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I do not have the expertise to judge whether there is a real military justification for this country’s continued possession of any kind of cluster munitions. However, it is significant that a number of military experts have questioned the continuing value of these weapons, smart or dumb. It is therefore imperative for the Government to reconsider whether the Oslo declaration should be restricted to dumb munitions. In particular, does the Minister agree that maintaining the distinction between so-called dumb and smart munitions will make monitoring compliance with any international agreement much harder than monitoring a straightforward ban on all cluster munitions?

During the Second Reading of the Cluster Munitions (Prohibition) Bill, the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, asked the Minister a number of questions. She asked whether the UK Government have undertaken practical assessments of the human impact of cluster munitions when used in a combat situation and whether they have gathered field data on cluster bombs. I am not aware that we have had answers to these questions, but it behoves the Government to come up with answers rapidly if they want their optimistic claims as to failure rates to be believed or if they wish to go on defending the use of these horrific weapons in any circumstances at all.

Will the Minister therefore give serious consideration to establishing a rigorous, verifiable test of the reliability of submunitions’ self-destruction mechanisms? If he does not feel able to go all the way to signing up to a total ban in Lima, will he undertake to institute reliable trials of the kind that I have mentioned? Will the Government then commit to rejecting any cluster munitions system that cannot achieve, say, a 1 per cent failure rate in realistic tests?

In concluding, I simply repeat my appreciation of the ongoing efforts of the noble Lords, Lord Dubs and Lord Elton, to secure the final elimination of these dreadful weapons, which we all wish to see, and my hopes for a successful second stage of the Oslo talks in Lima next week.

12.54 pm

Lord Ramsbotham: My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Elton, on obtaining this important and timely debate. I also associate myself with the tributes that have quite rightly been paid not only to him for his persistence in this matter, but also to the efforts of the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, and the Minister in the Oslo meeting. I am delighted to be able to do that.

In view of the admirable and wide-ranging comments that have been made throughout the debate, I wondered what I could add. Perhaps I may add my views, first, as a former military commander who had experience in the Cold War of planning for the deployment of cluster munitions in military situations and, secondly, as a member of a private security company that was responsible for mine clearing in many parts of the world.

I refer first to my military experience and the employment of these weapons as military weapons for military purposes. They were there for two purposes, one of which was runway denial, as practised by the Royal Air Force. This involved larger weapons, which proved to be fairly unsuccessful when eventually deployed in the first Gulf War.

From a military point of view the weapons were there for two main reasons. First, we required something to help us to break up any massed armour attack, and the top attack weapon of cluster munitions, particularly depleted uranium ones, was, we thought, one very promising way to help us to destroy masses of armour. Secondly, these weapons provided an ability to deploy, as it were, instant minefields to prevent mass movements coming against us. But, as I described in the December debate on the Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, when I was made responsible for planning counter-attacks against Russian armour through ground over which we had deployed these weapons, I began to think twice about them, because they were quite as likely to cause casualties and impede our movement as they were to affect that of the opponent.

It was at that stage that the Cold War ended. As far as I am concerned, when the Cold War ended, the use of these weapons against that kind of opposition also ended. I cannot for the life of me foresee any nation building up the kind of forces against which these weapons were designed to be deployed.

However, we have retained these weapons and we have used them. To my mind, where we have deployed them, we have used them completely unnecessarily, with no military justification at all. I was interested that the validity of the Statement of the Secretary of State was questioned by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester. The Secretary of State said:

The first part of that can indeed be stated in military terms, but I do not believe that the second part can be justified. If he is saying that we intend to retain legitimate weapons with significant military value, surely it would have been more proper for him to then qualify and say what that military value was and for what military purposes they were justified. But he has not.

Many noble Lords have said, with great eloquence and great expertise, that what we are now using—the M85 weapon fired from a 155 gun—has an appalling record of failure. The evidence of what has been happening in the Lebanon and what happened when we deployed these weapons proves that the figures claimed are not correct. I do not know whether those figures were produced in ideal circumstances, in a laboratory or on ground on which figures could be measured, but the deployment shows that they are not right.

