British Indian Ocean Territory

Wednesday 28th January 2026 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I advise the House that I have not selected the amendment.

12:53

[Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House is opposed to the United Kingdom ceding sovereignty over the British Indian Ocean Territory; believes that the United Kingdom should not give £34.7 billion to Mauritius when that money could be spent on the armed forces; further believes that the Diego Garcia British Military Base and Indian Ocean Territory Bill breaches the Exchange of notes constituting an agreement concerning the availability for defence purposes of the British Indian Ocean Territory, London, 30 December 1966 with the United States, as does the UK/Mauritius: Agreement concerning the Chagos Archipelago including Diego Garcia, and therefore that the Government should not proceed with the Bill; and also believes that Parliament must approve any changes to the 1966 Exchange of notes through the process set out under the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010.

Labour’s £35 billion Chagos surrender deal is falling apart every single day. It is high time that the Prime Minister tore up this atrocious surrender treaty and put Britain’s interests, security, and hard-pressed taxpayers first. The Opposition have made that clear from day one, and have taken every opportunity to expose the deceit, falsehoods and foolishness of the approach taken by Labour. Whether it is on arguments of international law, defence and security, self-determination, the importance of the Chagossian people standing up for their rights, or the environment, it is the Conservatives who have been standing up for Britain’s national interests by unequivocally opposing this surrender treaty.

[Sir Alec Shelbrooke (Wetherby and Easingwold) (Con)]

Building on what my right hon. Friend is saying, is she not shocked that most Labour MPs cannot be bothered to turn up for this debate?

[Priti Patel]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I think it demonstrates their disdain and contempt for the British people, quite frankly. It is pretty obvious that as the Prime Minister and various other Ministers travel the globe, they go around waving the white flag of surrender. [Interruption.] Government Members can sit there chuntering, but the British public can see exactly what is going on with them: they are weak, feeble and giving away the public’s money.

Had the Prime Minister—[Interruption.] The Minister is chuntering about the start of the negotiations, but this deal is on him, the Labour Government, their lefty friends and their international law agreements. [Interruption.] Perhaps the Minister would like to listen; he might learn a few things today. Had the Prime Minister and his dear friend the Attorney General—[Interruption.] Perhaps the hon. Member would like to contribute to the debate, and will put her name down to speak. If not, I suggest that she sits and listens.

Had the Prime Minister, the Attorney General, and the real Foreign Secretary, Jonathan Powell—along with those who are or were Foreign Secretary in name only—got their way, the Mauritian flag would already be flying over the Chagos archipelago, and hundreds of millions of £35 billion of taxpayers’ money would already be lining the coffers of a foreign Government.

[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

I invite my right hon. Friend to challenge the Minister to deal with the issue of the treaty of Pelindaba, which I think came into force in 2009. It was designed to prevent African nuclear proliferation. If we breach that treaty by means of this deal, it would open up an opportunity for all kinds of hostile powers, including China, to site nuclear weapons in Africa. Do the Government realise that? I know that my right hon. Friend certainly does.

[Priti Patel]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. Again, it is the Opposition who have been raising the issue that this deal gives succour and strength to Britain’s enemies. All the people who are working against us—China, Russia and Iran—will accelerate their plotting with their Mauritian friends on how to undermine the operationalisation of the military base on Diego Garcia, and on how to exert their influence in the Indo-Pacific at the expense of all our interests.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the shadow Secretary of State and the Conservatives for their consistent focus on this issue. Does the shadow Secretary of State share my concerns about the long-term guarantee for the UK, the right to extend the military lease, and the right of access under the treaty? This essential base can never have any ambiguity attached to it.

[Priti Patel]

The hon. Member is absolutely right, and he speaks to my fundamental point about capitulation, surrender and the way that the Government have worked against Britain’s interests. We see that night and day, and it is unforgiveable.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend is making an excellent start to this attack on the Government, but I will ask her a simple question. Should we not also dig a little deeper on the links between the Prime Minister and some of his earlier colleagues? That way, we would learn that Phillipe Sands, who was representing the Mauritian Government, had a deal done with the Russians over Crimea, in which he assured them, I understand, that the granting of independence and ownership for Mauritius would not impinge on their right to stay in Crimea. That was what brought their vote, and their support for this deal. Does that not look to my right hon. Friend as though it was absolute method traitorship?

[Priti Patel]

My right hon. Friend has made his point very clearly. This Government are not standing up for our values or interests. Nor are they making any effort to demonstrate that they are on the side of our national security. Fundamentally, that is what this debate is all about.

It is diligent work and scrutiny by Conservatives in this House and the other place that has led to the Government being forced to pause this surrender. That has been achieved by our diligent diplomatic engagement with the US Administration, by asking for over 400 parliamentary debates, by securing two Opposition day debates, and thanks to you Mr Speaker, by asking urgent question after urgent question. We are here to demand answers that they never provide, but only hide, all thanks to their shameful outright contempt for Parliament and the British public.

The Opposition have proudly made representations on behalf of the Chagossian people, who have not only been betrayed but are being threatened in Britain. Their families are being intimidated by people associated with the Government of Mauritius, who seem to be learning how to conduct transnational repression from their friends in the Chinese Communist party. This Labour Government will go down in history for many terrible things, but they can now add to that list of shame the repression and betrayal of the Chagossian people. Labour must rethink its deeply corrosive policy, which is putting at risk our security and the safety of the Chagossian people. Instead, we have a weak and feeble Prime Minister, currently on his knees in Beijing, who will do anything possible to push through this deal—a deal that has been constructed and negotiated by his left-wing international lawyer friends, whose views he seems to value much more than the British people and the Chagossian community.

We all know how this has gone completely wrong, although the Prime Minister could still take a different course. It has gone wrong because this surrender is completely unnecessary—because, as the Opposition know, it is based on an advisory opinion. Ministers have failed to give a convincing answer as to why we should accept it, and there is no answer on what enforcement mechanisms would exist, other than some hypothetical comments about the electromagnetic spectrum and the International Telecommunication Union. So tell us today, please.

We have not only a Government of incompetent politicians, but a Government of incompetent lawyers. In the words of President Trump, Labour is surrendering sovereignty “for no reason whatsoever.” Given this Labour Government’s obsession with international law, it is surprising and shocking that they are not just misinterpreting it, but have overlooked essential detail in the 1966 UK-US exchange of notes. This is now the third time I have brought the exchange of notes to the Dispatch Box in just the last week, Mr Speaker. For the avoidance of any doubt in the House or any ignorance on the Government Benches, the 1966 treaty with the USA, which establishes the military base on Diego Garcia, states that the whole of the British Indian Ocean Territory

“shall remain under United Kingdom sovereignty.”

It goes on:

“Subject to the provisions set out below the islands”—

all the Chagos islands, not just Diego Garcia—

“shall be available to meet the needs of both Governments for defense”.

This is a legally binding treaty between the United Kingdom and the United States of America on the British Indian Ocean Territory, and any attempt by the UK to surrender sovereignty over BIOT violates international law. Yet when the Government signed and published their treaty on 22 May last year, and then published their surrender Bill, there was not a single mention in either the treaty or the Bill of the need for the exchange of notes.

On Monday, in response to our urgent question, the Minister for the Overseas Territories, the hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty), said:

“we have been clear throughout that before the UK can ratify the treaty, we will need to do the following: pass primary and secondary legislation; update the UK-US agreement—the exchange of notes; and put in place arrangements on the environment, maritime security and migration”,—[Official Report, 26 January 2026; Vol. 779, c. 599.]

but this was not mentioned in any of the documents accompanying the legislation, let alone the treaty. When we have questioned this in both Houses, Ministers have merely said:

“Talks are ongoing to update the UK-US Exchange of Letters”,

but the exchange of notes was not even referred to in any of the documents accompanying the legislation.

I think this House deserves an explanation. When did the talks begin? What is the status of the talks? What is the timescale for making changes? Have the Americans raised concerns that the exchange of notes were not part of the original discussions with the US Government last year, when the Prime Minister said that the US supported the treaty? Why did the Government try to force through their surrender Bill without confirming the future of the exchange of notes?

[Dr Luke Evans (Hinckley and Bosworth) (Con)]

Negotiations may well be ongoing, but the key question is whether the UK can make a unilateral decision to give away sovereignty without the blessing of the US. This question was posed three times on Monday, and the Minister simply said it is under discussion. Ministers need to answer directly today, so I pose this question now: can this be done unilaterally or not?

[Priti Patel]

Well, this is the perfect debate and opportunity for the Government to answer. Perhaps the Minister would like to intervene right now—I would be very happy for her to answer that question.

I have another question for the Minister: have the American Administration questioned why the British Government would want to give up sovereignty of the British Indian Ocean Territory and, in doing so, violate international law? For once, the Minister needs to just be straightforward and give precise answers to the precise questions asked by those on the Opposition Benches, because the Government have continuously failed to do so.

British taxpayers, by the way, rightly want an explanation as to why their taxes should line the pockets of the Government of Mauritius without full and proper scrutiny and the disclosure and transparency that they deserve. Perhaps the Minister can tell us what exactly the National Security Adviser, Mr Powell, and the former ambassador, Lord Mandelson—remember him?—told the US Administration about the surrender treaty. It is well known that the Government are run by their friends and cronies, and it is also well known that Jonathan Powell, a friend of China, accelerated the negotiations when he was appointed envoy in September 2024. And can anyone in this House really trust anything that Lord Mandelson would have been involved in? That is definitely a question for the Government.

[Jim Allister (North Antrim) (TUV)]

Will the right hon. Lady agree that we stand at a critical point for not just this nation but the United States of America, and that it too should have regard to the fact that up to this point, the islands have been under the control of a nuclear power with a navy, and that this treaty would hand them over to a country more than 1,000 miles away with no navy. Does that not create an obvious geopolitical vacuum to which we are all vulnerable? Should the Americans in particular not be very wary of that?

[Priti Patel]

As is often the case, the hon. and learned Gentleman is spot on. That is exactly why the Minister has this marvellous opportunity today to explain this to the House and the British public.

Let us not forget that President Trump, the commander-in-chief, said that the UK is giving away extremely important land in an “act of great stupidity”—I think the House would agree with that comment—and that:

“There is no doubt that China and Russia have noticed this act of total weakness.”

Has there been any Minister-to-Minister engagement with the US Administration on this? Had the Prime Minister spoken directly to the President on this matter before kowtowing to China? I asked this very question here on Monday, but the Minister for the Overseas Territories, who is not present, could not answer. There is a new opportunity today for the Minister for the Indo-Pacific, the hon. Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra), to tell us: yes or no?

