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Cluster Munitions (Prohibitions) Bill [Lords]

Would that my assurances always satisfied the hon. Member for Stone (Mr. Cash). He apologised earlier for being a lawyer, but in fact he is doing us a service in this regard. I think I am right in saying that when Peter the Great visited this Parliament, he complained to the then monarch that there were far too many lawyers. So far as he knew, there were only two in his country and when he returned, he was going to execute one of them. One lawyer is fine; two is always a problem. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that there is a problem in the new clause in relation to the phrase""held under United Kingdom jurisdiction"." The convention specifically refers to "jurisdiction and control". Not all the cluster munitions that are currently physically within our jurisdiction are under our control. I am afraid that the amendment falls on that count but, more importantly, as the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr. Davey) said, it is unnecessary. We are already obliged under article 7 of the convention, which has one of the most rigorous systems of transparency that I have seen in an international convention, to make clear what our programme is for the destruction of our stockpiles—those within our jurisdiction and under our control. I hope that nobody will doubt our intent on this, because before signing the convention a whole type of cluster munition—the HE M483A1—had been destroyed. In the month that the UK signed the convention, all types of 755 sub-munitions had been destroyed. In July last year, following the inclusion of the Cluster Munitions (Prohibitions) Bill in the draft legislative programme, the destruction of all CRV-7 MPSM M73 sub-munitions was completed. In total, more than 14 million sub-munitions have been destroyed so far, which was some 37 per cent. of the UK's entire stocks, so we are very confident that we will beat by a considerable margin the target period of eight years and that we will have destroyed all our stock by 2013. Finally, I should say that new clause 1 is undesirable because if the Bill were to be thus amended, it would be required to go through a process of ping-pong with the other place. That is not, of itself, a precondition that means we should not amend the Bill, but it might be a more significant consideration at this particular point, especially given that nobody has yet really argued that this is an essential new clause.