Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe

Lord Dubs Excerpts

Thursday 30th March 2017 Grand Committee

[Lord Dubs (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Bowness, on having secured this debate, and perhaps even more importantly, on the very positive role that he has taken as leader of the British delegation to the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly. He and I have discussed on numerous occasions the work of the assembly and the OSCE in the wider sense. There are, of course, a number of issues on which reform is desirable, and I know that the noble Lord is battling hard to achieve those reforms, so I am delighted to be part of his delegation and I salute him on the work that he has been doing.

I have been a member of the parliamentary assembly for several years. Last year, we saw Roberto Montella become the new Secretary-General, which was desirable. We also have a brilliant British ambassador to the OSCE in Vienna, Ambassador Sian MacLeod. We had dinner with her in a restaurant in Vienna and an excellent briefing from her and her staff, and that was very positive and helpful.

One of the most useful things that the parliamentary assembly does is election monitoring. That is not because we uncover all sorts of scandals; it is because the countries that are having elections and know that we are coming take care not to do anything that we might pick up as being a breach of proper electoral behaviour. Of course, one occasionally sees administrative inefficiencies—I saw some myself—but we keep the system clean. People ask why the OSCE monitors British and American elections. The answer is that if we monitor elections in Russia and in some other countries that have more dubious democratic credentials, they will say that we cannot monitor just them; we have to monitor here as well. There have been monitoring missions to our elections—of course, we cannot take part in monitoring in our own country; but it is a positive part of the work.

I noticed that some countries attach great importance to the work of the parliamentary assembly. I cannot speak so much for the OSCE, but it is interesting that there was a resolution criticising one of the Stans—I cannot remember which one—and we immediately had the ambassador on our doorstep demanding to see us and demanding that we vote against the resolution. I pointed out to him that the only time we ever saw people from his country was when there was a resolution down for an OSCE plenary. Why did he not show more interest in us at other times? That fell on somewhat deaf ears; I had better not mention him.

It is, however, clear that some countries attach more importance to their delegations to the assembly than perhaps we do, as evidenced by the fact that too many representatives at the parliamentary assembly seem to confine their speeches to government handouts. Perhaps our Government would like that: no, I am sure that they would not. We, in fact, are pretty free-thinking, and although we get briefings from Ministers here before we set out, and the Foreign Office gives us written briefing, we do our own thing as seems right. It is somewhat depressing that some countries feel that their only job there is to make political speeches on behalf of their Government. On one occasion, I said something that was slightly critical of the British Government—I am sure that Ministers would accept that—and somebody came up to me and asked for my speech. I said, “I haven’t got a speech; I have five words on a bit of paper, because that tends to be the way we do things, as opposed to these handouts”.

Having taken the tragic step of leaving the EU, we will need more international links in the future. Whatever criticisms we might therefore make of the OSCE, subject to the reforms which I hope the noble Lord, Lord Bowness, will achieve in the near future, it is still clear that we will need those international links. Whatever the weaknesses of the OSCE and the debates there, at the very least it gives us international context, the chance to have debates and, on the fringes of the conference, the chance to have chats with politicians from other countries. That is pretty positive.

A lot of time in the parliamentary assembly has been taken by specific discussions about Ukraine and the Crimea, and Russian action there. The parliamentary assembly has given us some chance to contrast the way in which the Russians went into the Crimea and had a quick referendum, as they called it, without any of the objective context which we, for example, had in Scotland for its referendum or indeed in Northern Ireland. I say to those people: just have a look at Scotland. We had several years of debate and there was an even-handed approach. There had to be even access to the media on both sides. There was no army there telling the people how to vote. At the end of that time, the people of Scotland decided they did not wish to leave the United Kingdom. Contrast that with what happened in the Crimea.

In the excellent Library briefing pack, I see that there is a letter dated 15 March and headed “Statement by the Delegation of the Russian Federation”. It says:

“The multi-ethnic population of Crimea took the corresponding decisions”


—to join Russia—

“by a huge majority in a free and fair expression of its will. The status of the Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol as constituent entities of the Russian Federation is not open to reconsideration or discussion. Crimea is and will remain Russian. This is a fact that our partners will have to come to terms with. This position is based on and fully complies with international law”.

Well, we know what we think about that stuff. It seems to be wrong in every respect. I say to the Russians: have a look at the way we decide things in the United Kingdom—for example in Scotland, where an important decision was done fairly and democratically.

Briefly, I am a member of the migration committee of the OSCE, which does some quite useful work in looking at refugees and other issues. I am also a member of the Moldova committee, which is more difficult these days.

There is a disconnect between the OSCE and the parliamentary assembly. I would like that assembly—I know that the noble Lord, Lord Bowness, would like this, too—to get closer to the day-to-day work of the OSCE. When visiting a country, I sometimes suddenly realise that there is an effective OSCE mission there. But the parliamentary assembly is not able, so far, to engage with that as fully as we would like. I know that changes are on the way. A final thought: as far as I know, no country of the 57 in the OSCE still has the death penalty, with two exceptions: the United States and Belarus. Our next plenary will be in Minsk in July and we will have to tell them a thing or two about the death penalty.