Landmines and Cluster Munitions

Baroness Wheeler Excerpts

Thursday 3rd April 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Godson (Con)]

My Lords, I too commend the noble Lord, Lord Verdirame, for bringing this debate and for his own prescience in the matter, notably last year in the debate here on the SDR, when he foresaw that the embattled democracies of eastern Europe might have to withdraw from the landmines treaty and cluster munitions convention.

I also commend my noble friend Lord Attlee, who will be much missed in this place, for his prescience on the matter. But there is also a particular piquancy in his intervention today, because it is 90 years since the election of his grandfather, Clement Attlee, as leader of the Labour Party. That is of direct relevance to our deliberations today, because of course “Citizen Clem” displaced the ageing pacifist George Lansbury. We all remember Ernest Bevin as leader of the TGWU and his famous remark about Lansbury hawking his conscience. It is a source of great pleasure to me that the Labour Party is now the party of Attlee and Bevin when it comes to nuclear weapons and the broader defence of our kingdom.

Unfortunately, the ghost of Lansbury is still present in too many of Labour’s deliberations when it comes to landmines and cluster munitions, and I very much hope that that will change. I was sorry that last year the Minister, in response to the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, was slightly hawking her conscience as well in reproaching the Lithuanian Government for their wish to withdraw from the convention. I was sorry about that, but I welcome that in recent days—because I know that this is a work in progress—the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, responded to the noble Lord, Lord Spellar, in a Written Parliamentary Answer that the Government were indeed going to acknowledge the sovereign right of sovereign Governments to come to their own decisions, and I hope that that progress will indeed be maintained.

I have two particular questions for the Minister.

[Captain of the King’s Bodyguard of the Yeomen of the Guard and Deputy Chief Whip (Baroness Wheeler) (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Lord Godson (Con)]

Just very quickly—I will narrow it down to one, if the noble Baroness will bear with me.

[Baroness Wheeler (Lab)]

No. Will the noble Lord wind up, please? The limit is two minutes to allow all speakers to get in.

[Lord Godson (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness. There is a carve-out in the cluster munitions convention. Will the Minister give a statement to this House on the legal viability and durability of that carve-out in the cluster munitions convention for our forces—

[Baroness Wheeler (Lab)]

Will the noble Lord please sit down and wind up? I thank him.