My Lords, the Bill that we are to discuss today is vital for the security of our nation. It enables the ratification and entry into force of the treaty between the UK and Mauritius concerning the Chagos Archipelago, including Diego Garcia, and thus protects the operation of an essential UK military base in the Indian Ocean. The consequences of not ratifying this treaty should not be underestimated. The inevitable effect would be to expose the UK to an unacceptable level of risk and legal uncertainty, which could deny us key military and security capabilities, dramatically reducing the effectiveness of our Armed Forces and security services. A binding judgment against the UK from an international court or tribunal would undermine our ability to operate globally to protect UK influence and counter the threats we face in an increasingly dangerous world, and it would put at risk security at home.
I understand that the treaty has divided opinion. We have had good debates in both this House and the other place on its substance, and I, of course, welcome this scrutiny. Since the Government signed the treaty, there have been Statements and debates across both Houses, hundreds of Questions raised and answered, and the completion of several committee inquiries by learned colleagues.
The necessity of the Diego Garcia treaty and of this Bill has been amply demonstrated. It has been tested in detail by the International Agreements Committee and the International Relations and Defence Committee. Both agreed that protection of the strategic value of Diego Garcia—a vital national asset—was necessary. The IAC clearly set out the path to significant risks to the base if the treaty were not ratified.
The Diego Garcia treaty has the support of our international allies. The United States has been engaged throughout the negotiations and supports it, as do the rest of our Five Eyes partners; Japan, South Korea and India support it as well. The UN, the Commonwealth and the African Union all welcomed it. Our overseas territories family supports it. The list goes on.
I welcome the opportunity to test this further today. The treaty is an important matter that the Government considered with great care. We bore the full weight of responsibility for not only the security of the British people but the integrity of the UK’s position on the global stage, and for respect for the experiences of those who had lived on the islands.
This treaty is critical to our national security. The base holds a range of vital capabilities, some of which are highly secret. I know that those with experience in this House will understand the military advantage of being able to deploy forces rapidly across the Middle East, east Africa and south Asia, and will appreciate the political and security importance of operating such a prized asset jointly with our closest partner, the United States.
The deal preserves this vital security footprint. With it, we will retain full operational control over Diego Garcia, with robust provisions to keep adversaries out. These include: unrestricted access to and use of the base for the UK and the US; a buffer zone around Diego Garcia; a UK veto to ensure that no development or construction on the outer islands threatens base operations; and a ban on the presence of any foreign security forces. The protections were designed, tested and endorsed at the highest level of the US political and security establishment.
My Lords, I thank the Minister for introducing the Bill, and I will come to some of her points shortly. This is now the second opportunity that we have had to debate the UK-Mauritius agreement concerning the Chagos Archipelago, including Diego Garcia, but it is of course the first time that your Lordships’ House has been asked to approve the agreement in law.
When we debated the Motion to approve the treaty under the CRaG process, I lamented the fact that the other place was denied the opportunity to have a substantive debate on the treaty at that point. If the Government are so confident in their arguments, why did they deny the other House the opportunity to debate this properly? As I said then, the Government played fast and loose with the conventions on treaty approval, despite promises that had been given by their own Ministers when the CRaG process was first introduced. The Government were elected on the back of pledges to put public service and integrity first; refusing to adhere to the conventions in this case hardly lived up to those promises.
That said, as a responsible Official Opposition—and recognising the primacy of the other place, which approved the Bill at Third Reading—we will not seek to deny the Bill a Second Reading today. We already know that the other place did not have the opportunity to debate the treaty when it was laid before the House, and the Bill subsequently received minimal scrutiny. In fact, Committee and Third Reading were both taken on the same day, and a total of just 17 hours of debate were allocated to a Bill that fundamentally changes our strategic security role in the Indian Ocean and puts £35 billion-worth of taxpayers’ money in the hands of politicians thousands of miles away from the UK.
Not only was there no mention of the Bill in the Labour manifesto; there was a specific promise to protect our overseas territories. For the election, the Minister’s party’s manifesto said:
If the noble Lord was so concerned to do this, first, why did he not consult earlier? Secondly, he can achieve his aims—which would not be wrecking but would be perfectly legitimate —by amendment to the Bill, delaying implementation, perhaps. Those things are standard. He could make his case, or perhaps even win his vote, and achieve his aims, should they be genuine and not a wrecking amendment.
