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Cluster Munitions (Prohibitions) Bill [Lords]

The Minister has just enticed me to speak for at least another hour—he should be very careful about teasing me at the Dispatch Box. We have to accept that, horrendously, tens of thousands of civilians were killed in the two world wars by direct munitions. We can think of the 30,000 French casualties during the liberation of Normandy or the tens of thousands of British and German civilians who were killed in area bombing, many of them by land mines that were left behind. My hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Ellwood) said that those who drop or lay mines should effectively be responsible for clearing up, but that has not applied in the case of either the British or German Government. In fact, it is the home Government who have to do it. The only contribution that we have made to the continuing business of collecting munitions dropped by Bomber Command during the second world war has been to provide, thank goodness, an amazing array of aerial photographs. The casualty element of the problem, which my hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (Robert Key) so movingly brought to bear on the debate, shows the legacy of these weapons. It is sometimes difficult for us to think about the tens of thousands of people affected in Cambodia, Afghanistan and elsewhere—they are numbers, despite the photographs and so on. The legacy of the weapons in question still exists, and there are still casualties in Belgium and northern France from munitions from the two world wars. An old friend of mine was killed 11 years ago. He was a military historian at Sandhurst who foolishly brought back a piece of unexploded munitions from the battlefield in France, quite illegally. It was placed on his study desk, and one evening he was working, the heat in the room changed and the thing blew up and killed him. He is not alone. There is therefore a historical element to such casualties. My next point is important; I do not believe that my hon. Friends made it to undermine the purpose of the Bill, which they all said that they support. However, several colleagues asked why the UK Government changed their mind about the decision to do without cluster munitions. It might be helpful to the debate in Committee if the Minister provided an aide-mémoire from the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence, outlining the reasons for the decision. My shorthand on the matter is that the Ministry of Defence was always loathe to give up that range of munitions, partly because it was still thinking in cold war terms, but also because it believed that there was always a possibility of finding ourselves in a conflict in which we might need such munitions. It is a fair and legitimate question for colleagues to ask. I urge the Minister to ask the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence to provide, if possible, an aide- mémoire. I imagine that it is possible because the information cannot be restricted, certainly not nowadays, or it would automatically end up in The Independent or The Times. An aide-mémoire should be produced in time for Committee stage. I am sure that that will find support from hon. Members of all parties. My hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury (Mr. Lidington) asked a series of questions. The first—an important question—was, what changed the Government's mind? He, like other colleagues, rightly made the point that many of our allies still see the utility of possessing the munitions. I will not regurgitate the arguments of particularly my hon. Friends about how we operate in coalitions when some of our partners still possess and maintain the right to use such weapons under certain circumstances. I do not think that that is legal nit-picking—there is potentially a genuine problem. My hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury, the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (Jo Swinson) and others asked about the indirect financing of cluster munitions and where that fits in the Bill. My hon. Friend's final point was that there is no explicit commitment by the UK Government to meet the eight-year deadline in the Bill. The Minister is doing a cute frown at me and fluttering his eyelids in a way that only the Government Whips Office normally sees.