Landmines and Cluster Munitions

Lord Robathan Excerpts

Thursday 3rd April 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Robathan (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak very briefly, because I have time only for that, and I speak as who somebody has been in a minefield. Indeed, in Iraq, the wheel of the Land Rover behind me was blown off by an anti-personnel mine, and believe me, if you have just seen an anti-personnel mine go off, you do not want to get out of that Land Rover, for obvious reasons.

I have also set claymore landmines—only in training—and have been responsible for clearing landmines in the past. I refer to a speech I made on 10 July 1998 in the other place, where only I and my noble friend Lord Howard of Lympne, then shadow Foreign Secretary, expressed reservations about the Ottawa treaty, which is of course window dressing—how good we are. As a country, we last exported any landmines in 1982, I believe. I ask the Minister: how many UK anti-personnel landmines have been dug up by any agencies clearing mines since 1982?

I was a trustee and then chairman of the Halo Trust for some three years, and I visited Somaliland, Eritrea, Angola, Mozambique and Cambodia—I think. There was never a British anti-personnel mine found. Since 1998, we have had endless anti-personnel mines laid around the world.

In my dotage, I reckon I could still make an IED, an anti-personnel mine, in my kitchen. I am not intending to, for the benefit of any police, but that is what the Russians are doing in Ukraine. Are the North Koreans, the Iranians and the Chinese joining the convention? I do not think so. We all wish to see an end to anti-personnel mines. I have seen wounded people, back in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. I have seen UK soldiers maimed in Afghanistan and Iraq in the recent past. This convention does nothing for them or for peace. It takes away one line of defence from our own soldiers. If in a war we need that defence, British soldiers should have it. In 1998 I said that

“I just hope that there is never an occasion on which British soldiers are left exposed and die because they do not have anti-personnel mines in their armoury”.—[Official Report, Commons, 10/7/1998; col. 1367.]