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I suggest that we return to the ethical foreign policy that the Government started nearly 10 years ago. My party had one—the Tories never did, to my knowledge. If the Government supported the Bill, it would be an excellent way of restarting that policy.
12.33 pm
Lord Archer of Sandwell: My Lords, I join my noble friend Lord Berkeley in congratulating my noble friend Lord Dubs on finding an opportunity to promote this Bill and an occasion for discussing a topic which troubles many of your Lordships and very many people outside this House.
My noble friend made it clear that under the Bill, the United Kingdom would renounce the use of cluster bombs, because to use or possess them would be a criminal offence, as it would be to trade in them. And it would be a unilateral act by this country, because there is not yet a convention or treaty prohibiting their use. In that respect, there is a distinction between this Bill and the Landmines Act 1998 which implemented the United Kingdom’s undertakings under the existing Ottawa convention.
Of course, most noble Lords participating in the debate hope to see a convention concluded in the near future, but, sadly, that can be initiated only by Governments; for the moment, Parliament has no role to play other than to express approval or disapproval of the actions of Governments. Some of us would like to see Parliament play a more proactive role in negotiating conventions, but that is for the future.
Sometimes a unilateral renunciation of a detestable weapon, as the noble Lord, Lord Jay, pointed out, is important not only in augmenting the respect which this country currently enjoys but in encouraging others to follow suit. We sometimes debate the merits of unilateral renunciation of nuclear weapons, but that is very different. It is argued by the Government that to renounce our nuclear deterrent would leave us vulnerable to attack. However that may be—and some of us take a different view—no one can seriously argue that only cluster bombs can deter someone who might wish to attack us.
Many of the issues which might otherwise have confused this debate are already foreclosed. It is established in international law and, I am sure, in an international moral consensus, that a state prosecuting a war is not entitled to an unrestrained choice of method. The end does not necessarily justify the means, pace the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, who for the moment is not in his place. Military necessity does not confer a blanket licence.
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At least since the St Petersburg declaration of 1868, it has been accepted that there are categories of weapon, the use of which is unacceptable. That consensus was reinforced by the Hague convention of 1899 and the conventions relating to specific weapons since the Second World War. Similarly—and perhaps more importantly for the present purpose—there are conventions to protect non-combatants. That protection is not confined to the specific conventions. There has grown up over the past 150 years a body of customary international law generally referred to as international humanitarian law. The argument that cluster bombs are unlawful is not necessarily refuted by pointing out that there is not yet a convention forbidding them. Even were that not so, to say “There is not a law against it” is not usually an acceptable excuse. We are here to examine the existing law and, where necessary, to change it.
It is now clear, as was pointed out by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, that the character of war itself has changed, at least since the end of the Cold War. Military operations no longer normally take place on open battlefields with set-piece manoeuvres; more frequently, they are carried out in towns and villages among civilian populations. Tanks proceed up residential streets and are resisted from buildings in the side streets.
It is difficult to target a military objective with any weapon without endangering civilians, so cluster bombs stand condemned on two grounds. First, they are liable to injure those who are not and should not be targeted. It is sometimes argued that it is necessary to balance the suffering inflicted against the advantages to be gained—in traditional international law, the doctrine of proportionality. I am not qualified to assess the advantages and I am not sure that the Government are in a position to assess the advantages and disadvantages, since we are told that they have not conducted any study of the subject. But I accept that it could not be right to inflict such harm for a negligible advantage. However, I have always been a little troubled by the doctrine of proportionality. As the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Coventry warned us, that might appear to imply that any suffering is justified if the advantage to be gained is sufficient, pace the noble Earl, Lord Attlee. I do not go along with that. It is as though a burglar were to argue, “It's all right for me to burgle that house because the damage and distress which I cause will be outweighed by the value of the loot which I take away with me”.
The second ground on which cluster bombs stand condemned is that their power to injure is not exhausted at the time of impact, as many noble Lords have pointed out. They can kill, maim and ruin lives long after the battle has subsided. We have heard more than once—and before this debate, too—the distinction between smart bombs and dumb bombs. We know, too, as some of your Lordships have said, that smart bombs, like smart human beings, are not infallible. There are times when smart bombs can act dumb and fail to self-destruct. There are, of course, disputes about what proportion of them fail to self-destruct. In the case of the M85, estimates have
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The problem with statistics is that they conceal as much as they enlighten. Quoting statistics can be a way of saying, “It's all right because not many people have been injured”. If, as I am told, 78,000 bomblets were used in Kosovo, 1 per cent of 78,000 is the 780. That was 780 deaths and maimings waiting to happen. To the person whose legs are amputated the damage is 100 per cent.
But the damage is not confined to individual human tragedies. The death traps left behind, as the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, pointed out, inhibit the rebuilding of homes and the rehabilitation of civilian populations. And they continue to alienate populations when humanitarian organisations are seeking to bring about peace and reconciliation.
We saw in the case of landmines how public opinion can build up until it is irresistible. I believe, like my noble friend Lady Whittaker, that it is building up across the globe and that there will be a convention. That is why my heart goes out to my noble friend on the Front Bench—the most compassionate of individuals. When it comes, I am sure that she would like to say with pride, as I would, that my country gave a moral lead.