On that point, it is also worth asking whether, should there be a change in the proposed US-UK treaty, it will come to Parliament through the 21-day Constitutional Reform and Governance Act process? Again, we asked this question on Monday, and the Minister refused to answer. What are the Government trying to hide? As Labour failed to provide the House with scrutiny under the previous CRaG process, it is clearly happy to give away this sovereign territory and billions in taxpayers’ money without being held to account.

Given the Labour Government’s abject failure to clarify these points, it took Conservatives in the other place to take action, leading to this pause of the treaty. Instead of showing some humility and transparency and commitment to engage in proper scrutiny, however, Labour has sought to gaslight its critics—and, by the way, the British public—with a Government spokesperson telling the media:

“This is irresponsible and reckless behaviour by peers”.

Blaming peers—Conservatives, Cross Benchers and others—for doing their job diligently is another new low from a Labour Government seeking to undermine accountability, democracy, scrutiny and accountability. When the junior Minister for the Indo-Pacific responds, I hope she will speak on behalf of this feeble Labour Government and apologise to the British people for their appalling and discredited conduct.

[Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

Like my right hon. Friend, I am proud of the role that Conservative peers have played in this, but can we also take a moment to pay credit to Back-Bench Labour MPs? I think it is important to note that they are not here. Practically the only Government Member present, scribbling away, is the hon. Member for Rugby (John Slinger), whom I admire a great deal, but who is loyalist to his very core. If he is the only Member prepared to speak up, the truth is that Labour MPs have voted with their feet, and they now agree with my right hon. Friend that this deal has to go.

[Priti Patel]

I commend my right hon. Friend for his intervention. He has highlighted a lot of things there, which, in the interest of time, I am grateful for, because we have a lot of other colleagues who want to speak. It is worth pointing out that the Government will have a few of their Members who like to climb the greasy pole—there is one, who is not present today, who is now the trade envoy for Mauritius because he spoke up so frequently for the Government.

Ultimately, this is about the security and defence of our country. [Interruption.] No, no. The Government have a lot of questions to answer, because their feeble remarks in defence of this entire process have been absolutely shameful. That includes on China, with not just the Government’s relationship with China, but the relationship between the Governments of China and Russia. We have had completely misleading remarks about China and Mauritius, when it is the Opposition who have constantly called out that cosy relationship. I have even brought the Minister some press cuttings, but, as she has responsibility for the Indo-Pacific, she may have seen them already. None the less, I advise her to read the website of the Chinese Foreign Affairs Ministry. It provides a weekly diary of its friendly relationship with the Government of Mauritius.

On the Pelindaba treaty, we have already heard the comments about what this now means. It is absolutely wrong to inhibit and restrict our ability when it comes to stationing a nuclear deterrent on Diego Garcia, and it is right that we on the Conservatives Benches continue to question this.

Before I conclude, let me discuss the money. It is an absolute disgrace that this House has not had full disclosure on the money. It is in the public interest for Ministers to tell the truth, to be held to account, and to stop hiding the true cost by misrepresenting the positions of the Office for Budget Responsibility and the Government Actuary’s Department. That is utterly shameful. Today, Labour MPs have an opportunity to join us—

[Graham Stuart]

Where are they?

[Priti Patel]

They are all in hiding, because they are embarrassed. They can join us and stop this surrender. They can tell their constituents that they voted to save a British territory from being lost, that they stood up for our defence and security, that they voted to save £35 billion from disgracefully being handed over to a foreign Government while their taxes at home go up and their public services are squeezed, and that they voted to defend the rights of the Chagossians. Alternatively, they can sleepwalk through the Division Lobby like sheep, defending the indefensible and backing another Labour weak policy and failure of their enfeebled Prime Minister. Conservatives have opposed this deal at every stage from day one and we will continue to do so. We will fight to kill this Bill to defend both British sovereignty and Britain’s pride and national interests.

13:11

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs (Seema Malhotra)]

It is a pleasure to respond to this debate.

Let me start by saying that the Government oppose the motion. The treaty guarantees full UK operational control of Diego Garcia for generations to come.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

On that point—

[Seema Malhotra]

Let me make a few remarks before I give way.

The motion proposes a wildly exaggerated cost, in contrast to the actual costings published by this Government at the time of the treaty’s introduction, which has been verified by the independent Government Actuary’s Department. The motion invokes an exchange of notes, which the Government have publicly confirmed is being updated with our US partners. It also attempts to bind parliamentary procedure on that exchange despite that exchange not having been finalised. That is not patriotic. That is political point scoring at the expense of our national security. It is a sad indictment of what the Official Opposition have become.

[Richard Tice (Boston and Skegness) (Reform)]

The Minister refers to the cost, but does she agree that the Government have confirmed that it is over £34 billion?

[Seema Malhotra]

No. Furthermore, I will have no truck with Reform, which has no record on supporting the security of our country, especially given what has happened in Wales.

The Opposition may not want to hear this, but they backed negotiations over Chagos every step of the way. Some 85% of the Chagos negotiations took place under the Conservatives, and were led by the former Foreign Secretary. [Interruption.] They may not want to hear this, but it is important to share that, in November 2022, the former Foreign Secretary said that through negotiations—[Interruption.] I think a lot of people are interested in the past.

[Mr Speaker]

May I ask the two Front-Bench teams to make interventions rather than having this running battle?

[Seema Malhotra]

Thank you, Mr Speaker.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

On that point, will the hon. Lady take an intervention?

[Seema Malhotra]

Let me make a little progress before giving way to the right hon. Gentleman.

In November 2022, the former Foreign Secretary said that

“taking into account relevant legal proceedings, it is our intention to secure an agreement on the basis of international law to resolve all outstanding issues”.—[Official Report, 3 November 2022; Vol. 721, c. 27WS.]

In February last year, a spokesperson for the Leader of the Opposition insisted that negotiations over the islands were needed due to the international legal position. [Interruption.] I am referring to the current Leader of the Opposition—some might not remember who she is, but she is still in post, I believe. She may have defected to Reform.

What I will say—this is a serious point—is that there has been ample time for debate on this topic. Indeed, the Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty), debated it for more than two hours last week and for 45 minutes on Monday in an urgent question. Baroness Chapman of Darlington has spent hours debating the topic in the other place, including during an urgent question on Monday. We have committed to this deal and to these hours of debate because it is important that we do so. Courts had already begun to make decisions that undermined our position in relation to the security of the base.

[Sir Julian Lewis]

I am a little worried that the Minister is confusing Ministers coming to the Dispatch Box and not answering questions with proper scrutiny of what is going on, so here is a very specific question for her. She has heard previously about the Pelindaba treaty. Mauritius is a signatory, and all signatories have to declare their territories to be nuclear-free zones, effectively. If in the future the Americans, with our agreement and approval, wish to have some nuclear weapons permanently or temporarily on the base at Diego Garcia, will they be able to do so if Mauritius has sovereignty over the islands?

[Seema Malhotra]

I thank the right hon. Member for his comments. The answer to that question has been set out by Lord Coaker, and I will be laying it out—[Interruption.] The answer is yes, and it has been set out by Lord Coaker in the other place. I will come on to that in my remarks.

There have been questions from the Opposition today about the legal matters behind this treaty. It is important to say that Mauritius’s legal claim of sovereignty over the island of Diego Garcia is supported by a number of international institutions, including the UN General Assembly. The International Court of Justice considered this issue in the advisory opinion delivered in February.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

Further to the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis), I understand that the Prime Minister of Mauritius made it clear yesterday that he would not allow or agree to the placing of any nuclear weapons on the islands. Can the Minister please answer the question of how the Government can reassure the USA?

[Seema Malhotra]

I will be coming on to that point in my remarks. That is important.

I want to finish my point on the legal matters that have been raised. What the International Court of Justice said in its advisory opinion carries significant weight and is likely to be influential on any subsequent court or tribunal that considers the issues arising out of disputed sovereignty and whose judgment would be binding in international law. The ICJ—

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Seema Malhotra]

I will finish my remarks on this point. The ICJ concluded that

“the United Kingdom is under an obligation to bring to an end its administration of the Chagos Archipelago as rapidly as possible”.—[Interruption.]

The right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) may want to listen the next bit. The 2019 advisory opinion was followed in 2021 by a special chamber of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea in a case about delimitation of the boundary between Mauritius and the Maldives, which ruled that Mauritian sovereignty was inferred from the ICJ’s determination.

[Dr Luke Evans]

rose—

[James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)]

rose—

[Lincoln Jopp (Spelthorne) (Con)]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Who are you giving way to, Minister? Three Members think it is them.

[Seema Malhotra]

I give way to the hon. Member for Hinckley and Bosworth (Dr Evans).

[Dr Evans]

Specifically on that point, the 2021 judgment did not have any British representation and rested on the UN’s non-binding judgment. We also know from the 2015 ruling that that court cannot preside over sovereignty, so how does it stand up to scrutiny that the Minister is saying that there is a dire need to hand the islands over?

[Seema Malhotra]

The hon. Member will know that these matters have been shared before with the House. Perhaps I may remind him what US Secretary Hegseth said:

“The UK’s (very important) deal with Mauritius secures the operational capabilities of the base and key”—[Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Dr Evans, do you have to keep chuntering? You have asked the question, and you are getting an answer. I do not need—[Interruption.] Order. I wouldn’t bother giving me backchat. I do not need a running commentary. Let’s calm it down a little. It does not look good on TV.

[Seema Malhotra]

Thank you, Mr Speaker.

I remind the hon. Member of what US Secretary Hegseth said:

“The UK’s (very important) deal with Mauritius secures the operational capabilities of the base and key US national security interests in the region.

We are confident the base is protected for many years ahead.”

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Seema Malhotra]

I will continue my remarks, but I will give way shortly.

It is, therefore, the UK’s long-standing legal view that if Mauritius challenged us again in the courts, we would struggle to defend our position. Our Indo-Pacific foothold and the operation of the base could be put at risk within weeks. That is why the Government remain fully committed to the deal to secure the joint UK-US base on Diego Garcia, which is vital for our national security.

[James Cartlidge]

This is a fundamental point. The most sensitive part of our military is the nuclear deterrent; it is critical to the defence of ourselves and our allies. The United States is also nuclear armed. We are a naval nuclear nation, and the base at Diego Garcia is a critical naval base in strategic terms. Yesterday, it was reported that the Deputy Prime Minister of Mauritius, Mr Bérenger, had declared that nuclear weapons could not be stored on Mauritius if sovereignty is restored to Mauritius. Does the Minister understand that to be the case?

