Cluster Munitions (Prohibition) Bill [HL]

My Lords, I am glad to speak in support of my noble friend Lord Dubs. This Bill is certainly an immediate priority. He presented it today intellectually convincingly and with impressive moral conviction. Listening to the penetrating observations of the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, I could not help reflecting on my own experiences some years ago as a director of Oxfam. During that time I was greatly disturbed by the fact that more than 50 per cent of our work worldwide was caught up in the consequences of warfare. We wanted to get on with serious development work, but the reality was that we had to take the consequences of war seriously, over and over again. I also reflected during that period on the sad reality that war was affecting civilians more and more—in a sense, even more than military personnel. I could not help occasionally wondering whether, in the strategy and planning for warfare, this had not become a real and nasty consideration: we win wars by intimidating civilians. Lebanon has been mentioned in this debate. I find it very sad, when we are so committed to our membership of the Security Council, that we were so dilatory in pressing for an immediate end to the war. In that context, it is significant to note that perhaps as many as 90 per cent of the cluster bombs used in Lebanon were used in the last 72 hours of the war. Warnings may have been given, but too often the frail, the elderly and very young simply could not flee. The lasting consequences, together with the consequences of previous Israeli incursions in 1973 and 1983, remain grave. As we have heard, livelihoods have been destroyed and large areas of agricultural land are contaminated by failed, but still potentially lethal, submunitions. In the recent autumn, three to four civilians have been killed per day, and 35 per cent of those victims have, it seems, been children. The UN Mine Action Co-ordination Centre in south Lebanon has calculated that the number of unexploded munitions, as we have heard, may be as high as 1 million. The United Kingdom has championed the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. What does the spirit and logic of that position demand of us on the issues raised by the Bill? I found the reflections of my noble friend Lord Berkeley particularly significant. We speak a great deal about, and are preoccupied by, terrorism, but what is terror? Where is the dividing line between terrorism and action that generates terror? We need to think carefully about that if we are to have credibility in our stand against terrorism. We must consider the contradictions between what we argue we are defending and the daily experiences and the reality of life in highly sensitive and volatile parts of the world. As the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, argued so well, the dangers of counterproductivity cannot be overemphasised. It is claimed by some that cluster bombs are safe, and that the failure rate is less than 1 per cent. The noble Lord, Lord Elton, referred to this. It is clear, however, that the failure rate of the modern M85 submunitions used in south Lebanon may in fact have been between 25 per cent and 40 per cent. This dreadful saga is not just about Lebanon, of course. Unexploded submunitions, when accidentally activated, still kill, maim and bereave hundreds of people, many of them children, in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam decades after their deployment. More recently, the people of Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as Lebanon, have joined the people of south-east Asia in enduring this cruel legacy, with its agonising human costs, as lives are often painfully eliminated, children are hideously wounded, and access to land, to orchards with their olives, citrus fruit and banana crops, to homes and to forests for hunting and gathering firewood, is lost. The stark truth about cluster bombs is that while their multiplied and scattered effect, with its inevitable inaccuracy, brings disproportionate suffering to civilians in times of conflict—and that is bad enough—in the aftermath of that conflict they continue for years to punish the most vulnerable and innocent people in the community. So-called ““collateral damage”” is the distortingly anodyne language with which we endeavour to mask ghastly and nightmarish realities for ordinary, non-combatant people. That terminology is even more cynically inappropriate when applied to situations where a ceasefire has been established or peace restored. For the people where the explosions happen it is nothing less than indiscriminate terror. Earlier this month Kim Howells, a Minister of State, told us of the Government’s concern. He assured us that an international consensus had been achieved to hold expert-level discussions on the humanitarian impact of cluster munitions as what he described as an essential preliminary to legally binding instruments. He evidently expects those experts to report back in 12 months’ time. Our Government, he has told us, will then, after these further 12 months, consider the outcome of those discussions in deciding whether—and, if so, how—to develop their future policy on these sinister weapons. Another 12 months? Should, God forbid, circumstances arise in which these weapons are used before, it is to be hoped, some sane conclusions are reached, how many children must die or be maimed? How many more relatively innocent civilians must suffer? Is that not extraordinary complacency by a nation determined to retain its seat as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council? Do we not already know all too well the human impact of cluster bombs? My noble friend Lord Dubs is absolutely right about smart bombs. The Government’s leisurely timetable for phasing them out is totally unconvincing and ludicrous. In the name of the humanity that we constantly assert as the basis of our way of life, urgency is desperately required. Do or do we not regard children in the Middle East as being as important as any children here in England, Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland? That is why Norway’s determination to get on right now with banning cluster weapons is so welcome. Will my noble friend please clarify the position of our Government on three specific issues? First, how do they intend to engage with the Norwegian initiative? Secondly, why have they not ratified Protocol V of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, with the obligation which that places on states that have used cluster weapons to clean up in the aftermath? When will they ratify that protocol? Thirdly, what effective steps are the Government taking to constrain international transfers of cluster weapons? The need for that is pressing. As many as 70 countries, including Israel, may have stockpiles, mostly of less sophisticated weapons. There is reason to believe that Israeli attacks on Lebanon may well have violated a secret agreement restricting Israel’s use of certain US cluster munitions. It may not be the first time that this has happened. Yet, as recently as 2005, the United States is reported to have agreed a licence worth $615,496 for the sale of 1,300 M26 cluster weapons to Israel. Surely, that brings home the indispensable imperative of the proposed arms trade treaty dealing with international arms transfers, on which the United Kingdom has been giving much commendable leadership in this past year, despite the obstructive intransigence of John Bolton and his colleagues. I am perplexed by the contrast between the exemplary position of our Government on the arms trade treaty and, sadly, their laid-back approach on cluster weapons, given the cruel characteristics of those weapons. My noble friend Lord Dubs is to be congratulated on introducing the Bill. I wish it well and fervently hope that our Government will rapidly move to meet it.