Diego Garcia Military Base and British Indian Ocean Territory Bill

Report

Clause 1: Commencement of Treaty and main provisions of this Act

Amendment 1

1: Clause 1, page 1, line 7, at end insert “, subject to subsection (2A). (2A) Sections 2 to 4 of this Act come into force only when the Secretary of State has sought to negotiate an amendment to Article 11 of the Treaty to ensure that the United Kingdom would cease to make payments to the government of Mauritius in the event that the use of the Base for military purposes became impossible.”Member’s explanatory statement This amendment seeks to ensure that, before the ratification of the Treaty, His Majesty's Government makes arrangements for the terms of payment should environmental or other issues make the military use of the Base permanently impossible.

My Lords, happy new year to everyone. I will speak to Amendments 1 and 38. In an earlier debate on the Bill, I raised the concern that the UK is required, under Article 11 of the treaty, to continue to pay Mauritius even were the military base on Diego Garcia to become unusable. There seems to be no break or conditional clause agreeing any reasons why the UK may cease these payments before the 99-year date is reached.

Article 15 sets out how Mauritius may react should the UK cease payment, but this is a reason why Mauritius may terminate the treaty, not the UK. If the UK were to persist in not honouring its obligation to pay, the treaty would perforce be terminated by Mauritius. For the avoidance of doubt, would that mean that Article 1 of the treaty is still applicable and sovereignty would remain with Mauritius? Can the Minister confirm the Government’s view on this? I have forewarned her of this question.

In Committee on 18 November, the Minister said in response to my question about the base no longer being usable:

“I will reflect on this and try to come back to him with a more thorough response, because I can see that he … wants to know that the Government have given this the proper consideration that he would expect. I undertake to do that”.—[Official Report, 18/11/25; col. 772.]

If she has written with this further information, I have not yet received it. Fundamentally, does she feel that the environmental risks and the risks of other possible events, such as a major destructive attack on the base or even a decision by the United States that it has no further use for it, are sufficiently remote and unlikely for the UK to be able to accept—or have a possibly messy and even dishonourable termination, where considerable sums of taxpayers’ money may be involved?

As this is Report, I do not intend to do more than point this out without detail, but experience tells us that much can and does change over time. In well under the past 100 years, foes have become friends and friends, potential and real, have become foes. Weapon technology may well change and has frequently done so, as has how operations are mounted and security maintained. America could decide that it has no need for the base for operational reasons or even cease to act as a world police force and revert to isolationism. Is there any legally binding agreement between the UK and the United States that it will continue its use of the base or have need of its use for the 99-year duration of the treaty?

My Lords, I rise to speak in support of Amendment 1, to which I attach my name, and to reinforce the arguments made by my noble and gallant friend Lord Craig of Radley. This amendment is not moved by any wider purpose than common sense, and we trust that the Government will respond accordingly.

Currently, the Bill makes no provision for the circumstances under which the requirement to pay an annual fee for the use of the Diego Garcia base is revisited in the event of the base becoming unusable for military purposes. My noble and gallant friend has already mentioned the potential risks to the utility of the base arising from an extreme environmental event, the future potential for a policy change by the United States and the potential for the technical obsolescence of the base to come about. I argue that concerns regarding potential legal initiatives to constrain the use of the base, particularly partial constraints deriving from nuclear exclusion agreements or the question of Mauritius as the sovereign power having to honour obligations for the authorisation of offensive operations from the base, should be added to that list of concerns.

I fear that the greatest future concern should perhaps be the full or partial destruction of the base through military action by a hostile state. This might seem a surprising concern given the extremely remote nature of this base, but I have been to it. I argue quite strongly that the strategic importance of the base, its entirely militaristic purpose and its extreme remoteness from civilian life all combine to make it a highly vulnerable and attractive target.

The principal tenets for the use of force in warfare are distinction, military necessity, humanity and proportionality. Pause for a moment to imagine the early stages of a global conflict, when a desire for escalation dominance prompts a hostile nation to destroy a western strategic asset as a proportionate response, with no risk of collateral damage to a civilian population, attracting relatively minor moral opprobrium but resulting in huge military benefit. I cannot think of an obviously better or more considered target than Diego Garcia.