[Seema Malhotra]

I thank the shadow Defence Secretary for his intervention. It is a long-standing policy, as he will know this from having been in government, that we do not comment on operational matters or the location of nuclear weapons.

The Opposition know—[Interruption.] Perhaps I may make some comments on the Pelindaba treaty—

[Graham Stuart]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. The Minister said that she would address the issue of whether nuclear weapons could go to Diego Garcia, and now she says that she cannot comment. Is that—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. No, no, no. You are on the Panel of Chairs. You know that that is not a point of order—it’s not even the start of one. You are trying to continue the debate. I am sure that you are on the list to speak, so you will get to make your points later.

[Seema Malhotra]

The right hon. Member could not have known it, but I was on the first line of a page of comments on that exact issue. I am sorry that he chose that moment to interrupt proceedings.

As I was saying, it is a matter of long-standing policy that we do not comment on operational procedures. The Conservatives know that and, of course, took the same approach in government. As the Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff South and Penarth, told the Foreign Affairs Committee:

“We are confident that nothing in this treaty conflicts with our abilities to uphold international law, and to continue to operate the base as we do today.”

As Lord Coaker has—

[Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)]

On that point, will the Minister give way?

[Seema Malhotra]

I will continue my remarks. It is as if the Conservatives cannot decide who is speaking from the Front Bench today.

As Lord Coaker told the other place in November, the UK-Mauritius agreement

“enables the continued operation of the base to its full capability.”

He said that we will continue to be able to

“deploy the full range of advanced military capabilities to Diego Garcia.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 25 November 2025; Vol. 850, c. 1313.]

It is not just us; the agreement has been tested at the highest levels of the US security establishment under not one but two Administrations. They too were satisfied that it protects the full operation of the base. We have agreed with the Mauritian Government that nothing in the treaty conflicts with our respective commitments, and we are absolutely clear that we can continue to operate the base as we have done and as we do now.

[Mr Francois]

Will the Minister give way on that point?

[Seema Malhotra]

No, I have been very generous in giving way. I will continue with my remarks. [Interruption.] Sorry, what was that comment?

[Mr Francois]

Frit.

[Seema Malhotra]

Is that in order, Mr Speaker?

[Mr Speaker]

Order. It is getting touchy in here. I want the debate to be tolerant and respectful. It is up to the Minister whether she wishes to give way. That word is in order. It has been used from the other side as well, so let us not forget our memories.

[Seema Malhotra]

Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Given the security risk, this Government, like the Government before us, made the decision to negotiate with Mauritius to secure a deal to protect the base and the UK. Our agreement ensures full operational control of Diego Garcia; a 24 nautical mile buffer zone where nothing can be built or placed without UK consent; a rigorous process including joint decision making to prevent any activities on the wider islands—some over 100 nautical miles away—from disrupting base operations; full UK control over the presence of foreign security forces on the outer islands, whether civilian or military; and a binding obligation to ensure that the operation of the base is never undermined.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Seema Malhotra]

I will continue with my remarks for the moment. As I have said, we are confident that nothing in this treaty conflicts with our ability to uphold international law and continue to operate the base as we do today.

Moving on to the UK-US relationship, we have been clear that before the UK can ratify the treaty, we will need to do the following: pass primary and secondary legislation; update the UK-US exchange of notes; and put in place arrangements on the environment, maritime security and migration. This Government consider it our duty to protect the public. Therefore, it is our duty to pursue this agreement with clarity and resolve, and we will not put party politics ahead of national security, as we see the Opposition doing today.

We have made strong progress towards finalising an updated UK-US agreement and will reach an agreement on it before the agreement between the United Kingdom and Mauritius concerning the Chagos archipelago, including Diego Garcia, is ratified. These matters are still under negotiation, so it remains to be determined whether any updated agreement will be subject to ratification. We will keep Parliament informed about that.

[Lincoln Jopp]

I listened to the criteria that the Minister expressed before ratification is possible. Is American agreement one of the criteria that she considers essential?

[Seema Malhotra]

The hon. Member will have heard me say that before the UK can ratify the treaty, we will need to do the following: pass primary and secondary legislation; update the UK-US exchange of notes; and put in place arrangements on the environment, maritime security and migration. It is important—

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Seema Malhotra]

I will continue with my remarks, because I want to finish shortly.

The strength of the deal and the protection of national security is exactly why the US endorsed the deal last year and why Secretary of State Rubio called it a “monumental achievement”. The agreement safeguards the interest of both the United Kingdom and the United States well into the next century.

I will briefly turn to costs. A financial contribution over 99 years was always necessary to safeguard the operation of such a vital base. We published comprehensive detail on the payment schedule alongside the treaty. That was laid in the House within minutes of the signature of the treaty. The figures used by the Government were verified by the independent Government Actuary’s Department, in line with standard accounting practices. Those who seek to imply that the Government have misled the public on that do so without the facts, so let me set those out.

First, the Office for Statistics Regulation welcomed the Government’s approach to setting out the methodology and confirmed that it is in line with the principles of intelligent transparency. Secondly, the Office for Budget Responsibility has confirmed that the discount rates used by the Government were the reasonable ones to use. Thirdly, the figures have been verified by the House of Commons Library and scrutinised by BBC Verify and The Independent. All those confirmed that the Government calculated the figures correctly.

Beyond the numbers, it is also important to debate, as this House has done, the challenges that have been raised in relation to the Chagossian community, and rightly so. It is a vibrant and diverse community that now sees the Conservatives’ political tactics. They are the same Conservatives who, after ruling our resettlement for the Chagossians and committing to a £40 million package of support in 2016—they may want to answer to those two things—succeeded in spending just £1.6 million by the time this Government came into power.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Seema Malhotra]

I will conclude my remarks—I am sorry but I have taken a number of interventions today.

Since coming into power, this Government have been clear on our deep regret for the way in which Chagossians were removed from the islands and have sought to recognise the wide range of views within the Chagossian community. We remain committed to building a relationship with that community that is built on respect and an acknowledgment of the wrongs of the past.

We have established a contact group to give Chagossians a greater say in UK Government support to their communities and are in the process of enhancing that group, as Baroness Chapman committed to doing in the other place. Officials from the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office have engaged with Chagossian individuals and groups more than 30 times and they are regularly in conversation with the Minister responsible for the overseas territories, my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff South and Penarth.

In conclusion, doing this deal was right and essential. It protects our national interest, it defends our national security, it protects the Diego Garcia base from legal threat, it supports the Chagossian community and it preserves the unique environment in the archipelago. We know that the best way to do that is to pursue this deal. It is time that the Conservatives realised—or should I say, remembered—that too.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

13:33

[Calum Miller (Bicester and Woodstock) (LD)]

The process for negotiating this treaty with the Government of Mauritius has been utterly shambolic since it began under the last Government. One of the most striking aspects of this entire process has been the confected consternation of the Conservatives, despite them having accepted the need for negotiations in the first place while in government and continued those throughout their time in office.

It is clear that this Labour Government have also tied themselves in knots, first by failing to finalise negotiations with the United States linked to Diego Garcia, which has created new and fundamental problems with the Government’s Bill. There are now serious questions about whether the treaty would undermine the UK’s other international obligations. Will the Government take on board the Liberal Democrat amendment in the other place and commit to securing a firm assessment of the position of the US in relation to the Diego Garcia military base before any further attempts to progress their Bill?

[Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)]

My hon. Friend talks about some of the key issues in relation to the US and its agreement. On remarks from the US, I remember being contacted by my friend on the morning her brother was injured severely in an improvised explosive device explosion in Afghanistan. I have also had many constituents get in touch with me who are deeply angry at President Trump’s remarks about our service personnel. Does my hon. Friend agree that the rowing back is not sufficient and that the President needs to give an apology to British service personnel?

[Calum Miller]

Donald Trump’s remarks about NATO troops were untrue and deeply offensive, and I welcome the robust response from parties across this House. Yet there was no apology from the US President, which we deserve. Liberal Democrats have called on the Prime Minister to summon the US ambassador to offer an explanation for the remarks and an apology to the veterans affected and to the families of the 457 brave personnel who paid the ultimate sacrifice in fighting alongside US forces in Afghanistan.

[Sir Julian Lewis]

The hon. Gentleman is making a number of serious points. Does he see, as I do, a sort of parallel between President Trump’s egregious suggestion that NATO troops were, allegedly, not on the frontline and this issue of Diego Garcia? The fact is that President Trump makes certain comments and then, when confronted with the truth, has to try to elaborate on them, even if he will not go so far as to say the dreaded words “I’m sorry.” Is that not what is happening here? The Americans did not realise the extent to which giving up sovereignty over the base would compromise their military situation, and we have not heard anything to say that Mauritius could not stop any nuclear weapons ever in future being on Diego Garcia.

[Calum Miller]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention, but I was in the Chamber on Monday when he remarked that it was a fine aspect of joint working between Reform and the Conservatives to bring in that view from Donald Trump. I do not think it is appropriate for the leader of Reform to be whispering in the ear of the US President to upset negotiations. The right hon. Member makes a brave point when he appears to suggest that the fact that the US President has moved in one direction recently means that it will be sustained in the future. That notwithstanding, it is the case that the US President has recently made those remarks about the Chagos islands, and we will have to take those into consideration during the progress of the Bill.

We need to reflect on the other outstanding problems with the Government’s proposed legislation. Since the start of debates over the treaty, Liberal Democrats have been the only party consistently championing the rights of Chagossians. That stands in contrast with the Government’s lack of substantive engagement with the Chagossian community. Chagossians have been denied a meaningful say in their future and the provisions of the treaty shamefully fail to affirm their rights. But that is not only a failing of the Government; indeed, despite the remarks of the shadow Foreign Secretary, the motion we are debating today in her name includes not a single reference to the Chagossian community. That is addressed in the amendment in my name on behalf of my party.

[James Cartlidge]

Did you hear her speech?

[Calum Miller]

I did indeed. My point is that when the Conservatives had the opportunity to provide the bases for their objection to the Bill, they did not once mention the rights of the Chagossian community.

It is clear that those rights are just as low a priority for the Conservatives as they are for the Government. When the Liberal Democrats proposed, in Committee of the whole House, an amendment to the Bill that would have provided for a referendum of the Chagossian people, the Conservatives failed to back it and the Government opposed it. Even at this late stage, however, I want to encourage the Government to reconsider their position. There remains a window of opportunity for the Government to support the rights of Chagossians and buck the historical trend of this community being left out of decisions about their future. Will the Government therefore support a second Liberal Democrat amendment in the other place that would require binding guarantees from the Government of Mauritius on the rights of Chagossians?

