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Cluster Munitions (Prohibitions) Bill [Lords]

I begin by saying that my party, as it was in the other place, is very supportive of the Bill and will support its Second Reading today. I pay tribute to all those who have campaigned for the convention on cluster munitions and for the Bill to ratify it, in particular, as has been mentioned, the Cluster Munition Coalition and Landmine Action. I also pay tribute to the work that my noble Friend Lord Garden, who sadly is no longer with us, did on this issue. If he were here today, he would be very pleased to see the progress that the Bill is making. As we have heard, of people killed by cluster munitions, the vast majority are civilians—the various briefings that I have read give estimates of anything between 85 per cent. and 98 per cent. That figure alone makes it entirely unjustifiable to use such weapons on a war footing. The killing of civilians is always a tragedy and the record of cluster bombs in doing that means that they are just wrong—they should not be part of a responsible, civilised country's arsenal. We cannot justify weapons that end up killing civilians in such huge numbers. Apart from the moral argument, there is the argument about counter-productivity. Increasingly in the aftermath of the conflicts in which we have been involved, securing support from the local population has been a vital part of our operations. Our experience in recent years in both Iraq and Afghanistan has proved—if proof were needed—that the civilian deaths make it much more difficult to undertake that process of winning hearts and minds. When a country is trying to rebuild its agricultural production and economic development, the litter of cluster bombs makes it difficult to undertake basic food production, and rebuilding the infrastructure is far too much of a challenge. To be frank, it is a challenge that such countries can do without. There is also a strong argument that cluster munitions, as well as being dangerous to civilians, are not militarily effective. I understand that 78,000 were used in Kosovo, but they destroyed 30 only major items of military equipment, so they do not exactly have a successful military record, either. Of course, there is also the human cost of what these munitions do. I recently had the opportunity to visit Chechnya as part of a delegation with the estimable Lord Judd and the all-party group on human rights. Although that was a fascinating and perhaps somewhat depressing visit in terms of human rights, one of the high points was going to speak to the children in local schools and seeing how they are trying to rebuild the future of that country. Having said that, seeing with one's own eyes children who are amputees—who have lost limbs—as a result of the cluster munitions that were heavily used by Russia in the conflict in the 1990s brings home what a travesty they are and what a lasting impact they have. As has been said, this is not just about the killing that is done but about the maiming and the loss of limbs, which obviously have an impact throughout a person's life. That is particularly difficult to think about when children are involved. The Minister talked about the just way of waging war. How one can have a just war is a moral dilemma we often discuss, but we have now concluded that certain types of munition and arsenal are not just and that they should not be used. Excellent progress has been made on land mines and their use internationally, which is now much reduced. I hope that that success will be repeated in the case of cluster munitions. We have heard other appalling weapons mentioned today, in particular the white phosphorus that has been used by the US, particularly in Falluja in Iraq—