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Cluster Munitions (Prohibitions) Bill [Lords]

It is a pleasure and an honour to be the final Back-Bench speaker in what has been a very powerful and interesting debate. I begin where my hon. Friend the Member for Leominster (Bill Wiggin) ended by paying tribute to my hon.—I should say gallant now—Friend the Member for Salisbury (Robert Key) for his recounting of a truly incredible story. It was a very moving and vivid account of a personal experience that brought home to him the actual dangers of the very thing that we are discussing today. I am pleased that he survived the incident, although very saddened to hear about the loss of his friends. He has been, and continues to be, an asset to this House, so it was all the more moving to hear about the start of that amazing story back in 1955. There have been other excellent contributions, and it has been fascinating to hear the interventions from my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Milton Keynes (Mr. Lancaster), who has had first-hand experience of dealing with those munitions, as well as the speech from my hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham (Mr. Holloway), who has equally wandered the globe, seen those munitions at first hand and seen also the damage that they can do. It is a tribute to the power of this House that we have Members with such knowledge and expertise who can contribute to this debate. My hon. Friend the Member for Leominster stressed that countries that are either applying or want to be at the top table on the UN Security Council may not be signatories to the convention, so I should be interested to hear whether the Minister supports countries putting their names forward to sit at that top table—whether in a permanent or temporary slot—if they have not signed up to the convention. Before I get into the detail of the Bill, and as we are on the subject of mines, I pay tribute to the 56 Riflemen who have been killed and the 235 Riflemen who have been injured from the 2nd Battalion and 3rd Battalion the Rifles. These deaths and injuries, which have taken place in Afghanistan in the past 12 months alone, show the dangers that those Riflemen are continuing to endure in a war zone. I highlight that because Afghanistan is the war zone at the moment, and we are debating what happens to a war zone once the war is concluded—once the armies pack up and go home and the civilians return to be rehoused or to reoccupy their communities. The Bill is important because it does not discriminate in terms of its application, but there is a legacy for which we are responsible. I was interested to hear the Minister say that a third of all injuries are to children, who pick up these munitions way after the war has finished and the military has gone on its way. It is worrying in itself that we do not do more to ensure that we clean up after war has taken place.