Another outstanding issue is the question of money. The Government are proposing to send billions of pounds to Mauritius, despite having what appears to be zero monitoring, evaluation or recall mechanisms built into the treaty. It is inconceivable that the Government would oppose the introduction of such measures or fail to support the principle that the UK should be able to cease future payments to Mauritius if the treaty were deemed no longer to support the UK’s security, so will the Government back a third Liberal Democrat amendment in the other place introducing meaningful and effective safeguards around the proposed vast sums of public funds due to be sent to Mauritius?

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

This is a really important point, because the Government say that they have cleared this with the Office for Budget Responsibility, but the actuaries have been clear that we cannot calculate this on the basis of what happens in Mauritius, given its social issues and inflation—that would be ridiculous—and that we have to calculate it on the basis that the agreement we have made gives a total at the end, which is £34.7 billion. Does the hon. Gentleman not agree that dodging around that really is a low position for the Government to take?

[Calum Miller]

The way I think about it, the Government are proposing to write 99 years-worth of cheques to Mauritius that the Mauritians will be able to cash over that period. It only stands to reason that this Parliament should be able to scrutinise such large expenditure during the duration of the treaty, in order to have some accountability for these funds.

As things stand, this deal appears to be going the way of the dodo—another redundant creature that originated in Mauritius. I implore the Government to listen to the concerns raised across this House and recognise that the Bill in its current form is not fit for purpose.

13:41

[Tim Roca (Macclesfield) (Lab)]

I feel I should put on record at the beginning that I am not the Government’s trade envoy to Mauritius—[Hon. Members: “Yet!”] Hansard can record a diplomatic silence at this point.

This debate ultimately turns on whether we understand the world as it is, not as we might wish it to be, much as some believe otherwise. We still live in an economically, militarily, politically and morally interconnected world, and that interconnectedness has not gone away. It has become more contested, more multipolar and certainly more strategic, but it has not ended. That matters, because this deal must be judged not on slogans or hyperbole but on whether it secures the United Kingdom’s security interests in that interconnected world.

One of the central lessons of recent years is that uncertainty invites challenge. We see that every day in the South China sea. China has asserted expansive territorial claims that many countries do not recognise and that the international courts and tribunals do not recognise. What happens in response? Other states deliberately sail ships and fly aircraft through those waters and airspace to contest those claims and to test resolve. Uncertainty becomes a pressure point and ambiguity becomes an opportunity for interference. If we allow ambiguity to persist over the Chagos islands, and in particular over Diego Garcia, the same dynamic could apply.

Our claims may be strong historically, but they are being increasingly contested in international courts. That does not make the base more secure; it makes it more vulnerable. It creates exactly the kind of grey zone in which hostile actors thrive, including an ever-expanding Chinese navy. This treaty removes that uncertainty. It closes off the space for challenge, rather than leaving it open.

[Dr Kieran Mullan (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)]

The mistake the hon. Member makes is in buying into China’s narrative that there is a grey zone in the South China sea. There is no grey zone. China should not be there, but it could not care less. It goes there anyway. The idea that some agreement we make with Mauritius is going to stop China acting at a later date is complete nonsense, as China proves in the South China sea every day.

[Tim Roca]

I disagree with the hon. Member, because the two situations do have parallels. In the South China sea, people are challenging Chinese sovereignty, and it has been proved not to have standing in international courts. At the moment, ambiguity is starting to arrive in our position over the Chagos islands. This treaty would remove it and remove cause for the Chinese navy to take advantage.

Against this backdrop, I want to restate the tests that I set out in an earlier debate on this deal. Does the agreement protect our national security? Does it command the support of our allies and professional security community? Are the costs proportionate to the benefits? On each of these tests, the answer remains yes. Diego Garcia is a keystone of our joint security architecture in the Indo-Pacific. It is where UK and US forces operate together against terrorist threats. It is a logistics, communications and intelligence hub, and it is central to safeguarding the global trade routes on which our economy depends. Without a secure base, all of that is placed at risk.

Our Five Eyes allies in Canada, Australia and New Zealand support this deal, and our strategic partner India supports this deal. I want to address briefly the noise around President Trump’s social media posts, which the Minister dealt with very well earlier. Social media is not statecraft. What matters is the settled position of the United States, its military leadership and its security agencies. On that, there has been clarity for some time. The Pentagon, the State Department and successive US Defence Secretaries—Republican and Democrat—have supported this agreement.

As I said at the beginning, interconnectedness is incredibly important and we cannot ignore the fact that international opinion matters. Yes, the world has changed. Power today is exercised through force—hard power has become incredibly important—but it is also still exercised through legitimacy, alliances and rules. If we expect others to respect international rules where it suits us, whether in Ukraine or the South China sea, we cannot be seen to apply them selectively elsewhere, except in the supreme national interest.

[Sir Julian Lewis]

I am a great admirer of the hon. Gentleman; he is courteous and thoughtful, and I always listen to what he says with great focus and attention. He is criticising the dangers of ambiguity, and I agree with that point. Does he accept, however, that we have not cleared up the ambiguity about whether nuclear weapons could ever be on Diego Garcia if the Americans and the British wanted them to be? It is no good saying, as the Minister did, “We never talk about deployments of nuclear weapons.” We are not asking about deployments of nuclear weapons. We are asking about the legal position if the case was that the Americans or the British wanted to have nuclear weapons, temporarily or permanently, on Diego Garcia. If we transfer sovereignty to a country that is signed up to be part of a nuclear-free zone, that is bound to call into doubt the ability to have nuclear weapons there in the future. Can he clear up that point?

[Tim Roca]

I cannot clear up that point for the right hon. Member, but I have great confidence that ministerial colleagues would be able to. We have been told at all points that this treaty would ensure the continued effectiveness of the base in the way that it is run now. There was an Ohio class submarine there in 2022, and I hope those arrangements continue under this treaty. From what I have heard from Ministers, there is no reason that they would not.

Let us turn to the costs of the deal. It will cost a fraction of the defence budget for an irreplaceable asset—

[Ben Obese-Jecty (Huntingdon) (Con)]

Could the hon. Member clarify precisely how much of the cost of the Chagos islands deal will come from the Ministry of Defence budget?

[Tim Roca]

I am sure that has been set out already in several debates. The point that has not been set out adequately and cannot be set out in huge detail is that, in exchange for providing the United States with facilities on Diego Garcia, the in-kind support in terms of intelligence and other matters that we receive from the United States must run into the billions every single year. Although we cannot put a figure on that, it is a really important element in this debate.

There is no prosperity without security, and there is no security without certainty. In an interconnected world, those are not abstract principles; they are strategic necessities. That is why, in my view, this is a sensible, hard-headed deal, and a confident assertion of the United Kingdom’s national interest.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

I call Dr Andrew Murrison.

13:49

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

What a pleasure it is to be called so soon, Madam Deputy Speaker; I am very grateful.

My goodness me! I do feel sorry for the Minister, being wheeled out to defend the indefensible. I have to say, the Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, the hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty), has done a Trojan piece of work on behalf of the Government, and it is only fair that he should be given the day off.

Every day is a school day when it comes to Chagos, is it not? We learn something new every day of the week, it seems. Perhaps the Government might like to reflect on whether, in that wonderful Keynesian way, when the facts change, we change our mind—apparently not. The facts have changed. The ground truth has certainly changed, not least the attitude of the United States; that is clear beyond peradventure. In February last year, the then Foreign Secretary said that without US agreement, the deal would be dead. But in recent days, the US commander-in-chief, no less, has said that the deal is “stupid” and “weak”. There cannot be any ambiguity in that. That is the contemporaneous view of our greatest partner and friend. Surely to goodness, that is justification for pausing the deal.

We have learned about the Pelindaba treaty. I have to say that I was not aware of it until very recently, but it is a showstopper. Paul Bérenger, the Deputy Prime Minister of Mauritius, recently said that there will be no nuclear weapons on Diego Garcia. He has been very helpful to the Government by laying out exactly what things will look like when Mauritius takes control of Diego Garcia. The Minister says, “Well, we cannot comment on that because it is operational,” but that is precisely what it is not. We are not talking about precise B-52s or Ohio class submarines going into Diego Garcia—I do not want to know about that. What I want to know about is the legal structure within which it is possible for these things to be in Diego Garcia and Chagos in general.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

I made this point to the Minister earlier, but perhaps my right hon. Friend might also explain it. The Deputy Prime Minister of Mauritius made it clear as recently as yesterday that—as the hon. Member for Macclesfield (Tim Roca) said—there is no ambiguity at all: no nuclear weapons on Chagos for any Government.

[Dr Murrison]

That is precisely the case; it is as plain as a pikestaff, yet the Government persist with the policy.

It is perfectly reasonable and respectable for the Government to say, “The facts have clearly changed, and all these things have come to light, so we will pause this. There is no hurry in this matter, nor any dishonour in saying that we need to consult on it more widely—potentially indefinitely. Nevertheless, we will continue the process and keep it open.” I appreciate that, to save the Government’s blushes, we cannot simply can it, but we can pause it.

If the Minister wants more evidence that the Chagossians have been trampled all over during this process, she need only refer to the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, which said in December 2025 that we should pause the deal in order to ensure that the Chagossians’ voices are properly heard. She is being attacked from all quarters, and the unifying message from all those quarters is, “For goodness sake, let’s pause this—just think again.”

[Lincoln Jopp]

Does my right hon. and gallant Friend agree that this could well be a case of, “If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs, it is possible that you have failed to appreciate the gravity of the situation”?

[Dr Murrison]

My hon. Friend, who is experienced in these matters, makes an extremely good point. We need to keep our heads in all this. The Conservative party has been consistent in its opposition to this terrible, terrible surrender deal. The people out there honestly cannot understand why the Government persist with it. It is plainly not a matter of national security. I fear that all this is underpinned by the Government’s insistence on satisfying their post-colonial guilt. The Government need to get over that and understand that national security has primacy in this matter.

[Tom Hayes (Bournemouth East) (Lab)]

I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that, as a Labour Member, I have had zero conversations with other Labour Members about this deal being motivated by some kind of post-colonial guilt—that is absolutely not a motivation, and I want to dispel that impression once and for all. He talks about consistency. Why was it that the Conservatives started the negotiations? Why was it that 85% of the negotiations were concluded by them? Does he not agree that, now that they are out of office, the Conservatives have suddenly discovered that they do not need to be consistent?

