect of cluster bomb use. Many of the bomblets do not work properly, they fail to explode on immediate impact and are left on the ground after hostilities have ended, to be trodden on by farmers returning to their fields, to be pulled up when families are clearing away rubble from their damaged houses, or even to be picked up as possible playthings by children, who are attracted by their shape and shine. Cluster munitions remain lethal. I was supported in that Adjournment debate by my hon. Friends the Members for Sunderland, South (Mr. Mullin) and for Stroud (Mr. Drew), but in response the then Minister of State in the Ministry of Defence, my right hon. Friend the Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Mr. Ingram), did not adopt the same positive and humanitarian approach in 2006 as my hon. Friend the Minister for Europe has done in opening today's debate. Indeed, the line that the then Minister of State came up with closely reflected what the hon. Member for Aylesbury (Mr. Lidington) says is the current American position. The then Minister of State described the UK's cluster munitions as""lawful weapons that provide a unique capability against certain types of legitimate military target."" He went on to say:""Our military commanders judge the degree of force to employ to achieve the mission, subject always to strict compliance with international humanitarian law.""We believe that that is a sufficiently adequate body of law. It puts considerable constraints on the use of cluster munitions."" To be fair, by the time of that debate Government policy had moved on from its previous blanket defence of the use of all cluster munitions in our arsenal to a differentiation between dumb cluster munitions and smart cluster munitions. The former would be phased out because they had no self-destruct mechanism if they failed to explode on impact or had no target-discriminatory capability. It was argued that the smart munitions had those things and, thus, did not present the same level of danger to civilians. The then Minister of State said that""a total ban on the use of all types of submunition would have an adverse impact on the UK's operational effectiveness."—[Official Report, 23 November 2006; Vol. 453, c. 802.]" How things have moved on in less than three years. I congratulate Ministers on being prepared to reconsider their position in the light of evidence. It was not just the view on cluster weapons themselves that changed over the following few months; the UK position on what was the best way of dealing with the humanitarian debate about the future of cluster munitions also altered. By the time of my debate, Norway had said that it intended to lead an initiative outside the UN review arrangement for conventional weapons. Canada had taken the same approach in securing the land mine treaty 10 years before, using the so-called Ottawa process. In my Adjournment debate, I had urged the Government to join actively in the new Oslo process. The then Minister said that the UN review conference was the approach most likely to achieve "real humanitarian benefits". Thankfully, that view was changed within weeks or months of that debate, and the UK became increasingly engaged in the Oslo process and came to play an increasingly important and beneficial role in it. As interested observers noted at the time, the change of heart seemed to come out of a robust debate within Government, with the Department for International Development championing a ban, the Ministry of Defence wanting to hang on to so-called smart munitions and the Foreign Office eventually coming down on the side of radical action. When the Minister winds up, he might like to enlighten the House on exactly what happened in those robust discussions.