This treaty is due to last 100 years. How is it a wrecking amendment to take 30 days to consult the people who will be affected by it? The Minister is talking nonsense, and she knows it.
Without that additional consultation of the Chagossian people, we fear that the Bill, which received so little scrutiny in the other place, will go on to become law without the affected Chagossians having their views heard, as they rightly should. I know that a number of them have turned up to the Public Gallery to hear this debate today.
I hope that the Government’s decision to withdraw the committal Motion at the last moment is an indication that they are listening to us and want to think about this more deeply. It is clear to us that we need that consultation, so I call upon the Minister to bring it forward as part of the committal Motion when the Government eventually bring it back to the House. As I said, the Government intend this treaty to last 100 years; surely, we can take one month to consult the people most affected by it.
To call the Bill a surrender Bill is an understatement. This is a strategic capitulation that will see us give away sovereign territory that has been British for two centuries. To add insult to injury, taxpayers are paying tens of billions to Mauritius for the privilege of doing so. We know the important, strategic role that the British Indian Ocean Territory has played internationally as a staging post for forward operations in both the Indian Ocean and the Middle East. Handing over sovereignty, even with a lease agreement in respect of Diego Garcia military base, puts, in our view, that strategic role in jeopardy.
In particular, the requirement in the agreement that Mauritius must be informed of armed attacks on third states directly emanating from the base on Diego Garcia is an astounding failure of diplomacy. Could the Government tell us how this would actually work in practice, in a rapidly changing armed conflict? Has the US, which actually runs this base, agreed to do that? How would it work in practice? How would we inform them in an emergency situation, with proper notice to enable us to take strategic action, as required?
All of our ODA spending is published. It is probably one of the most transparent bits of government funding. I will send the noble Lord the website address so he can have a look and satisfy himself on this point.
I am grateful for that; that is a concession, of sorts. I have only asked her the question four times during Questions so far. Now that she is willing to be more transparent, that is progress, at least.
Against that backdrop, hard-working Britons will be furious that Ministers have somehow found £35 billion to send 6,000 miles away when we face such financial challenges here at home. The fact is that the treaty facilitated by the Bill will fund tax cuts for Mauritius while taxes are being hiked here at home. We put this deal on hold when we were in Government, when it was in its infancy. We saw its flaws, and we paused it. Alas, Ministers no longer have the clarity of mind needed to deliver for the British people and are—
I am sorry, but that is factually incorrect and I would like to give the noble Lord the opportunity to correct it. It was paused, but when the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, was appointed Foreign Secretary, he restarted those negotiations.
I am happy to tell the Minister that I have spoken to the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, about that. He agreed that it was paused, which I think she has just confirmed.
Alas, Ministers no longer have the clarity of mind needed to deliver for the British people and, as so often with this Government, they have allowed themselves to be taken in by their international lawyer friends and donors. This all begs the question: why? Why did Ministers feel the need to pursue this agreement that puts Britain’s interests last? Why have the Government seen fit to saddle taxpayers with an additional financial burden, at a time when we are all being softened up for massive tax rises from the Chancellor of the Exchequer?
Ministers have told us, as the noble Baroness did again today, that this agreement is a legal necessity, but, as we heard from my noble friend Lord Wolfson of Tredegar when we debated the Motion to approve the treaty—I commend his speech to noble Lords who have not had the chance to see it yet—there is a range of views among very senior lawyers on this matter. The Government cannot hide behind legal advice, unless they want to publish it for us all to see. This was a political decision for which Ministers must take the political responsibility.
The almost single-minded obsession with international law has blinded the Government to the real threat from a country that itself pays absolutely no heed whatever to that same international law. We know that China has said that it wants to deepen its strategic partnership with Mauritius. As recently as 15 May this year, China’s ambassador to Mauritius said that the People’s Republic of China wanted to strengthen ties with Mauritius, noting the country’s “strategic advantages”, and expressed a commitment to elevating the bilateral strategic partnership. The Chinese ambassador to Mauritius is on the record as offering, unsurprisingly, massive congratulations on the deal and stating that China fully supports Mauritius’s attempt to “safeguard national sovereignty”. It is a shame that China does not show that same regard to the national sovereignty of other nations.
I have listened carefully to all the noble Lord’s contributions. I fear that he has missed something out, and I want to help him. First, can he explain briefly whether international law advice which was given to the previous Administration over the status of British sovereignty, and which has not changed for this Administration, has changed? Secondly, why did James Cleverly, on 3 November 2022, make a Statement to Parliament that that Government had decided to begin negotiations on the exercise of sovereignty over the BIOT Chagos Archipelago? If everything that he said was a point of principle, why did the previous Government accept that negotiations had to start on ceding sovereignty?