[Dr Murrison]

I do not have any insight into the hon. Gentleman’s conversations with Labour Members. As a former Foreign Office Minister, I would say that there are negotiations and then there are negotiations, and sometimes we can use negotiations as a tool to keep certain parties happy, while having no intention of agreeing to what they are demanding of us.

Furthermore, a lot of the pressure for all this comes from the advisory note by the ICJ. In this country, we think of judges as upstanding and impartial maintainers of our legal system and the rule of law. That is not necessarily the case when it comes to supranational judicial bodies. We know, for example, that Patrick Robinson—one of the judges involved with the 2019 ICJ decision—has been demanding that the UK pony up £19 trillion in slavery reparations. Those are not apolitical, independent judicial figures. Many of them have an agenda, and it is one that is hostile to this country—as hostile, I would say, as some of the parties, like Russia and China, that we are currently trying to prevent from getting a hold on those islands.

It is perfectly reasonable for the President of the United States, who I have to confess is not my cup of tea, to decide—belatedly, but nevertheless—that this is a disastrous measure and that he wants nothing to do with it. He has signalled that in his own inimitable fashion, and the Government should take note, pause the surrender treaty and come back with something better, if at all. This deal, surely, is as dead as the dodo.

13:56

[John Slinger (Rugby) (Lab)]

Before I turn to the subject of the Opposition day debate, I must comment on the answer that the shadow Foreign Secretary, the right hon. Member for Witham (Priti Patel), gave to the right hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart)—a Member I respect hugely. She mentioned climbing the greasy pole, possibly even in relation to me. It is always amusing when people who have served in the Cabinets of multiple Conservative Prime Ministers accuse Back-Bench Members of somehow being involved in climbing a greasy pole. It is just very, very amusing. [Interruption.] I thank the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) for his comment; I understand he also did pretty well in the past.

This motion is the Conservatives playing politics with national security—their friends in the other place using a wrecking amendment to block the Diego Garcia Military Base and British Indian Ocean Territory Bill being a prime example of that. Conservative Members have never been able to answer this question: if there was no problem with British sovereignty and operation of the base, why did they begin the negotiations in the first place?

[Lincoln Jopp]

I thank the and hon. and incredibly loyal Member for giving way. Does he realise that, as the result of a UN judgment in 1965, the United Kingdom was required to enter into negotiations with Argentina over the future of the Falkland Islands? Those negotiations continued until 1982, when they were concluded in a rather different way from that envisaged by the UN.

[John Slinger]

I thank the hon. and even-more-loyal-than-I Member for his intervention. We spar across the House—

[Mr Francois]

He is an hon. and gallant Member.

[John Slinger]

I thank the even more loyal hon. and gallant Member for his history lesson, but it does not change the fundamentals: 85% of the negotiations took place under the Conservatives.

In November 2022, the right hon. Member for Braintree (Sir James Cleverly), who was then Foreign Secretary, said:

“Through negotiations, taking into account relevant legal proceedings, it is our intention to secure an agreement on the basis of international law to resolve all outstanding issues”. —[Official Report, 3 November 2022; Vol. 721, c. 354WS.]

In February 2025, a spokesperson for the Leader of the Opposition insisted that she understood that negotiations over the islands were needed due to the international legal position. This motion is obvious political opportunism. These are hon. and right hon. Members of this House of Commons who raised no objections in Parliament, filed no critical questions and voiced no concerns on social media. Only after leaving government did they do so, but with no plan of their own.

On the matter of the sovereignty of the Chagossians, the Conservatives’ view is logically inconsistent. They want the UK to retain sovereignty, but they attack the Government for not giving the Chagossians the right to self-determination. They ruled out resettlement. Some Chagossians want to return to Diego Garcia, so are Conservative Members calling for them to be returned to that island, with the inevitable issues that that would cause for the operation of the vital base? Opposition Members have gone rather silent on that point.

[Dr Murrison]

Does the hon. Gentleman see any parallel between the plight of Chagossians and the plight of Greenlanders? The Prime Minister has gone out of his way, correctly, to defend the rights of Greenlanders, but he is doing the complete reverse for Chagossians.

[John Slinger]

The sovereignty of the Chagossians is a sensitive and delicate issue which we are attempting to deal with, as my hon. Friend the Minister set out. We have established a contact group. Many meetings have taken place, and I strongly endorse those steps to give respect to the Chagossian people for what has happened to them. The Conservatives used only £1.6 million of the £40 million support fund for the Chagossian people, which hardly indicates that when they were in office the interests of the Chagossian people were their No. 1 priority.

In conclusion, this motion is political opportunism of the worst kind, because it concerns national security and the British national interest, and the Conservatives really should not be playing party political games with that. Nor should they be using words like “surrender” with such abandon, as the shadow Foreign Secretary does, because that implies things that are simply not true and it is whipping up public concern, which is totally unnecessary, particularly regarding British national interest. That is why I am very glad to oppose this opportunistic motion before the House. I commend the Minister on her speech.

14:03

[Dr Kieran Mullan (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)]

I welcome the opportunity to make clear my opposition to any proposal to give away this strategically important sovereign British territory. This is not merely a territorial concession; it is an act of strategic self-sabotage, a dereliction of duty and an unforgivable betrayal of our national security. At a time of growing global instability, when our adversaries are watching for any sign of weakness, Labour has chosen to send precisely the wrong signal: that Britain can be pressured into abandoning its own territory.

This decision is indefensible on every level. The Chagos islands, and specifically Diego Garcia, have been a vital strategic asset for the UK and our allies for decades. The military base on Diego Garcia has played a crucial role in global security operations, supporting counter-terrorism efforts, maritime security and regional stability. It has been instrumental in projecting western power in the Indo-Pacific, a region increasingly shaped by geopolitical competition, particularly with China. By ceding sovereignty over these islands, Labour has put at risk Britain’s strategic interests and undermined our ability to operate in the region. What makes this decision even more staggering is that we are not just surrendering our sovereignty: we are paying Mauritius billions of pounds for the privilege.

My central concern is the serious strategic challenge we face in respect of China. China has a population of 1.4 billion people and by 2030 its GDP is projected to be $26 trillion, second only to the US, and there are projections that it will potentially outstrip the US by 2050. China’s increase in military spending this year alone is expected to be 7.2%, which is the third consecutive year in which its increase in military spending has been over 7%. China has become the world’s largest shipbuilding nation, and its navy is expected to comprise 430 military grade ships by 2030, compared with the US navy’s estimated decline to 294 ships. China is a growing military power and there are no indications that it is anywhere near a supposed peak.

Domestically and internationally, China conducts itself as an autocratic state. It has the most sophisticated domestic surveillance system in the world, Skynet, which as of 2023 has 700 million cameras—that is one lens for every two Chinese citizens. We must not be so naive as to assume that if we end up in even greater strategic competition with China it will care at all about what agreement we have reached with Mauritius. We saw with Hong Kong how easily agreements made with third countries can be ignored, as China did there.

If Mauritius seeks to align itself strategically with China, do we think China will hesitate and ask it not to break the treaty because of international law? China will not respect any Bill or pay any attention to diplomatic consequences for Mauritius if it thinks it is in its interest to get Mauritius to break that agreement. That is the difference between any form of agreement and sovereignty, because once sovereignty has been given away, it can never be bought back.

[Sir Julian Lewis]

This is why some people are concerned that if Mauritius allowed the Americans to have nuclear weapons on the base, although I do not think it would allow that, that would give China an excuse to break the same treaty to which Mauritius is already committed about a non-nuclear Africa, and China would not even get the odium that it otherwise would receive if it started deploying nuclear weapons all over the African continent.

[Dr Mullan]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is extraordinary that Labour Members are prepared to defend the deal, while admitting that they do not even know if our accusations are correct. They could say that they do not agree with what we are proposing, but to admit that they do not know whether nuclear weapons will be allowed on the island and that they are happy to support the deal anyway is disgraceful.

We must address the wider consequences of this decision. If Labour is willing to abandon the Chagos islands so easily, what message does that send to our other overseas territories? The International Court of Justice may have issued an advisory opinion in 2019—[Interruption.] What I say is true; the world is watching. We have had pressure put on us in relation to a sovereign territory and we have collapsed, but Labour Members want us to think that the rest of the world will not interpret our standing from that.

[Tim Roca]

We have heard from chief Ministers and leaders of the other British overseas territories how disappointed they have been in the rhetoric used by the Conservatives in trying to drag them into the situation. There is no question about our commitment to the British overseas territories. This deal is a completely separate matter.

[Dr Mullan]

The people who we should be worried about are not the people in charge of the British overseas territories—we should be worried about the people who are watching what we do and making decisions about how they will act, as we saw with previous attempts to take control of those territories. Does the hon. Gentleman think that Argentina will observe this situation and not draw a lesson from it? Of course it will.

[Mr Francois]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. Will he confirm to the House that very shortly after the deal was announced, the Argentine Government announced that they wished to renew their claim to the Falkland Islands? That is a fact, is it not?

[Dr Mullan]

That is a fact. My right hon. Friend will know that other UN bodies have supported Argentina for decades, and are pressuring us to continue negotiations around that issue. The Government rely on what the UN says, but the UN’s position on the Falklands is completely contrary to the interests of this country.

[Sir Julian Lewis]

Ministers keep saying “How dare you compare this with the Falkland Islands?”, but Labour’s manifesto at the last election gave a commitment to defend the sovereignty of the British overseas territories—not some of them, all of them. If they cannot be trusted on this one, they cannot be trusted on any of them.

[Dr Mullan]

My right hon. Friend highlights the lessons that the rest of the world will be drawing from this decision.

A submissive approach to third party calls on these issues displays an incredible naiveté about the world we live in and the direction we are travelling. Our previous positive disposition towards the role that these institutions could play was in a different era, when we expected a converging uniformity of basic values and democracy. That convergence is not happening; instead, our enemies are using our desire to stick to it as a weakness to exploit. They do not even recognise basic legal norms and institutions in their own countries; their own citizens do not benefit from legal protections and rights, and they do not believe in the rule of law full stop.

Do the Government really think that our enemies will put international legal obligations ahead of pursuing their own strategic interests? Of course not, yet we are expected to undertake a strategic surrender in the name of the rule of law in a way that advantages them, and on what basis—that they might look at what we have done and change their ways in the future, as they failed to do in Hong Kong? That is incredible naiveté.