Attention has also been drawn, quite rightly, by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Archer of Sandwell, and others, to the fact that the nature of warfare has changed. Many noble Lords have mentioned the admirable description of General Sir Rupert Smith of war among the people. You do not deploy mass, indiscriminate weapons when civilians are likely to be casualties, not only because it is not a humanitarian thing to do but because it is an intensely stupid thing to do in relation to whatever use of military force there is.

As I tried to explain in December, the use of military force is much more politically directed now, and there must be a political end to every employment of military means. If that is the case, the military must be given clear direction about what it is to achieve, which will, in turn, help it to determine the means to use. That is bound to include state rebuilding and winning and retaining the hearts and minds of the people in the country concerned. Therefore it must be unwise, at best, to do anything likely to alienate the very people whom you are trying to win over with whatever action you are taking. Nothing could be more counterproductive than causing endless unnecessary casualties, particularly to tomorrow’s generation, who seem to be the biggest victims of all. That became abundantly clear to me when I found myself involved in the demining of countries such as Afghanistan, Angola, Mozambique, Bosnia, Zaire, Somalia and Laos, where we discovered that it was the innocent who were the victims of what had been laid indiscriminately.

I am disappointed at the ambivalence of the Secretary of State’s Statement. It would be helpful if he could revise the second part of it. The whole thing seems to rest on a definition of “affordability”, a term that in this case I use about deployment. Can you deploy? Yes. But can you afford to give up what you must give up if you deploy it? One of the things that we as a country give up if we deploy these sorts of weapons is respect for us as a decent and civilised nation.

I conclude with the words with which I concluded my contribution to the debate introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Dubs:

I hope, therefore, that very soon the Government will add the wretched M85 to the other weapons that they have so rightly discarded.

1.02 pm

Lord Garden: My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Elton, on securing this debate at such an appropriate moment. After the progress at the Oslo conference, we now have the opportunity to take a significant step forward in Lima next week. It is telling that all noble Lords across the House have spoken in support of a ban. In December, at the Second Reading of the Cluster Munitions (Prohibition) Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, we discussed the tragedy of unexploded bomblets, which last so long in many parts of the world, and we heard much more on that from many noble Lords today.

We can send a strong message from across the House to our UK government negotiators to press the case for an international ban. That has the strongest support from these Benches. We hope that it will follow the experience of the landmine ban. While it may be unrealistic to expect instant universal acceptance of such a ban, I share with the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, the thought that that should not make us temper our approach to how we go for an outright ban. It is important that the climate of international opinion makes the use of these weapons much more difficult even for nations that insist on retaining them.

I join others in welcoming how the UK Government have moved towards the side of the angels in recent months. It seems not long ago that we had an impasse where the MoD was determined to hang on to all its stocks of cluster munitions, both bombs and artillery, despite growing problems over their usage in the operations we are now undertaking. Then we had the Statement of 21 March this year, which announced the banning of dumb cluster munitions with immediate effect and the withdrawal from service of the BL755 aerially delivered bomb and the M26 multiple-launch rocket system artillery munition. These are welcome announcements that allow the UK to take more of a lead in calling for an international ban. However, as we have heard from many noble Lords today, we are still left with one cluster munition in the army: the L20A1 155-millimetre artillery projectile, which uses in each projectile 49 M85 submunitions. Our current stockpile, as I understand it, although the Minister may correct me, is 59,364 of these submunitions. This specifically is one of the weapons—as we have heard today, particularly well from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mayhew—that caused such problems in Lebanon when they were used by Israel last year. Other noble Lords have also spoken on that.

I will focus my remarks on that aspect of our United Kingdom policy, as others have, and on the definitions of “dumb” and “smart” munitions, if there is a distinction to be made. In the Written Statement of 21 March the Government highlighted their concern that dumb munitions disperse submunitions over an area. Many noble Lords have described that in graphic terms, such as numbers of football pitches. The Statement continued:

As we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Elton, that is a specious argument.

In answer to an Oral Question on 17 April, the noble Baroness the Leader of the House stated that the UK has its own definitions of “dumb” and “smart” bombs, but she did not think the House would want to hear her explanation. I trust that the Minister will take this opportunity to tell your Lordships the difference in some detail.