It is a matter of public record that discussions took place. I have spoken to both James Cleverly and to my noble friend Lord Cameron about this, and we are very clear that no agreement was possible along the terms that had been outlined. That is why the negotiations were paused and why we did not reach any agreement at the time. That is why we believe the process is flawed and why we will oppose the Bill.
20 of 116 shown
The Government acted to protect this vital asset because it faced an existential threat. This was well understood by the previous Government, which is why they started negotiations more than three years ago—negotiations that they entered in good faith, despite what we heard in the other place, and continued for 11 rounds, including detailed text-based negotiations in the weeks and months before the general election.
It was under the previous Government that Mauritius secured its string of legal and political victories against the UK. Noble Lords will be aware of the International Court of Justice’s advisory opinion in 2019 and the loss of votes at the UN General Assembly. This was followed in 2021 by a ruling by a special chamber of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea on a maritime delimitation dispute between Mauritius and the Maldives. The special chamber, in a decision that was binding on the parties to the dispute, ruled that Mauritius’s sovereignty was inferred from the ICJ’s determinations. This gave a clear indication of how this tribunal—and, quite possibly, other international courts and tribunals—would approach the ICJ’s advisory opinion and the sovereignty dispute between the UK and Mauritius.
I urge noble Lords to reflect on the sound conclusions of the International Agreements Committee and the International Relations and Defence Committee. The learned members of both committees took evidence from eminent legal scholars, including a former member of the ICJ. The IAC concluded that, if the treaty is not ratified,
“Mauritius is likely to resume its campaign against the UK through international courts”
and stated that it heard evidence that
“any international court looking at this issue would be unlikely to find in favour of the UK”,
putting the base at risk.
The Government have been clear about the legal position. Had a long-term deal not been reached, it was highly likely that wide-ranging litigation would have been brought quickly against the UK. There were several potential routes for this, which included further arbitral proceedings against the UK under Annex VII of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. A judgment from such a tribunal would be legally binding on the UK. The United Kingdom’s long-standing legal view has been that we would not have a realistic prospect of successfully defending our legal position on sovereignty in such litigation. Even if we had chosen to ignore legally binding judgments against the UK, their legal effect on third countries and international organisations would have given rise to real impacts on the operation of the base and the delivery of all its national security functions. We have all heard the counter- positions—that the Government are bowing to an opinion that is merely advisory and that there was no viable route to a binding judgment—but I am afraid those simply do not reflect the reality of this situation.
It is clear that securing a deal was essential. The agreement that the Government have signed protects the base for generations and is firmly in the national interest. The Government did not secure the base at any cost; we negotiated a deal that is good value for money for the British people. The full financial details were published alongside the treaty on the day of signature. The average cost per year in today’s money is £101 million, and the net present value of payments under the treaty is £3.4 billion. These figures have been verified by the Government Actuary’s Department. These figures draw on long-established methodology, used under this Government and previous Governments, to account for long-term projects. We have all heard, and I suspect we will hear again today, the Opposition claim that the cost is higher. This is grossly misleading. Accounting norms and processes set out in the Green Book are there for a reason: so we can understand the true value of things. Let us debate those values with transparency, not exaggeration or manipulation for political point-scoring.
I suspect that some in this House will have heard concerns regarding undue influence on Mauritius from hostile forces. The Opposition were quite vocal on the subject in the other place—although, interestingly, we heard barely a peep before 4 July last year, when they were in negotiations. The treaty is the only way to ensure the base continues to operate as it has done, with all the protections that I listed earlier, including threats from our adversaries; whereas, had Mauritius secured a binding judgment against the UK, there would have been nothing to stop it leasing different islands to different countries, dramatically undermining the utility of this prized military asset.
As with any government policy, it is crucial that we discuss the people who are at the heart of it. I know there is a deep strength of feeling, genuinely held, in this House and the other place about Chagossians. Let me be clear: this Government deeply regret the way the Chagossians were removed from the islands. We are committed to building a relationship with the Chagossian community that is built on respect and acknowledgement of the wrongs of the past. The negotiations on the treaty were necessarily state-to-state between Mauritius and the UK, and it is true that our priority was to secure the base, but that does not mean that the interests of the Chagossian community were set aside. Indeed, the treaty has the support of many in the Chagossian community. Olivier Bancoult, chair of the Chagos Refugee Group, which is the largest Chagossian group, has said
“we remain convinced that this agreement provides the only way forward”,
and in a recent communiqué urged all Members of the UK Parliament to support the Bill.