[Sir Alec Shelbrooke]

Does it not prove my hon. Friend’s point that despite being signatories to the World Trade Organisation, the Chinese continue to steal intellectual property?

[Dr Mullan]

It is not just the WTO; the Chinese are supposed to follow the jurisdiction of international maritime courts, for example. The Government point to that as a reason why we should comply with them, but the Chinese break those rulings all the time, as we discussed in relation to the South China sea. They could not care less; they are restrained only by their strict self-interest. They pretend and play up the idea that they might follow the rules—when it does not suit, they do not follow them—yet we are supposed to follow the rules, because the aim is to get the Chinese on side. That is never going to happen.

Let us look at the membership of the ICJ and the people who made the ruling. The vice-president was Xue Hanqin, who ruled that the UK should give the islands over to Mauritius. She is a former Chinese Communist party official who served as the director-general of the department of treaty and law in China’s foreign ministry—the same ministry that is overseeing the violation of the agreement in Hong Kong. It makes absolutely no sense to see it as a neutral arbiter. In 2022, she was one of two judges who voted against an ICJ ruling that Russia should suspend its invasion of Ukraine.

Would our country slavishly adhering to those rulings, against our own national interest, bring onside wavering countries that are making their own strategic calculations about who they want to support when it comes to challenges such as Ukraine and, if it happens, Taiwan? Of course it will not. The historical argument for that approach has been to suggest that we will bring other countries over to our way of doing things—the rules-based order—but I am afraid that that is not happening. Countries across the world are actually looking at which bloc and which sphere of influence would be best at defending their interests if they seek to align with it. This surrender deal will make it very clear that they should think twice about supporting the western democracies and instead point their finger towards the autocratic states that will benefit so enormously from the deal.

Surrendering the Chagos islands will simply strengthen those countries that want a more disorderly world. We should seek to use the rules-based order—we should not abandon that long-term goal, and we should continue to make it clear that that is our preference for how we run the world—but not with our eyes and ears closed to what is actually happening, and not at huge cost to our own interests. This is not diplomacy or pragmatism; it is weakness, and weakness has consequences. Britain is not just losing a territory; we are losing credibility. Our allies are watching as Labour surrenders key strategic ground without so much as a fight. Our adversaries are taking note and seeing a Government who lack the resolve to defend their own interests.

This deal is a sell-out and a catastrophic misjudgment, and it must not go ahead. I urge every Member of this House to stand firm for Britain’s interests, our national security and our place in the world. We must reject this reckless agreement and demand that our Government defend British sovereign territory, rather than bargaining it away behind closed doors.

14:09

[Sir Alec Shelbrooke (Wetherby and Easingwold) (Con)]

It is worth reflecting on the entire geopolitical situation that the world faces. Many treaties simply are not worth the paper that they are written on; if it suits our adversaries to ignore them, they will. Is not the old maxim, “To stop a war, be ready to fight a war”, more true today than it has ever been? If we decide that we are going to rely on pieces of paper, rather than the ability to say, “We will defend, at war if need be”, we weaken our position.

Let us consider the whole Indo-Pacific region. The NATO Parliamentary Assembly made a visit to Pacific command back in August. The admiral of the base made it crystal clear that in a very short space of time, the Americans would be outnumbered in the Pacific arena. Limiting what weapons can be used, when those weapons currently can be used, simply will not work. There has not been a satisfactory answer on whether nuclear weapons can be stored on Diego Garcia when it is under the authority of the Mauritians.

Despite the conversations about what Pete Hegseth said and what other treaties may have been negotiated along the way, we have the commander in chief, who outranks the US Secretary of State for Defence, saying, “I do not want to do this deal.” We have the deputy Prime Minister of Mauritius saying, “You will not be able to hold nuclear weapons there.” What makes Ministers so convinced that those leaders are wrong, and that they are right? That is the greatest and deepest concern.

We live in a world that is rapidly changing, not just in its disregard for the rules-based order, but in its energy demands. Those energy demands are shifting the geopolitical situation. Given where a lot of the materials that we need for renewables are, the focus is shifting more towards that hemisphere and away from the Gulf. The geopolitical positioning of the Chagos islands is therefore becoming more and more important.

It is absolutely right to say that our Government started negotiations, which went on and on, but that does not mean that there is a victory in ending them overnight by just giving way on the red lines that we would not cross. That is a very important point, because we should recognise the situation that we face, rather than crowing about some diplomatic “victory”.

Time and again, we see the Government kowtowing to Beijing, rather than standing up to it. We see that today. Where is the strategic plan? My right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) was exceptionally critical of the golden era of relations with China under David Cameron. The criticisms coming forward are not new; my right hon. Friend warned at the time of the security risks that China posed. The Prime Minister has signed off on the super-embassy, despite all the things we know about, and the things that we have seen in its blueprints, and for what reason? This seems to be almost—

[Sir Julian Lewis]

Pathological.

[Sir Alec Shelbrooke]

Yes, pathological. There is this belief that the Chinese will always act in good faith, that we can trust them, and that they would not dare invade, because we signed a piece of paper. The world is changing, and there is no shame in pausing negotiations when changes come to light. The Minister should reflect on what is said today about how the situation has changed since his Government came to power, getting on for two years ago. The situation has changed incredibly.

[Tom Hayes]

rose—

[Sir Julian Lewis]

rose—

[Sir Alec Shelbrooke]

I give way to my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East.

[Sir Julian Lewis]

I have a helpful suggestion. I know that I cannot commit my party as a whole, but let me speak personally. If the Government change their position, I—and, I am sure, my right hon. Friend—will give a personal pledge never to accuse them of having done a U-turn on this matter. We will praise them to the skies, and we will not seek to take party political advantage of their belated acceptance of reality.

[Sir Alec Shelbrooke]

That is a really important point. When the Government act in the national interest, changes in position should be welcomed.

We do not have the defence capability that we need, and it is worrying in the extreme to hear that the money for the Diego Garcia deal will come out of the defence budget. We hear people saying, “The defence budget went down under you; it was hollowed out,” and so on. It did go down, but the bit that is often missed is that that started during the cold war, and it continued through 13 years of Labour Government and across Europe. The Americans halved their defence budget over that time. However, the world is a different place now; Ukraine was invaded, and at that point, the world changed direction.

Let us consider for a moment two countries that have made incredibly significant U-turns, if you will: Germany, which has a new defence posture and will spend hundreds of billions on defence, and Japan. Both countries have very much drawn a line under the events of the second world war, and have recognised that the world has changed into a much more dangerous place and needs a much bigger posture.

[Tom Hayes]

The right hon. Gentleman has slightly taken forward the point that I was going to make. I take the point that we live in a more insecure time, and that this country has to respond to that. He has given the example of Germany; it is able to do what it is doing because its indebtedness has not risen as extraordinarily in recent years as ours. We are in deficit to the tune of £2.7 trillion, and we pay £105 million in debt interest repayments every year before we pay for anything else, so we are in a particularly difficult situation as a Government, and that is due to our inheritance.

However, the right hon. Gentleman’s thoughtful contribution is moving this debate into a more strategic conversation about the relationship of the UK to China. In my hand, I have an iPhone, designed in California and assembled in China. I assume that he has an iPhone, too—most people in this Chamber do. The point that I am making is that we have to figure out the relationship between our two countries. Economically decoupling so significantly could harm our quality of living, our trade balance and our investment opportunities, but we must also be mindful of the threat that China poses. What is the Conservative party’s posture on China?

[Sir Alec Shelbrooke]

The hon. Gentleman may have been tied up this morning trying to decide whether he backs Andy Burnham, but our leader has made our posture crystal clear today. When asked whether she would be going to Beijing now, she said that she would not, because there was no point in doing so until there was a proper plan about which strategic interests we would work on with colleagues in Beijing. I am afraid that I do not believe that there is much to celebrate in a trade deal with the Chinese worth £600 million; it barely seems worth the trip.

On debt, the hon. Gentleman has slightly forgotten something called a pandemic, which cost half a trillion pounds. He has forgotten Gordon Brown’s banking crisis, which also cost a half a trillion pounds, and he has forgotten that we have gone into a war in Europe that caused 11% inflation. We get a very interesting dichotomy from Government Members; they say, “Inflation was 11% under your Government, but it’s not our fault that inflation is going up; it’s because of the war in Ukraine.” They might want to marry those two sentences up.

[Dr Mullan]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that at every single point from 2010 onwards, all the Labour party has ever done is encourage us to spend more?

[Sir Alec Shelbrooke]

And it has put what it said into practice. It has raised £77 billion in taxes, but I cannot see great investments being made in defence. May I say that I do not like the idea of expressing the amount of GDP being spent on defence as a percentage? Somewhere along the line, NATO and its allies fell into the trap of thinking that we had to spend x% on defence; they say, “Well, we spent 5% of GDP on defence in the 1980s.” Yes, we did, because that was what it cost. That was not a target to get to. We should identify what we need, and then fund it, and see what that comes out as. If we do not properly defend ourselves, it may well not be possible to deliver the things that we say we want to fund.

That brings me back, before I go too far outside the lines, to the point of today’s debate. This is about a geopolitical situation, and about removing a key capability without a guarantee that we can have our nuclear deterrents. We have shown over decades that those nuclear deterrents help keep the peace. There are no SNP Members in the Chamber, but when they say, “We would never use Trident. We would never use a nuclear weapon,” they miss the point. It is not a nuclear weapon, but a nuclear deterrent. We have used it every single day since the day that the Resolution class was launched, and that has kept a semblance of peace and moved us away from war. I am deeply concerned that this debate seems to be more about what may be written on a piece of paper than what we actually have the capability to do today.

14:24

[Dr Luke Evans (Hinckley and Bosworth) (Con)]

I have actually enjoyed seeing what the Foreign Office has been doing over the past few weeks. I was trying to determine why I have been getting so much more enjoyment out of it, and I think it is because it has been taking advice from “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”. Every time we have a Foreign Office question, the Black Knight comes in front of us. They are honourable, brave and doughty; they will not answer a question; they are torn limb from limb, and their arguments are struck down one by one; but they still want to have the fight.

[Mr Francois]

It’s a flesh wound!

[Dr Evans]

It is indeed. I applaud the Government and their Ministers for doing that.

We hear time and again from Government Members that we have had ample time to debate these issues. I entirely agree, but that is exactly the problem. These debates have been going on for so long because we are not getting the answers that we need to do our job and scrutinise this deal. Anyone making a good argument should be able to justify their point and evidence it. I will summarise some of the key questions that I want answered, and will say why we seem stuck. I will then explain why that matters, and, finally, will give the context of this debate.

