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People say, “Oh yes, but you need them as direct-fire weapons”. You do not. For direct fire you need all the weapons that people in Afghanistan have been calling for and, fortunately, they have been appearing—the multi-barrelled grenade launcher, the heavy machine gun and other weapons which you can deploy and have line of sight against the people who come at you. You do not need these indiscriminate weapons because, as the noble Lord, Lord Elton, said, they not only take innocent lives, have a residual effect for years to come and undermine all your efforts to win the hearts and minds of the people to your cause—which is why you are there in the first place—but because they leave behind material which inhibits the use of the ground over which they have been fired for the practical purposes of post-conflict reconstruction, which may be farming, roads, building or whatever.
I am very sorry that the result of the meeting last week in Geneva was really festina lente—make haste slowly and negotiate whether to have a proposal, rather than getting on with it. There is evidence from everyone, not least the military commanders on the ground, that these weapons are wholly inappropriate for the sort of conflict in which we are currently engaged. Surely now is the time to follow the Prime Minister’s welcome remarks and ban them.
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12.17 pm
Lord Dubs: My Lords, it is indeed a privilege to follow the three speeches made so far. Most of the arguments have been well put. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Elton, on having secured this debate, but above all on his long-term commitment to getting rid of these dreadful weapons. I shall be brief. I made a contribution on the same subject during the debate on the Queen’s Speech. Most, if not all, of the arguments have been put better than I could put them.
I will say this, however: I believe that in a few years’ time these dreadful weapons will be banned in their entirety. When something is inevitable, why not get on and do it now? We shall be asking not, “Why have we banned them?”, but, “Why has it taken us so long to do what is right?”. When something is so obviously right, it is only proper that we should do it quickly and not delay.
Having said that, I welcome the progress made by the Government to date. The Secretary of State for Defence has got rid of dumb cluster munitions, the Government contributed fairly positively to the Oslo process earlier this year and the words of my right honourable friend have already been quoted. They represent a clear commitment to support the Oslo process in its entirety. I am pleased, not only that the Government are doing something at the CCM discussions but, above all, that the Government will take part in the continuation of the Oslo process.
I am fairly convinced that we do not need unanimity to start getting rid of these weapons. If we want international unanimity, we will wait for a long time. We made progress in dealing with anti-personnel land mines without the agreement of some of the leading countries in the world—indeed, they have not yet signed up. But the fact is that the climate of opinion as regards anti-personnel landmines changed significantly with the step that this country and others took in getting rid of them. Similarly, I believe that if one or two leading countries in the world do not go along with the proposal on cluster munitions, the rest of us should. We are, after all, a significant military power and, together with the other countries that are opposed to these weapons, we would play an important part in saying, “Enough. No more. We don’t want them”.
The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, made it very clear that there were no real military uses for these weapons. I suppose it is understandable that in the Ministry of Defence some people say, “We don’t want to get rid of all these weapons systems. There may be an occasion when we want to use them”. I understand such reluctance. I am not a military person; nevertheless, the case for their military use seems to be increasingly thin as one listens to people with experience discuss when they could possibly be used. The answer is: hardly at all in the past and not at all in the future. Reference has already been made to the US Army. Surely no army would want to advance into terrain into which cluster munitions had been sent. It would be dangerous; it would be like advancing into a minefield and would make no sense at all.
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One key issue is the hearts and minds of the civilian populations in areas where conflicts take place. Many eminent military people have already been quoted—I could produce quotations from others—saying that you negate the purpose of military action if you alienate the civil population on whose behalf ostensibly you are intervening. That is how war has changed a great deal since the beginning of the last century. We are not really concerned about the attitude of the civilian population, and I can think of no conflict on this earth where the outcome is bound to be, and should be, influenced by how civilians react. However, if we use weapons that alienate or kill innocent civilians, we can hardly say that we have done very much for hearts and minds.
I started by saying that the Government had moved. I ask them to move a bit further and to move quickly on this issue.
