Cluster Munitions (Prohibition) Bill [HL]

My Lords, I, too, am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, for bringing this debate to your Lordships’ Chamber. I wish to associate myself strongly with the clear and persuasive speeches made by the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, and my colleague the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Coventry. I suspect that there is a good deal of unanimity in your Lordships’ House on what these weapons do and the effects that they have. I wish to focus on the declaration made by the noble Lord, Lord Drayson, in his letter to the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, of 5 December. He said: "““We consider that cluster munitions are lawful weapons when used in accordance with international humanitarian law””." He went on to define how they might be properly used and be of military force and might. This poses at once the question of whether we are going to base our use of any weapons on what is lawful or on what is right. As in other areas of debate—for example, bioethics—does a ““can”” automatically imply an ““ought””? I believe that military action is justified and that our Armed Forces do an amazing job. We have a common duty to keep the peace, to protect the innocent and to minimise oppression, which is a duty that we all seek to support. But in pursuing those goals, we must surely be governed not by just what is legal, but by what is right. In considering what arms we should use, I believe that we need to differentiate fairly clearly between those that are focused or targeted weapons—guns, bombs and missiles—that can be used against a defined military target and those indiscriminate weapons, such as chemical weapons, gas, nuclear weapons and cluster bombs, that affect civilian populations and areas as a whole. It is an increasingly easy distinction to make. Although there will be arguments about the boundaries, there cannot surely in your Lordships’ House be any doubt on which side of that divide cluster munitions fall. Why do we need to be so clear about the kind of weapons? Because the use of force in any ““just war”” theory means proportional response. Can cluster bombs ever be a proportional response? When war spills out from the battlefield with conventional armed forces opposing each other, such as was envisaged by theorists like von Clausewitz, into the soft sweep of violence which affects whole civilian populations as well as military forces, we need much more sharply targeted weapons, not more indiscriminate ones. I have no hesitation in supporting the noble Lord in this debate. I hope very much that a definition of weapons and how they can be used proportionally will form part of the way we think through these questions, as this issue, which seems to me so self-evident and clear, is taken on to its next stage.