At Second Reading of the Bill introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, in December, I went into considerable detail about the technical aspects and lack of effectiveness of cluster submunitions. I shall not repeat that today. I can say all I need to on the military aspects of the issue by saying I agree with every word the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, has said today. I support his military analysis of the lack of military utility of cluster munitions in the post Cold War world

Bomblets are scattered over a wide area and, as such, lack discrimination. If the target set is a mix of enemy and civilian, they cannot discriminate. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Archer of Sandwell, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester reminded us, that poses a real problem for most of the operations that our Armed Forces are currently undertaking. There is the instant humanitarian problem that you kill civilians as you kill your enemy. There is also perhaps the legal problem that has been highlighted by some noble Lords. Is the increased risk of collateral damage because of the dispersed pattern proportionate to what you are trying to achieve, or is it more likely to be counterproductive in any campaign that seeks to nurture the support of the indigenous population? All noble Lords have come to the conclusion that it is more likely to be counterproductive.

The second problem, which attracts more attention, is the question of unexploded ordnance and long-term consequences—what might be called the sowing of unintentional minefields. I also had a letter with similar wording from the noble Baroness, Lady Amos, about what NATO has done to inform Serbia, as it is required to do, about the cluster munitions that were dropped in 1999. I could not believe what I read. Eight years later we are still thinking about how to deal with this complex problem. We are not even meeting our responsibilities to tell nations where we have dropped these weapons.

We have had a fair amount of discussion about what failure rates are appropriate. Again, in December I went into some detail about the effect of real conditions against trial conditions. The general failure rate quoted for dumb cluster munitions is 5 per cent. The manufacturer says that some smart weapons can have a rate of less than 1 per cent. However, data from the Gulf War showed that instead of the 5 per cent failure rate you tended to get about 23 per cent when using the weapons for real—four or five times the brochure rate. Various official sources have been quoted for the M85, with failure rates ranging from very low to about the same as our other cluster bombs. The latest one I could find was a trial showing it to be between 1.3 per cent and 2.3 per cent, but the noble Lord, Lord Elton, told us of much higher figures in Lebanon. We do not know, and that is one of the problems. So I fully support the cry of the noble Lord, Lord Low, for more facts about the real failure rates in real conditions. Perhaps it will be impossible to find out, but experience tends to suggest that manufacturers are being much too optimistic. Indeed, when I look at military handbook tables of cluster munitions, I find it interesting that the M85 is normally put in the same column as the BL755—it is seen as a weapon of the same sort of intelligence, if I can put it that way.

In a 2002 briefing, Human Rights Watch compiled a list of these various submunitions, stating which appeared to be more advanced than others. It certainly did not classify the M85 as advanced. It talked about a future generation of submunitions which would be quite different; they would be primarily set up to sense and destroy armour and, if they did not find the target, they would neutralise themselves. But because they are so complicated, we would end up with a cluster munition that has only two submunitions—the most they are likely to get is about nine. That is quite a different weapon. Those are what most of the military community thinks of as smart new future-generation weapons. That may be of only passing interest to your Lordships, but it suggests that there is a debate to be had about where one draws the line between smart and dumb. The M85 would certainly not be allowed to fall on the smart side of the line.

I am afraid that we have moved only halfway. We have all congratulated the Government, and have personally congratulated the Minister on his work on this. It is pretty good, but we can imagine the fight between the Ministry of Defence and the Foreign Office, where the Ministry of Defence says, “We have 50,000 of these submunitions. They are pretty new. Leave us those and we will let you have the other two”. It is not good enough. If we want to take the moral high ground in these negotiations, we have to take it now. I hope that, as a result of this debate, the Minister will bring pressure back on the MoD to take those munitions out of service. Then the negotiators can go to Lima and negotiate from a position of moral strength. The military case must be entirely satisfactory for the sort of campaigns we find ourselves involved in.

We have a real opportunity to advance the international ban on these terrible and counter-productive weapons. I trust that we will brief the negotiators with everything we can to make sure that they advance the cause.

1.13 pm

Lord Astor of Hever: My Lords, I, too, am grateful to my noble friend Lord Elton for raising the question of cluster munitions again. Along with the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, I congratulate my noble friend on the important role he plays in the cluster munitions campaign.

