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Cluster Munitions (Prohibitions) Bill [Lords]

Conservative Members are happy to welcome the Bill on to the statute book. As the Minister fairly pointed out, this debate would previously have been conducted on different terms by both his Front-Bench team and mine. There is now much greater parliamentary and public recognition of the appalling number of casualties that cluster weapons inflict, mostly to civilians and often to children. What has also changed is that our armed forces and the Ministry of Defence have felt able to accommodate a ban on cluster munitions without significantly impairing the effectiveness of our defence-preparedness. The Bill's provisions to protect the position of British servicemen and women engaged on joint operations with allied countries that have yet to ratify the convention on cluster munitions are particularly important. We currently devote a great deal of time and attention to weapons proliferation issues. We also debate the rising threat of nuclear proliferation and chemical and biological risks, the need for progress to be made in tackling the trade in small arms and the very slow progress being made towards those objectives. Therefore, it is good that this evening we are able to mark a small step towards ridding the world of at least one particularly unpleasant category of lethal weapon.