12.22 pm
Lord Addington: My Lords, the more I thought about this debate and the more work I did for it, the more I felt that in summing up I would discover that everything that should have been said probably had been said. Often when people say that, there is a degree of sadness in their voice, but that is not the case this time because everything has been said better than I could possibly have said it.
The description given by the noble Lord, Lord Elton, of the rather Byzantine and realpolitik nature of the negotiations that are currently going on seems to anyone who has done any negotiating, at however junior a level, so accurate that it cannot be describing anything other than what is happening.
I have seldom heard such a successful hatchet job on an argument than that executed by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, on the issue of utility. We are talking about a weapon which is directly counter-productive for those who might use it: you cannot move forward because you have laid your own minefield that will blow bits off your own soldiers. Why on earth would we even consider using a weapon such as that? The noble Lord referred to a weapon designed for static defensive posture, whereby you would be concerned only with stopping someone coming towards you or making them do it so slowly that you could counter-strike with weapons, possibly at a distance. There is logic there.
I hope that the noble Lord will not tell us that there is some plan to reinvent the Cold War with the threat of mass attack by an army or any other troop movement. However, if the type of warfare that we are involved in now is one in which we must move forward, chase down and counter-attack our opponents, such as in Afghanistan, the Taliban would probably want us to use this weapon. If we inflicted some casualties but mainly missed, the Taliban would have a safe haven to which they could withdraw. If we fired in a direct line, they would have a slight advantage in that they would be able to get away from us. Surely there can be no grounds for the use of this weapon in military terms.
The Americans have said no to the doctrine of overwhelming strike or overwhelming incapacity, as
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Having been a disability spokesman for many years, I did not realise how well that brief would prepare me to understand the effects of these weapons. It has been difficult enough in this country, which probably has the most advanced disability legislation, to ensure an infrastructure that helps those who are movement or sight impaired. In a developing country or one that is recovering from warfare, we should consider the economic damper we are imposing on high numbers of people who are wheelchair-bound, or who have lost an upper limb, sight or hearing. I am talking not just about the human effect; their economic capacity will be dramatically reduced, far more so than in a technologically advanced society where there are metalled roads. What level of technical support is required to enable people in those terrains to move around if they have lost a limb, let alone two? Think of the extra cost that we are piling on to huge sections of these societies. It is almost unimaginable that we should carry on doing this.
As noble Lords have said, the Government have moved a long way. I hope that they will move further, and the Minister can tell us about their plans and the guidance they will give. We have lots of these weapons in the stockpile but presumably the military will not be required to use them if they are militarily inappropriate. I take that as a given, although a confirmation would not hurt. To make sure that we have no such weapons, and, I hope, will not be producing them for people, where do we go from here? Will the Government give another undertaking to place a ban on these weapons because we cannot find a use for them and because they are against our objectives?
I did a small calculation. If 4 million weapons have been dropped on Lebanon and there is a 5 per cent failure rate, according to my maths, 200,000 weapons are lying across that comparatively small area of land. If we drop them in an area that has softer ground and more trees, there will be more. It is impossible for smart weapons to function fully for the simple reason of the stress such devices go through in delivery. They are fired from a large piece of artillery or dropped from a plane, so there will be damage. We are still digging up the occasional live bomb from World War II. Weapons have always failed. Seventeenth century mortar shells landed on battlefields and did not go off, which we read from accounts of military history. I believe that a bomb went through this Chamber in World War II and did not go off.
Lord Addington: My Lords, I hear it was at the other end.
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There is no way that we can deal with these things safely. Devices will always be traumatised in their delivery systems. Can we please have a government undertaking today that we will do everything we can to achieve an international ban, everything we can as a nation to ensure that our Armed Forces do not use these devices, which are almost certainly counter-productive for our current types of military conflict, and that we will not supply them to anybody else? I look forward to the answer as this may be an occasion when agreement will break out.