My Lords, I add my voice to those of the noble and gallant Lords, Lord Craig of Radley and Lord Houghton of Richmond. It seems to me that this is precisely the kind of question that ought to have been looked at in detail. The more we have sat here and gone through clause by clause, the more it seems that these issues were avoided in the negotiations. I wonder whether the Minister has read the report in today’s Times newspaper about where the impetus for this treaty had come from. It quotes a senior figure involved in the administration of the BIOT as saying that it was

“championed by a small number of civil servants”

and that

“in multiple conversations with military and BIOT administration staff it is clear that there is no one who supports this treaty”.

Maybe if we had had those conversations with the people on the ground, military and civil, issues of the kind raised by the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig, would have been anticipated, but if they were not, is not the fundamental purpose of this Chamber to address them at this stage? For that reason, should we not be backing the points made by the noble and gallant Lords?

My Lords, I gave very careful consideration to the points raised in these amendments by both noble and gallant Lords. They raise significant issues, which I am very sympathetic to. I am also very keen to hear the Minister’s response, given her commitment in Committee, especially in relation to the consequences of Article 1 of the treaty, as the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig of Radley, has indicated.

There are, however, elements of the amendments which I am perhaps not entirely persuaded by. They are the conditions within the bailiwick of the Mauritian Government that could give rise to the circumstances where we would seek to stop payments. They are not covered by this amendment, per se. They would, however, be covered in subsection (4) of the proposed new clause in my Amendment 50, which will be discussed much later during our considerations today and which would create the conditions where, if the Mauritian Government by their actions were putting at risk the consequences of our payments, Parliament would be able to pause the payments.

If there are reasons unspecified by Amendment 1 which are non-defence related, there is the potential for UK funding for resettlement support, the trust fund operations or Chagossian community-specific support to be put at risk, so it is worth while to separate out the defence interests from the other elements of the treaties. As the mechanisms in Amendment 50 are preferable in our view, we would find it difficult to support these amendments.

My Lords, Amendment 26 standing in my name states that:

“Sections 2 to 4 come into force only when the Secretary of State has assessed … the impact of the termination of all rights granted by the Treaty to the United Kingdom with respect to the entire Chagos Archipelago through Article 15 of the Treaty”

and

“the impact of the arrangements in Article 15 on the leverage opportunities at the Secretary of State’s disposal in negotiating with Mauritius after ratification”.

Article 15(1)(a) of the Mauritius treaty states that Mauritius can terminate the Mauritius Treaty in the event of

“a failure by the United Kingdom to make payment as required by Article 11”.

This means that if a payment is more than 22 days late, the entire Mauritius treaty is terminated, subject of course to the fact that sovereignty over the Chagos Islands will be in the hands of Mauritius. In that event, we would lose absolutely everything, and if the United States wanted to keep its Diego Garcia base, it would probably have to do so by force. While the United Kingdom could no doubt seek to achieve this, China, Russia and other countries could protest very loudly and have international law on their side. It would provide an excuse for any other power to try to take Diego Garcia and could lead to a major war.

Of course, the Government can respond by saying that this will not happen if we pay on time—and, no doubt, they will assure that we will pay. While we are protected from this eventuality by dutifully paying up completely and always on time, Article 15(1)(a) places the United Kingdom, and by extension the United States, in a formally intolerable, weak position.

To understand the problems arising from the very weak footing on which the treaty places us when negotiating with Mauritius, we must appreciate the huge concerns about what happens in relation to the Chagos Islands beyond Diego Garcia. Mauritius has a clear incentive, arising from the income stream we have promised, to seek additional income streams for leasing other islands or parts of islands. The Government have sought to make much of the fact that we have a veto on the deployment of security and defence forces beyond Diego Garcia, but the problem is that the real threats do not announce themselves as deployment of security and defence forces and are much more subtle. Something that begins as a non-security and defence deployment, in relation to which we have no veto, can evolve into something very different—an emergent risk, over which the treaty affords us no right of veto but only a right to object. The right to object can be resolved only on a consensual basis within the joint committee between the UK and Mauritius proposed by the Mauritius treaty and could no doubt take a long time if Mauritius wanted it to. It is here that our complete lack of leverage provided by paragraph 1(a) of Article 15 is a particular cause for concern.