The treaty provides that Mauritius may develop a programme of resettlement on the Chagos Archipelago, other than Diego Garcia, and noble Lords will also be aware of the £40 million trust fund for Mauritius to use in support of Chagossians. I know many in this House are interested in the operation of these commitments. My noble friend Lord Collins noted in this place that, ahead of ratification, the Government would make a ministerial Statement in both Houses providing a factual update on eligibility for resettlement and the modalities of the trust fund.
I know that many noble Lords are also interested in the environmental consequences of the treaty. It is crucial that one of the world’s most pristine marine environments is protected, and this Government and Mauritius are committed to that. Mauritian Prime Minister Ramgoolam has publicly stated his commitment to the marine protected area and confirmed it directly to the former Environment Secretary at the UN Ocean Conference in June.
Just yesterday, the Mauritian Government announced plans for the establishment of the Chagos Archipelago marine protected area. This will be based on the robust International Union for the Conservation of Nature categories for marine protected areas. Critically, it makes it clear that there will be no commercial fishing across the entire 640,000 square kilometre area. The Great Chagos Bank will be given one of the highest levels of protection, with the rest of the MPA categorised as a highly protected conservation zone. There will be limited provision for controlled levels of artisanal fishing in confined zones intended for resettlement to allow for sustenance of the Chagossian community, while maintaining the commitment to nature conservation. This development should assuage the concerns we have heard in this House and the other place about Mauritian commitments to environmental protections.
Despite this progress, and the passage of the Bill in the other place, there are still those here who want to relitigate the debate that we had in July. There are Motions intended to probe and amend at Committee and Report. They are welcome, but Motions that are designed to wreck are not about the welfare of a community; they are a cynical tactic of delay and disruption. The Opposition Front Bench has tried blocking ratification, yet seems unable to accept the will of this House. I am disappointed, but unsurprised, that we all now look likely to have to witness an unedifying spectacle of it having another go.
Noble Lords will notice that we are not considering a committal Motion to commit the Bill to Committee today. As noble Lords know, it is extremely unusual to table a Motion to seek to divide the House to delay the passage of government legislation passed by the House of Commons. It is even more unusual for the Opposition to press such a Motion to a vote on the Floor of the House, as they have indicated they would. We know that His Majesty’s Opposition take their responsibilities seriously. They have said on multiple occasions to my noble friend the Leader of the House of Lords that their motivation is to properly challenge and scrutinise government legislation. That is their job; it is not to block legislation or stop the Government getting their programme through.
Let me share the truth of this matter. The amendment to the committal Motion favoured by the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, is, in effect, a fatal Motion. I will explain why: it makes committal conditional on consultation. It is not credible to undertake meaningful consultation in the 30-day period set out in the Motion. It would therefore risk progress towards ratification becoming bogged down in litigation. The Front Bench opposite should know that; I would be surprised if they do not.
The Motion would wreck the Bill and mean a delay not of 30 days but of months, maybe years. In these circumstances, the Bill and the treaty that it is intended to implement could not move ahead. This is both reckless and deeply cynical. It is reckless because it threatens the continued operation of the base on Diego Garcia and, with that, the national security of the British people. It is cynical because the Opposition now seek to use, for their own ends, a community they systematically disregarded when in government. We all know their record: the decision not to consult Chagossians when meaningful consultation was possible at the start of negotiations; the decision in 2016 not to permit any resettlement by Chagossians across the archipelago; and the dramatic failure to spend 96% of the £40 million commitment to support Chagossians.
It is worth contrasting that record with the record of this Government. We are financing a new trust fund for Mauritius to use in support of the Chagossian community. We are working with Mauritius to start a new programme of visits for Chagossians to the Chagos Archipelago, including Diego Garcia. The treaty we have entered allows Mauritius to develop a programme of resettlement on the islands other than Diego Garcia. This Government are also increasing our support to Chagossians living in the UK through new and existing projects. These are initiatives that actually deliver for Chagossians; they are not empty promises or hollow words.