12.29 pm
Lord Astor of Hever: My Lords, I, too, thank my noble friend Lord Elton for bringing cluster munitions and the latest United Nations conference on the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons to the House’s attention today. The conference focused on two specific areas of the convention: amended Protocol II—“Landmines, Booby-Traps, and other Devices”—and Protocol V—“Explosive Remnants of War”. The concluding message of the conference made by the UN Secretary-General was to:
Protocol V is the only protocol of the convention that this country is yet to ratify. Its subject is cluster munitions. Fired by an air-carried or ground launch dispenser, these weapons contain numerous submunitions, which are designed to eject those submunitions over a pre-defined target area. Cluster munitions are bound by no regulatory strictures, not even the Ottawa convention. They are currently a legal military weapon that the noble Lord, Lord Drayson, representing Her Majesty’s Government in 2006, claimed:
- “fulfil a legitimate military role that cannot be performed by other means”.—[Official Report, 6/11/07; col. 587.]
But the controversy that surrounds cluster munitions is that, while they can effect military advantage, their humanitarian cost is grave. My noble friend Lord Elton made the point that more and more military observers now consider them campaign losers, a point reinforced by the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, and the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, who also drew the House’s attention to new military thinking, following on from General Rupert Smith’s excellent work on “war among the people”. Although we must always respect the judgment of commanders of our Armed Forces, I am sure that they will be thinking and considering at a high level the issues that the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, has mentioned today. The noble Lord, Lord Dubs, pointed out that military commanders will want to do everything possible not to alienate and kill civilians
The UN mine action co-ordination centre estimated that, during its one-month conflict, Israel dropped nearly 4 million cluster bombs on Lebanon from artillery projectiles which, as of 15 January 2007, resulted in 555 recorded casualties with children making up 25 per cent. Too often their consequence is the tragic death of innocent civilians. They can indeed be the “horrendous and silent hazards” that Timothy
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On Tuesday this week, the final day of the conference, the decision was reached that a group of governmental experts should be established to negotiate an international treaty stipulating exactly how, and if at all, cluster munitions should be used. The group will report its findings to the next meeting of the high contracting parties in November 2008, an outcome that we on these Benches welcome. We have been calling for an internationally recognised definition of these two different types of missiles. Unlike smart missiles, dumb missiles are understood to be those that do not discriminate between targets, or do not have mechanisms to self-destruct if they fail to explode on impact.
The Foreign Affairs Committee report—to which my noble friend alluded—estimates that smart cluster missiles’ failure rate is between 5 and 10 per cent, and the staggering failure rate of dumb cluster missiles is between 25 and 30 per cent. Dumb cluster missiles that fail to explode effectively become landmines when they reach the ground, as my noble friend explained. He pointed out the excellent work of de-miners and, like him, I pay tribute to them.
After its 2007 conflict, Lebanon has been scarred, with an estimated area of 37 million square metres contaminated with almost a million unexploded submunitions. To prevent such situations arising again, the noble Lord, Lord Drayson, had advocated a ban on the use, production, stockpiling and distribution of all dumb cluster missiles, but not smart missiles. After the Prime Minister’s speech at the Lord Mayor of London’s banquet on Monday, Her Majesty’s Government’s position is now less clear. The Prime Minister declared he wanted to,
- “work internationally for a ban on ... those cluster munitions which cause unacceptable harm to civilians”.
Can the Minister please clarify which cluster munitions, exactly, are “those munitions”, and if government policy has changed in any way? Will the Government be supporting the Prime Minister’s rhetoric with financial support? We on these Benches welcome Her Majesty’s Government’s £15 million donation in 2000-01 for de-mining teams around the world.
Is Her Majesty’s Government’s commitment to the banning of cluster munitions such that, if the certain conventional weapons resolution does not bring about change due to the resistance we have seen from some states—my noble friend mentioned Russia—they will follow Austria, Belgium, Hungary and Norway in banning these weapons anyway? The noble Lord, Lord Jay, asked for firm and moral leadership, and for Her Majesty’s Government to ban all cluster munitions. This was reinforced by the noble Lord, Lord Dubs.