This is an important subject, particularly in the wake of the Oslo conference and the Government’s subsequent announcement on disposing of two of the dumb munitions that we held. I join other noble Lords in paying tribute to the Minister for the important work he did behind the scenes to facilitate this.

We understand the humanitarian concerns that have so exercised many noble Lords all around the House. As my noble and learned friend Lord Mayhew said, we have a duty to do what we can to diminish the horrors of war.

As we have previously said, we fully share the concerns expressed by my noble friend Lord Elton and other noble Lords about what can be the very serious humanitarian impact of the use of dumb cluster munitions. In practice, in our case, as my noble friend said, this is the L20A1 155-millimetre artillery projectile with M85 submunitions with self-destruct devices. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response to the concerns expressed by my noble friend and others about this weapon.

We warmly applaud the work of British mine clearance specialists, who have taken the lead in recent United Nations operations to clear cluster bombs from homes and villages in south Lebanon. I declare an interest as an honorary colonel of the Royal Engineers TA regiment. Some members of my regiment have been involved in the mine clearing and, very sadly, a sergeant-major recently lost a foot.

I am sure that the Minister shares my concern at the long-term impact that will be felt in south Lebanon at the loss of so many lives to cluster bombs. It is right that the United Kingdom should take such a lead as it sensibly can in the movement against dumb cluster munitions and the inappropriate and unjustified use of cluster bombs more widely.

The commander of Israel’s multiple-launch rocket system was reported as saying:

Clearly, this is unacceptable. Can the Minister indicate what pressure the Government have put on their Israeli counterparts to reveal the precise locations where they dropped cluster bombs last summer?

There is much for which to commend the recent Oslo conference. One of the main pledges to come out of it was to complete by 2008 a legally binding international document to prohibit the use of cluster munitions that cause unacceptable harm to civilians. It is also true that the battle to win hearts and minds is crucial, not least in campaigns of the nature that our forces now face in Afghanistan and Iraq.

We have a responsibility to reduce civilian casualties and for that reason have long been in favour of phasing out dumb munitions. But we also have a responsibility to give our Armed Forces adequate equipment and weaponry. We have a duty to provide them with as much security as we can, and I hope that the Government are taking fully into account the views of our services, of whom this Administration have asked so much when taking these decisions.

Towards the end of last year, Russia, China and the United States all indicated their ongoing opposition to a ban on cluster munitions, but none of those strategically vital nations attended the Oslo conference. Others, such as Japan and Poland, did not sign the agreement. Are the Minister and his colleagues confident that they will be able to persuade each of those nations to sign and observe such a ban? It is essential that we have an agreement whereby other countries follow our lead. An internationally binding ban on the use of a clearly defined category of munitions would therefore be altogether more significant. We therefore believe that the Government should continue to press for an internationally agreed definition of a cluster munition and similarly agreed distinctions between a “dumb” and a “smart” munition.

In the present circumstances, we continue to endorse the Government’s previous assessments that cluster munitions perform a legitimate military role that cannot be fulfilled by other means. The use of cluster bombs remains necessary when such targets become a serious threat to the security of our Armed Forces. We can never anticipate what threats our troops may have to face in the future; therefore, we do not yet support a blanket prohibition on the use of cluster munitions. Having said that, I wonder whether the Minister agrees that it is essential that commanders have very clear instructions about when the use of cluster bombs would be justified on the battleground. The problem in Lebanon, for example, was exacerbated by use of the bombs in relatively densely populated areas.

1.20 pm

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Lord Triesman): My Lords, I join everyone else in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Elton, on securing what I agree is an extremely important debate. I also thank him for his tireless humanitarian work in connection with cluster munitions and wish him God speed on his visit to Lima.

All speakers have expressed essentially the same view. Everyone is genuinely concerned and I hope that no one will take offence when I say that there is no ethical monopoly on anyone's part when addressing an issue such as this. Achieving a balance between ethics and national defence is the type of problem that all governments have to face and we have to do so with as much realism as possible if we are not to be reckless about the fate of our own forces. I also thank all noble Lords and noble Baronesses for their kindness about my role. The Government have been profoundly concerned with these issues, and that has involved many colleagues throughout the Government. I will pass on the regard that the House expressed to them, if I may.

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