12.43 pm
Lord Elton: My Lords, I join other noble Lords not only in congratulating the noble Lord who introduced the Bill but in my sympathy for the Minister. The noble Baroness, Lady Northover, suggested that she had drawn the short straw. I recall, just after I had been appointed to my first ministerial post, meeting the late Lord Eccles in the Prince’s Chamber and telling him my news with great excitement. Instead of the warm congratulations I expected, he shook his head sadly and said, “You’ll have to eat an awful lot of worms”. I fear that the noble Baroness may not enjoy her dinner today.
The case against cluster munitions has been conclusively made. I wish to fortify it in only one respect: the question of the reliability of the so-called smart weapon to self-destruct. We have heard the figures of 1 per cent and 5 per cent as the likely failure rate. Those figures came from observing the campaign in Lebanon. I have seen photographs of the ground over which that campaign passed. A photograph of an area slightly smaller than this Chamber showed five unexploded bomblets in one place. Either a large number of missiles were targeted on the same garden or the failure rate was a great deal more than 1 or 5 per cent.
That being so, I am tempted to think of reports by United Nations observers, who suggested that a more credible assessment of the failure rate may be 25 per cent. My noble friend Lord Attlee gave a most interesting dissection of the situation, and I hope that your Lordships are not tempted to expect a safe smart bomb to be available before long, because the current failure rate is the result of the best efforts of munitions manufacturers around the world, and it does not work. We have to write it off as a usable weapon in the terms described by the manufacturers.
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Will the Government confirm that they have now definitively and finally abandoned all use of airdrop cluster weapons, as alleged twice in this debate? Can we have that on the record from the Minister? If not, why not? We need to know the situation.
My second question is whether the Bill, introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, is necessary. Perhaps these weapons are already de facto illegal. Paragraph 4 of Article 51 of the supplementary protocol to the international Convention on Conventional Weapons, relating to the protection of the civilian population. states:
I shall move straight to the second paragraph—
“(b) those which employ a method or means of combat which cannot be directed at a specific military objective; or
(c) those which employ a method or means of combat the effects of which cannot be limited as required by this Protocol;
and consequently, in each such case, are of a nature to strike military objectives and civilians or civilian objects without distinction”.
I shall pass again to paragraph (b)—
“(b) an attack which may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated”.
In Article 57, the responsibilities are given to local commanders. It states:
“1. In the conduct of military operations, constant care shall be taken to spare the civilian population, civilians and civilian objects
I shall pass to the second and third requirements—
“(ii) take all feasible precautions in the choice of means and methods of attack with a view to avoiding, and in any event to minimising, incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians and damage to civilian objects
(iii) refrain from deciding to launch any attack which may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life”.
There is no question that these weapons inevitably cause considerable loss of civilian life. If we are subscribers to the protocol, we seem to be in breach of it. If we are not, will the Minister tell us that we have not subscribed to that additional protocol?
There is not much more to say. As my noble friend sits next to me, I have to hear what he says about how it looks on the ground. I sympathise deeply with him and greatly respect what he has done in the cause of this country, at a stage when it seemed so honourable and hopeful. I understand the need for every soldier to have the greatest possible weaponry to hand; but, as we have been told that the principal object of these weapons is to deal with armour, how many armoured tanks on which we rained these lethal weapons were there in Afghanistan? I did not know that the Taliban had any. The Government’s statements in defence of the policy seem a little moth-holed.
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I thank my noble friend for bringing this matter forward. The reality, I recognise, is that the Bill will not get on to the statute book in its present form. I hope that it has a Committee stage, because there are ways in which it can be improved, and the discussion could improve our own approach to this problem internationally.
On the international question, I conclude by reflecting sadly on what we did in Switzerland the other day. I know it has been dressed up as us pressing forward on the need for discussion of this important matter for another 12 months before we meet again, but unfortunately we did not press forward on the need, expressed by so many other countries, for negotiation: actually getting down to discussing what we could agree. If that is going to be the Government’s attitude, there is no way forward but that suggested by the Norwegians at the conference. They have now declared that they will call an unofficial conference for those who want to go ahead. More strength to their elbows—I wish I knew what the Norwegian was for “elbow”, but more strength to them anyway. They are embarking on a course that proved successful when it came to getting rid of landmines, which in my view were less objectionable creatures than these are.
Your Lordships have heard that children are most likely to be maimed by one of these things, because it looks like something to play with. If your Lordships can do something today that will persuade the Government to take forward honestly in the international forum a campaign to ban these weapons, I will be satisfied if we do not do it on our own before everyone else does. I wish, however, to be satisfied that the Government are putting 100 per cent into their effort to get that result as quickly as is humanly possible.
12.51 pm
Lord Judd: 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
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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
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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
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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.
1.04 pm
Lord Garden: My Lords, I add my congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, on giving us the opportunity to debate this Bill. I trust that, given the almost unanimous support for the Bill in this debate, it will go into Committee and be taken seriously. We have heard speeches from noble Lords with a wide range of experience. I single out the military experience of the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, and the diplomatic experience of the noble Lord, Lord Jay, as providing an important dimension to the debate.
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