We have reason to be hopeful that the outcome of this discussion on Protocol V will be successful, after the impressive results of the conference’s focus on the amended Protocol II. This protocol regulates, but does not ban, the use of landmines and booby-traps.
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The conference on the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons is a step towards repairing the terrible consequences of warfare and expanding the freedom of movement for those who live in lethally infected areas.
12.37 pm
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Lord Malloch-Brown): My Lords, I join all who have congratulated the noble Lord, Lord Elton, on obtaining time for this important debate. I thank him for his tireless humanitarian work on cluster munitions. I immediately acknowledge his seductive, even seditious, suggestion that I ignore the cautious advice of officials and go further than my brief allows. I reassure him that my brief will allow me—in that crabwise motion described by the noble Lord, Lord Jay—to move this issue forward at least some way. While this is the second debate on this subject this year, I would welcome many more. Pressure in a Chamber such as this moves the issue forward.
Across the Government, and in the Prime Minister’s reference to cluster munitions earlier this week, there is a clear recognition that the use of large numbers of explosive submunitions over large areas presents a serious risk of civilian casualties. Cluster munitions have long and potentially deadly consequences for civilians when their submunitions fail to explode as intended, and become dangerous explosive remnants of war, visiting a terrible toll upon subsequent generations. We agree that the use of cluster munitions was brought into sharp focus by the conflict in Lebanon last summer.
In describing what we have done in government, I shall look at this in two groups: first, what is happening on the international side and progress towards the banning of these weapons, and secondly, what is happening internally in our own use of weapons.
It has already been noted that my right honourable friend the Prime Minister said in his speech earlier this week:
“We want to work internationally for a ban on ... those cluster munitions which cause unacceptable harm to civilians.”
I was asked by the noble Lord, Lord Astor, whether that amounts to a change of policy. At this stage, it does not because the Government believe that they have already banned the so-called dumb weapons, but I recognise that there is a debate about whether that goes far enough.
Lord Elton: My Lords, we keep on referring to “dumb”. My noble friend advanced a possible definition of what is not dumb: something that has either self-destruct or deactivation. The third category
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Lord Malloch-Brown: My Lords, the noble Lord knows that the United Kingdom now has two weapons types that are in dispute. One has a self-destruct mechanism built in and we believe that the other type does not meet the definition of a cluster bomb because of the limited number of munitions within it. However, that is a matter of debate, and, as has been observed throughout this debate, as yet there is no acceptable international definition of a cluster bomb. We believe that we have reduced our arsenal in ways that mean that we are not using weapons that do the kind of damage that occurred, for example, in Lebanon, but we recognise that this is not the last word on that.
I shall turn first to what has happened on the international side. As a number of noble Lords have mentioned, the CCW third review meeting made some progress last year on several related categories of weapons, but the priority for the UK and our EU partners at this year’s meeting of states parties to the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, which has just concluded, was, as the noble Lord, Lord Elton, observed, to secure a negotiating mandate on cluster munitions as a necessary step towards agreeing additional protocols on cluster munitions.
Like the noble Lord, Lord Jay, I do not believe that the difficulty is divisions within the European Union on this; it is more a case of divisions with others who have not raised the quality of their weapons to the UK standard. Let me immediately say that we do not believe that the negotiating mandate that was eventually agreed is anything like as strong as we would have liked. However, as the Prime Minister said, we seek practical action for change. We will work hard with other states parties over the next year to ensure substantial action emerges from the work of the group of governmental experts whose rather leisurely meetings schedule was referred to. We believe that the CCW is still the right place to secure a new instrument because it includes the major users and producers of cluster munitions and an agreement forged there is most likely to bring down the use of these weapons. That is why the United Kingdom has worked very hard over the past 12 months to be a leader in the process in that conference.
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