My Lords, as we begin our proceedings on Report, let me reiterate our view, as the Official Opposition, that the treaty that the Government have agreed with Mauritius puts the interests of the British people last. It is an abject surrender that we would never have agreed to. It was mentioned nowhere in the Government’s election manifesto, and it stands in stark contrast to their manifesto commitment to protect the British Overseas Territories. The British people were not consulted on the treaty, yet it will see over £34 billion-worth of taxpayers’ money paid to the Government of Mauritius over the treaty’s lifetime. That is a political decision by this Government at a time when taxes to the British public are being hiked to an all-time high.

In stark contrast, the Mauritian Prime Minister said that the money from the Chagos deal will fund debt repayments and tax cuts as part of a budget package that will see 80% of Mauritian workers exempted completely from income tax.

However, it is, of course, not just the British people who have not been consulted but the Chagossians themselves, who have suffered so much over many years and have not had their voice heard in this process either.

I am pleased to say that the Government have rightly shared some more details about the Chagossian Contact Group they have set up, but it should not have taken forceful pressure from the Opposition to deliver that transparency. Even with those details, the Chagossian people have not been formally consulted by the British Government on this treaty. We have only to look at the recent report from the International Relations and Defence Committee on the opinion of Chagossians to know exactly what they think of this treaty.

In the other place, we opposed the Bill at Third Reading, and we still oppose it. But, of course, now that we are on Report, we will work constructively with noble Lords across the House to seek to improve the Bill today.

My Lords, one criterion which the House may like to have in mind as we consider the amendments before us is whether they would prevent the Government ratifying the treaty. We have to pass the Bill before the treaty can be ratified, and some of these amendments would ensure that ratification could not take place until there had been some renegotiation or a new negotiation.

The House decided, at the end of June, that it wanted to ratify the treaty. The House voted for ratification; the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, argued that it should not do so, but it chose to follow the advice of its International Agreements Committee and voted for the ratification of the treaty. Consistent with the view we have held up to now, I believe that, today, we should not pass any amendments that would require renegotiation.

I believe that for a number of reasons. One is that we would make ourselves an international laughing stock. Having spent all these years negotiating this treaty—and having secured the strong support of the United States Administration, as well as that of our friends in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and India, for this treaty—it would be very peculiar if we decided that, on second thought, we wanted not to ratify this treaty but to restart negotiation with Mauritius. I do not know how our American friends would react. They can, as recent history shows, be impulsive. It is conceivable that they might think that the best way of securing the use of the base in Diego Garcia would be to switch sides and to decide that a deal between the United States and Mauritius would be better for the long-term security of the United States than the deal that the British have negotiated with Mauritius. That is possible; it is not a risk I would wish to run. We would make ourselves look very strange if we refused to ratify the treaty.

Amendment 6 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, would require us to renegotiate the treaty and insert a provision that it could be extended, after 99 years, only on the same terms as it now exists or on terms that would be more favourable to the British. I do not know much about Mauritius but I would have thought that no Government in any country could agree that a treaty could be changed only on terms that would be less advantageous to them. It seems to me that an absurd proposition is being put forward here.

In general, my point applies, I hope, to a whole lot of amendments for which I would have much more sympathy—such as the amendment in the name of the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig. He makes a valid point, but his amendment says that that point would have to be explored with the Mauritius Government before the treaty could be ratified. Therefore, I am afraid, I cannot support it.

My Lords, I wish briefly to speak to Amendment 40 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Callanan. I am struck by the fact that, in all his interventions so far in these debates—at Second Reading, in Committee and, now, on Report—he has never referred at all to the report of the International Agreements Committee on this treaty. He also seems not to have registered, let alone to respect, the vote that was taken at the end of the debate on 30 June.

The point I am making is that, were the noble Lord to go back to the documents and the evidence that was tabled at the time when the International Agreements Committee’s report was laid before this House, he would find there the testimony of Sir Christopher Greenwood. It is remarkably convincing and answers the question posed by the noble Lord in his Amendment 40; it describes what Sir Christopher thinks would happen in circumstances where Mauritius returned to a route that involved international litigation.

It is all set out there. He is an extremely distinguished British national judge of the International Court of Justice. It has nothing to do with the advisory opinion. It is to do with his views about the situation that would then exist. He believes that Mauritius would not have too much difficulty in convincing any international court to which it took litigation that the Chagos Islands were transferred at the time of Mauritian independence.