The Bill is relatively short. It preserves the current laws of the British Indian Ocean Territory as laws that will continue to apply to Diego Garcia once the treaty is in force, allowing for the base’s continued, effective operation with minimal disruption. The Bill also grants a new power to make the domestic legal changes needed to implement the treaty and to manage responsibly the base’s future operation.
There will be no change to the British nationality status that any Chagossian currently holds, whether it is a British citizenship or a British Overseas Territory citizenship, and current pathways for Chagossians to acquire British citizenship are also maintained. Most of the provisions in the Bill will commence only when the treaty enters into force. I trust that we will have a lively and thorough debate on this subject matter, and I look forward to debating the Bill’s contents. I beg to move.
“Defending our security also means protecting the British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies … Labour will always defend their sovereignty and right to self-determination”.
It seems that tax is not the only manifesto commitment being binned today.
Crucially, the views of the Chagossian people have not been heard. We feel it is only right that the Government should be required to consult the Chagossian community on the implementation of this treaty, including on the establishment of the Chagossian trust fund, which the Minister discussed. The UK taxpayer will fund it, but the Mauritian Government will have sole responsibility to distribute it however they see fit.
That is why I tabled the amendment to the original committal Motion that would have required the Government to consult the Chagossian community over a period of 30 days. If the Minister is concerned that 30 days is not long enough, I note that we talked about making it longer, but we did not do so because we wanted the Government to have the opportunity to get their Bill through this Session. If I had set the Motion at three months, the Minister would have told us that there is no time to have a Committee debate before the end of this Session because the Opposition are trying to deny them the Bill. We deliberately selected a short period so that the Minister could not argue that we were trying to wreck the Bill—that was not our intention. It was a measured, reasonable approach which we felt would have made up completely for the Government’s failure to consult the Chagossians to date and would help us in our work to give the Bill the proper scrutiny it deserves, informed by the outcome of that consultation. It was not a wrecking amendment, and the Minister knows that in her heart of hearts. Without that additional consultation—
My noble friend Lady Goldie will expand on some of the security implications of this agreement, but we are clear that it is a capitulation that weakens our influence on the international stage. It is a surrender orchestrated by international lawyers and implemented by a Prime Minister who is either unwilling or unable to stand up for the UK national interest.
The Bill does not just relate to the UK’s affairs in the Indian Ocean; the sheer cost of the treaty with Mauritius makes the Bill a domestic issue, too. By pressing ahead with this legislation, the Government are facilitating an agreement that will see the UK pay almost £35 billion to Mauritius. I notice that the Minister spent quite a bit of her time disagreeing with those figures, yet only one hour ago, when I asked her how much of the ODA budget is being dedicated to this agreement, she got a cheap laugh, and avoided the question once again, as she has now done four times. However, she knows, as I know, that some of that ODA budget is being used to fund this agreement. If she wishes to be so transparent and disagree with our figures, why does she not tell us how much of it is going to be spent from the ODA budget? She can stand up and do it now, if she wishes.
That is who the Government have appeased with this agreement. When the Government took office, they claimed that they would protect our national security. Can the Minister please explain how ceding national sovereignty to a country that is known to be deepening its ties with a nation that we know to be a threat to the UK will help them achieve that manifesto commitment?
As the Official Opposition, we will seek to amend the Bill in your Lordships’ House to ensure that the Chagossian community is properly consulted and that the agreement facilitated by the Bill does not put the desires of international lawyers before the interests of the British people, who have paid the taxes which are now to be transferred with careless abandon to Mauritius.
Speaking of the rights of the Chagossians, I find myself on this occasion in the unusual position of agreeing with noble Lords to my left when I say that the Government have not handled this well. In the other place, the Liberal Democrat spokesman, Dr Al Pinkerton, said that,
“this Bill fails the Chagossian people”.—[Official Report, Commons, 20/10/25; col. 756.].”
On this, we agree. Ministers have failed to properly consult the Chagossians to the point that the community is now furious with this Government, as we have all seen from our email inboxes.
However, there was another way. In the other place, the shadow Foreign Secretary, Dame Priti Patel, tabled a presentation Bill which included specific requirements
“to consult and engage with British Chagossians in relation to any proposed changes to the sovereignty and constitutional arrangements of the British Indian Ocean Territory”.
That is what should happen. The Chagossian community should be heard and not ignored.
In conclusion, the questions at the core of all our debates will remain these. Is this treaty a good deal for Britain? Does the Bill put us in the service of the British people? I do not think that it does—