First, we ask about the legal position. The Government say that there is legal jeopardy, but the Conservatives contend that what the International Court of Justice says is non-binding, that there is no court that could pass judgment, and that there is a Commonwealth opt-out. The Government say that the cost is £3.4 billion; the Government Actuary says that the figure is £34 billion, and the Conservatives contend that the Government are using the wrong tool to make a judgment on cost, because net present value does not count. When it comes to the environment, the Government say that safeguards are in place, but the Conservatives contend that Mauritius does not have a navy that would enable it to hold up its side of the bargain and prevent damage to fishing.

Turning to the nuclear aspect, we Conservatives recognise that the Pelindaba treaty creates a conflict, and the Government have not explained why it does not. As for the US’s involvement and whether it has a veto, we believe that the 1966 agreement would need to be taken into account. Finally, although it has not been mentioned today or over the past few weeks, there is the long-term security of this base. At the end of 99 years, there is only an option for us to buy and continue, so what happens at that point? We have not secured the long-term security of the base at all.

[Lincoln Jopp]

My hon. Friend will have heard the Minister for the Indo-Pacific, the hon. Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra), list the preconditions before treaty ratification can take place. I am pretty sure that I asked about America, and she said that there needed to be an exchange of letters. The position of the American Administration is that the Chagos deal as proposed by His Majesty’s Government would be

“an act of GREAT STUPIDITY”.

We seem quite a long way from getting American agreement and acquiescence. Does my hon. Friend, like me, foresee that we would need a protracted period of negotiation with the United States of America to get its acquiescence to this deal?

[Dr Evans]

Fundamentally, the US should express its concerns publicly, and it has now done so. We have asked Ministers, both in this debate and on Monday, whether the UK Government can make a unilateral decision without amending the notes. The Government have said that they have to amend the notes, but they have not set out what happens if the US does not agree. That is the key part of this, but the Government keep reading out the same answer that I got on Monday when I asked that question, the same answer that I got when I intervened on the Minister, and the same answer that my hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne (Lincoln Jopp) got. They say that they have set out the process, which is primary legislation, secondary legislation, and then amendments to the notes. The question is: what happens if the Americans do not agree to that amendment of the 1966 notes? I will take an intervention if the Minister can tell us, because the fundamental point about US involvement is this: if they say no, but we say yes, where do the islands go? What happens to the agreement? What happens if they say yes and we say no? Those fundamental questions are why we keep coming back to this issue. If there was clarity and simple answers to simple questions, the Opposition would understand that and be able to make a balanced judgement. Instead, we have gaps in our understanding from the Government.

[Sir Julian Lewis]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech, but I think he knows the answers to those simple questions. The answer to the question whether Mauritius could stop us having nuclear weapons stored on Diego Garcia is clearly that it would be able to do so. It is clear that the answer to what happens if the Americans say no to changing the 1966 agreement is that this deal to get rid of our sovereignty over the Chagos islands would be dead in the water. The reason that Ministers will not say those things, even though they know them to be true, is that they are afraid of a headline saying, “Minister admits that Chagos surrender can’t go ahead without American agreement”.

[Dr Evans]

My right hon. Friend is entirely right in pinpointing some of the issues, and I will reverse my speech and deal with some of those first. On the 1996 Pelindaba treaty, formally ratified in 2009, although the whole treaty is about where countries can research and what they can do with nuclear weapons, the key part, article 4, is about the prevention of parking of nuclear explosives. Paragraph 1 states:

“Each Party undertakes to prohibit…the stationing of any nuclear explosive device”

on its territory. By definition, if the base goes across to Mauritius, it will be under the treaty, because Mauritius is a signatory. There is a slight misconstruing, because there is a specific carve-out. Paragraph 2 states:

“Without prejudice to the purposes and objectives of the treaty, each party in the exercise of its sovereign rights remains free to decide for itself whether to allow visits by foreign ships and aircraft to its ports and airfields”,

and it goes on.

What the treaty implies, and what it states specifically, is that Mauritius would have to be consulted and provide explicit permission for nuclear craft, whether submarine, boat or aircraft, to be there. Only yesterday we heard that that permission would not be granted. This question on the security of the nuclear aspect is unanswered, and I look forward to the Government trying to rectify that position, because they have not explained the interaction with the treaty. This is not operational; it is purely about legal text.

[Joe Robertson (Isle of Wight East) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech, which contains more detail than the Government’s contribution. In a nutshell, is the fundamental problem not that when we give away British sovereign territory to another nation, we are vulnerable in perpetuity—whatever agreement we have sitting around it—to that agreement being torn up, disagreed with and not implemented?

[Dr Evans]

Absolutely. On a technicality, the Minister is right to say that the treaty in front of us has no problems, but at the end of the day it is about the interaction with other treaties once we have signed it and sovereignty has been given away. My hon. Friend is right that things would not be covered once Diego Garcia no longer belonged to us, and the Government are struggling to explain that difficulty.

[Sir Julian Lewis]

I must tweak what my hon. Friend just said. Although there is discretion for the Mauritian Government to give permission for a nuclear-armed vessel to visit temporarily, for example, there is no discretion for nuclear weapons to be stored permanently on Diego Garcia.

[Dr Evans]

My right hon. Friend is right. From memory, I think he is referring to article 3 of the 1996 treaty, which explicitly talks about researching and so on. The Government need to set out the implications and how that treaty interacts with this treaty that they are signing or want us to ratify.

Let us step back a bit further. We are in this position, the Government argue, because of a non-binding ICJ judgment. I will ask the Minister again: with which court does he believe there would be a problem? The Government have said time and again that we could be brought into conflict with several courts. The Defence Secretary was worried about the United Nations convention on the law of the sea and the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, but we already know from a 2015 ruling against the UK over Mauritius that they cannot judge sovereignty, so that one is out the window.

Earlier, I asked the Minister, the hon. Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra) about this issue, and she mentioned the 2021 special chamber of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea. As she will know, the UK was not party to give information to that, and it rested on the non-binding judgment of the ICJ, which is already contested. There is an opt-out, because it is a Commonwealth interaction. Months on, the Government still cannot answer these simple questions.

Another body that is often referred to—we will go over this again—is the International Telecommunication Union. We know from the Government’s own written answers that article 48 of the ITU constitution states that it cannot judge sovereignty. The Government know that, and I do not understand why they will not just stand here and say that.

On finances, the figures and what they are made up of is contested. The Government are right on their figure, and the Opposition are right on our figure, but how can that be? It is because of the mechanism being used to judge that value. The Opposition contest that the best way to work out the figure is the nominal value used by the Government actuaries. The deal is over 100 years, and we have to take into account what things will look like and other factors. The Government actuaries say that the cost is £34 billion, yet the Government are using net present value, which gives us £3.4 billion. I am glad that the Minister for Defence Readiness and Industry is here, because I posed this question to him in the last debate, and his answer was that the figure is in the Green Book. I retorted:

“Can the Minister point to any other country in the world that has used NPV to give away sovereignty?”—[Official Report, 9 September 2025; Vol. 772, c. 748.]

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

I ran the Department for Work and Pensions, which spent the whole time looking at net present value. The key problem is that we do not use net present value when dealing with a foreign country for a very simple reason: we have no idea what social issues will erupt or change. While we have control in the UK, we do not have control of a foreign country. That immediately distorts the payment amount, plus net present value strips out relevant inflation, which makes it much cheaper, officially. The real cost that we have to bear is the £34.7 billion that the actuaries have stated, not this nonsense of net present value.

[Dr Evans]

I entirely agree with my right hon. Friend, who has experience of running a Department. I find it all the more frustrating that Ministers cannot simply set out the difference between the two values when I as a Back Bencher can spot it and explain it. The question is which is the better tool and why.

Net present value has domestic use, and that is why the Office for National Statistics will not come out and say that there is a problem with it. It is a legitimate tool to use, but it is being used inappropriately when we are dealing with sovereignty. The assumptions that the Government are building their figure on are 3.5% for the first 30 years, but this is a 99-year lease. We do not even know what will happens with the other 70 years. If we compare with other countries, we see that the US uses a 7% social discount rate.

We are posing simple questions, doing our job on the Opposition Benches, trying to get answers from Ministers as to why we would use this net present value. When we take everything into account, if we use simply an inflation-adjusted amount, it is £10 billion. There are three figures out there that are all correct, but all stand to be used in a different way. The fact that a Minister repeatedly cannot answer those questions is of due concern to Opposition Members.

I will turn to the size of the environmental aspect. It has been pointed out multiple times that Mauritius does not have a navy or a force to protect the blue planet programme that is in place. Why am I concerned about that? We know that the 2015 UNCLOS tribunal was all about the fact that the UK wanted to put more protections in, but the Mauritians wanted fishing rights in the area—we already have history there—yet we would not have the Navy to enforce protections. It is a simple question for the Government to answer: how will they resolve that problem?

[Sir Alec Shelbrooke]

Does my hon. Friend share my concern that were this deal to go ahead, there will be a need for more Navy, which is expensive? At the end of the day, the increases to the defence budget that we are being told about will be used to pay for this ridiculous deal.

[Dr Evans]

Quite possibly. We already know that the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office has its blue planet programme to help to protect environmental areas that were, or are, under British control. Does this come under the FCDO budget as well? We still do not know the answers to these questions—very simple questions, which we have been asking for the past year.

On the matter of the Chagossians, my right hon. Friend the Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison) raised a very simple principle. Again, I am confused by what the Government are saying. The Prime Minister himself has said that Greenlanders will decide for Greenland, yet Chagossians cannot decide for Chagos. I understand that there could be an argument one way or the other, but the Government apparently will not make it. They do not seem to see the illogical nature of what they are putting forward when they make a statement referring to sovereignty in one area, but make no statement that would apply to the case that we are discussing today.

[Aphra Brandreth (Chester South and Eddisbury) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that British Chagossians will be given no say in how a trust fund is to be spent, and that it is simply wrong that they are being given no opportunity to have any personal say in the matters that will affect them and their futures?

[Dr Evans]

Absolutely. That is another perfectly sensible question to pose to the Government, and for them to answer and to set out the reasons and the rationale.

I am still concerned, when we are dealing with the detail, about the long-term nature of the deal and whether it is bomb-proof. When we come to the end of 99 years, what will happen? The only protection we have is that we have first say on taking it on. We have already heard, from Members on both sides of the House, how much China’s economy will grow. Will we even have the finances to buy that deal? Will we be outbid by the United States, by China, or by some other BRIC power? We are held over a barrel by the Mauritians, or, worse still, the Mauritians can simply say, “We don’t want it any more”, and the base is gone and we can do nothing about it.

