Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe

Lord Dubs Excerpts

Tuesday 17th October 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dubs (Lab)]

My Lords, I am delighted to follow the noble Lord, Lord Smith, and welcome the fact he initiated this debate. The noble Lord, Lord Bowness, was a member of the OSCE parliamentary assembly for quite a number of years and was held in incredibly high regard by parliamentarians from a range of countries. He really enhanced this country’s reputation because of the high regard in which he was held. I am not saying the noble Lord, Lord Smith, will not emulate that, but he has not had as long a go at it as the noble Lord, Lord Bowness. I saw the way noble Lord, Lord Bowness, handled things and was respected; it was quite a nice thing for this country that we had somebody who was so well regarded.

My experience is primarily of the parliamentary assembly, with a membership of 57 countries. I will say a little about the OSCE and the parliamentary assembly, then look at the difficulties we are facing because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and its consequences.

I have one criticism. The OSCE as a body does a lot of good work. The parliamentary assembly, which also does good work, does not link closely with the OSCE. I think the two should be brought more closely together. This is a matter of the management of the OSCE and the parliamentary assembly. It would be healthier if we could scrutinise the work of the OSCE in rather more detail than we normally can in the parliamentary assembly. This difficulty has bedevilled the organisation for some time; I am sure it can be solved. Given the United Kingdom’s generous contributions to the work of the OSCE—I understand they were generous—we have some influence and ought to be able to do something about it.

I will say a little about how the parliamentary assembly is working, and then I will get on to the position of Russia. There are three plenary assemblies of the parliamentary assembly. I do not understand where this has come from, but by convention the British delegation only goes to two: Vienna in the spring and the main assembly in the summer. We tend not to go to the autumn assembly, unless you are the leader of the delegation or serving on a committee that is meeting at the same time, which occasionally happens. It is a little odd that we do not attend the third. I do not think we got to this position because of cost, but it is certainly a little odd. We have to explain to our fellow parliamentarians from other countries why we will not be at the plenary, when they are all going.

I have a criticism of the way in which the parliamentary assembly works. It is meant to be an assembly of parliamentarians, and we understand what that means, but, in some countries, parliamentarians see themselves not as independent people who give their voice to the issues but as people who put forward the views of their own Government. They do not seem to have any independence of mind or attitude, whereas parliamentarians from the British, German, Canadian, French and American delegations, and from most of western Europe, all feel that we should contribute as parliamentarians.

I remember there was a resolution some years ago— I cannot remember whether it was about Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan or wherever—and the ambassador of that country asked to come and see me. We had a cup of coffee, and he demanded that we oppose the resolution. I said, “First of all, you and I have never met and you come here only when you want me to oppose something on the order paper. That is not quite the way to behave. We are totally independent. With due respect, I do not think you, an ambassador, should tell British parliamentarians how they should vote. We are independent of government—we are independent of the British Government and we are certainly independent of your Government”, and he disappeared. I hope I did not cause him too much upset—I did not mean to, but it was a bit of cheek, frankly. But that was some years ago, and it has not happened since then.

Inevitably—but still unhelpfully—we find that, from time to time, whatever the topic of debate at a plenary, the old arguments are always brought forward; for example, the tension between Armenia and Azerbaijan. That has been going for a long time—long before the present crisis in Nagorno-Karabakh—but it tends to come in whatever the ostensible topic of the debate is, as do arguments about Cyprus, Greece and Turkey. We cannot do anything about that. If parliamentarians feel extremely strongly about those issues—in some cases, their Governments obviously feel extremely strongly —I understand why they give voice to this. We are used to parliamentarians being independent, and it is a bit unusual that it does not always work that way.

I am most honoured to be a member of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly migration committee—it is a mouthful—which has parliamentarians from about 15 countries and debates issues to do with refugees and migration. We get a different perspective there from what we get here simply because of the nature of the membership of the committee. There is an excellent clerk, Farimah Daftary, who keeps it going brilliantly and provides excellent briefings. Frankly, to me, it is as useful as anything that I have done on the parliamentary assembly.

The other issue mentioned in the noble Lord’s introduction is election monitoring. This is important because, although we do not identify many examples of blatant fraud or cheating, the fact that there is an international monitoring force keeps the thing a bit cleaner than it would otherwise be. The trouble is that there are other issues that you cannot spot on the day, such as whether the media have given the opposition parties in any country a fair chance in the run-up to the election. These can be highlighted by the OSCE itself, which looks at this over the longer term.

Election monitoring is a fascinating process. I remember going to eastern Turkey, Serbia and the United States, and one gets an insight into the country in question that one would not get on a normal parliamentary visit. It is fascinating to go to obscure parts of the country to visit polling stations and see how it all operates. If it helps to keep the elections respectable and clean, it is a good thing. Sometimes, we have to be careful not to tell them what to do. We are tempted to because we have seen some of the issues in our own elections and want to say, “Please don’t do it like that”. We have to keep clear of that: we are there to monitor.

Normally, they welcome us. There was an issue in the United States where, in some parts of the country, they did not want us to go into polling stations. In any case, because of the voting machines, it is a bit different: one does not have to watch how they deal with bits of paper. A lot of the accountability, particularly in countries where all the counting is done at individual polling stations, involves recording how many ballot papers they got and then making sure that they have accounted for them with votes cast and surplus ballot papers returned. I observed an election in Serbia where there were four elections on the same day, including for the President, a mayor and members of the assembly. The ballot papers were slightly different in colour only, and confusion was therefore possible—but it got sorted. With a bit more thought beforehand, they could have avoided this by having clearly distinguishable ballot papers. Every voter had to go in and sign for each of the four ballot papers, and, if the number of signatures did not tally with the number of ballot papers issued, there was a problem. Of course, in the rush of an election day, it did not always work out, but it was an interesting experience.

On Russia’s and Belarus’s membership, it is a tragedy that the work of the OSCE itself and the parliamentary assembly is being hampered, handicapped and made much more difficult by the Russians’ attitude, aided by Belarus. As the noble Lord said, we have the “minus one” formula and cannot just expel the Russians because if two countries oppose anything, we are stymied, even if the other 55 countries want it. I hope that will not be a reason for stopping the OSCE; we should keep going, because the Russian invasion and what Russia is doing in Ukraine will surely not last for ever, and it would be a pity if an international organisation and initiative that has so much potential—it stretches from the United States and Canada right through into the former Soviet republics—were to stop. So I hope that the Government will see the OSCE as something positive and go on supporting its work.