Why does all this matter? Those are all technical questions that I want the Government to answer, but overall we must see the wider context, which has been explained here numerous times before. The United States is changing its foreign policy, China is changing its foreign policy, yet the UK does not appear to have an approach in either direction. It appears that we are looking towards a sphere of influence, with America having one side and China and Russia having another. So the question for the House is, “Why rush this through?” Why not think about it? Why not answer these simple questions, to get this side of the House on board, so that we could then say, “We think this is the right thing for the country?

The saddest aspect of this whole debate is the way in which the Government have turned it into a scapegoating of the Opposition as if we were playing political games, rather than seeing that the simple technical questions that need to be answered are the key to unlocking our understanding. If we as parliamentarians cannot get answers to these questions and do not understand the rationale, how can we explain it to our constituents, how can we explain it to the nation, and how can we explain it to the world? If the Government want us to stop—supposedly—playing politics, I ask them to give simple answers to simple questions, back them up and give evidence for them. Otherwise, we are left fighting the Black Knight, who is brave, who is forthright, who is keen to stand in the way of any progress, but who simply will not answer a question and is cut down, limb by limb, in a pool of blood.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

I will now announce the result of today’s deferred Division on the Draft Medical Devices (Fees Amendment) Regulations 2026. The Ayes were 294 and the Noes were 108, so the Ayes have it.

14:43

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)]

I will try to keep my words brief, because so much of this has already been laid out by my colleagues, although I see no reason why I cannot repeat it.

In essence, this whole thing falls on to a couple of stools, but there is an intervening issue. The hon. Member for Macclesfield (Tim Roca) and I have been to Ukraine together, and I have a very high regard for him. The Government ought to put him on their Front Bench as soon as possible, because he will make less of a mess of it than the others. [Interruption.] It was a compliment. Having been in government, I have to tell him that it was quite a compliment.

The hon. Gentleman talked, quite rightly, about ambiguity—sometimes determined ambiguity, and sometimes inadvertent ambiguity. What China is doing in the South China seas is against international law and has been condemned by the United Nations, absolutely and clearly. China has no right to that area, historic or otherwise, but the Chinese have ignored that, and are now putting defensive forts in the area. We have seen them threaten the Philippines, barge their boats out of the way and fire shots over them. The same goes for Vietnam. They are threatening Taiwan as well. All those countries lay a certain amount of claim to the area, but the Chinese have ignored that.

The one thing that the Chinese want to do is extend their position to the trade routes. If the Chinese Government could gain control of the east-west trade routes—which, strangely enough, flow right past the Chagos islands—that would be an absolute win for them. They would be able to choke the trade going from east to west whenever they wished to do so. People might say, “Well, they wouldn’t do that, would they?” Oh yes, they would. They are now talking about blockading Taiwan as part of that process.

I know that the hon. Gentleman is a realist, and on that basis I simply say that we need to look at the Chagos islands, and to look at this treaty, in the light of the threat to the free world from this unbelievably brutal but enormously growing power—a threat that is itself growing in plain sight. It is worth our reminding ourselves that the Chinese are building a navy that, as even United States experts accept, will outgrow US naval forces within two years. That is really important. Any one shipyard in China today builds more naval ships than the whole of the United States of America and probably Europe as well, and China has many naval shipyards.

[Sir Alec Shelbrooke]

I spoke earlier about the naval problem, but China has also built an incredible number of intercontinental ballistic missile silos. It is hugely increasing its nuclear arsenal and refuses to come to the table for negotiations on non-proliferation treaties. Is this not the most ridiculous time to give up the certainty of being able to house nuclear weapons at a strategic site?

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

I will come on to that, but my right hon. Friend is right. I just wanted to provide the background information on what the problem is. The problem is China. Remember that China supports Russia, so the very idea that a British citizen—Philippe Sands in this case, representing Mauritius—should actually negotiate with and talk to the Russians about how this would not make it difficult for them to hold on to Crimea strikes me as astounding. It is astonishing that a British citizen should even engage with them on this. That tells us that the nature of some of the people who are involved in this is questionable indeed.

The background, then, is “What is the threat?” It could be argued, I think, that the threat is now greater than it has been at any time since the second world war, and certainly since the end of the cold war. We are in a new environment, and that new environment requires us to understand the nature of our assets and how we would maximise those assets, not minimise them. My argument here is slightly different: we have taken the wrong decision over Chagos for the wrong reasons. If we had stepped back and then asked ourselves about this in 10, five or even two years’ time, when China is estimated to have a more powerful fleet in the Pacific than the United States can muster at any stage, would we really say that we ought to let the Chagos islands go and put them in the hands of Mauritius, which China lauds in almost every announcement that it makes and with which it has a very good relationship?

[Dr Mullan]

Even if we accept the Government’s position that Mauritius does not get on particularly well with China, are we really leaving in the hands of fate the question of whether the Mauritians might change their minds 50 years from now and seek to line up with China’s sphere of influence? It is a huge gamble to take.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I fundamentally agree with him. In a way, I am sorry that the hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty) is not here—that is not to say that I have a detrimental view of the Minister now on the Front Bench, the hon. Member for Plymouth Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard)—and I worry about why he is not here. I hope he is not suffering from “long Chagos.” Maybe we should send him a “get well” card very soon. We miss him, because we are definitely seeing studied ambivalence at the Dispatch Box as a master strategic plan.

I will repeat what has been said by a number of colleagues: we know from yesterday, if we needed to know it at all, that the Deputy Prime Minister of Mauritius has made it categorically clear that there will be no allowance for nuclear weapons, either parked or landed, on the Chagos islands while the treaty exists. The hon. Member for Macclesfield rightly spoke about studied ambivalence, but there was no ambivalence in the statement from the Deputy Prime Minister of Mauritius. He is completely clear, yet we are ambivalent. For us, ambivalence is a mistake, because it allows the statements of fact to be presented by those who will take control of Chagos. That is not just a mistake, but a disastrous mistake.

[Sir Julian Lewis]

I think there is a further twist, because the Pelindaba treaty not only prohibits the storing of nuclear weapons on the territory of Mauritius, which the Chagos islands would become, but requires an inspection regime. I understand that the country that would carry out the inspection is South Africa, which is somewhat closer to China and Russia—particularly where naval co-operation is concerned—than it is to America or the United Kingdom.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right, as he normally is. The reality is that the treaty to which he refers is very clear that its signatories cannot modify it; they must categorically agree not to have nuclear weapons on their territory. We are in the business of giving that territorial right to Mauritius, so there is no question but that the treaty will apply to Chagos.

That brings me to the other thing that the Government simply do not want to face up to: the 1966 treaty between the USA and the UK is absolutely clear. The Government obfuscate by calling it an “exchange of letters”, but it is actually a treaty. When we talk about an exchange of letters, it sounds like a “get well” card or something that one puts in the post. The Government say that this is not a big problem and that we can just exchange a few letters to each other:

“How are you getting on?”

“Fine. What about you?”

“We’re just going to give the islands away. Are you okay with that?”

“We’re okay with that—no problems. Can you give us a bit more detail?”

“We will when it is all passed. Don’t worry about it. We’ll be with you on this.”

No, it is a treaty. It has the substance of being a treaty, and that substance states categorically:

“The Territory shall remain under United Kingdom sovereignty.”

We cannot arbitrarily change that; we have to have full agreement from the USA. I do not believe that the United States really understood that it would not have sovereign rights over the base. I do not think the Government ever bothered to explain that, because I seem to recall that when this whole debate began, it was never mentioned. The Government did not come forward and say, “Yes, we’re going to get this Bill through. It’s not in the Bill, but we’ll exchange letters with you afterwards, because although it’s relevant and it’s completely sovereign, we don’t want to talk about it.”

The Government have to explain why they have never made any significant mention of that at all, because it now has a massive bearing on what happens to this really poor treaty, which is badly drafted, hurriedly written and only a few pages long. I sat through the debates on the Maastricht treaty—rebelling, of course—and the reality was that it was huge. Every aspect of our arrangements was in there and was debatable and amendable. It has been horrific to see how quickly the Government want to get the Bill through. I honestly think that it is madness.

I come to the cost. The other bit that is completely wrong is the Government’s desire to show how little they have had to pay under the treaty to get what they consider to be a reasonable lease. Is it not ironic that the Government are now moving against leaseholders here in the UK? They do not like leases. Apparently, people do have enough power over their leases. I simply say that the Government should learn from their own views about what is happening domestically. The lease is a terrible thing at times, because it gives people so little control. This is going to be a lease.

[Mr Francois]

My right hon. Friend is making an excellent speech, and if he was not already sanctioned by the Chinese, he would be by the end of it. Does he recall that Disraeli said in opposition, “We may not win the vote tonight, but we can win the argument?” Does my right hon. Friend agree that not only are we winning the argument, but the Government are failing by not answering any questions or making any argument at all?

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

Indeed. In fact, rather than us winning the argument, the Government have simply lost the argument. That is even more powerful, because they are making no effort to explain it. I honestly feel sorry for Ministers. I have sat in government, and I know that Ministers are sent out to bat and to defend the indefensible, which they have to do well. I have a high regard for the hon. Member for Plymouth Sutton and Devonport, as he knows, but good luck to him on this one—he will need to make his speech brief, because we will intervene.

I simply say that the cost is nonsense. My hon. Friend the Member for Hinckley and Bosworth (Dr Evans) brilliantly laid it out, so I will not repeat the specifics. As I said to him, having sat in government, I know how these figures are put together. There is no way on earth that a Government should use net present value for a foreign treaty that covers a period of over 90 years—it is an absurdity. We have no control over the social obligations in Mauritius, which may shift and change. We have no control over what the Mauritians’ economic policy will be and the impact of inflation. The treaty can only really be used for domestic issues, and I think this is a shimmy by the Government to try to get the cost down, absurdly, to £3.4 billion, when in fact it is £34.7 billion. That figure is probably wrong, because I think it will be more than that over the long term. This is another absurdity and an excuse to be got rid of.

All the other points have been made, so I will not dwell on them, but I do want to dwell on this point. It was wrong to have chucked the Chagossians off their islands in 1966—it was a bad decision and an immoral one, and we need to own up to that fact. My Government should have done so, and we should own up to the fact that we owe the Chagossians something better. The hon. Member for Bicester and Woodstock (Calum Miller), who speaks for the Liberal Democrats, has talked about a referendum, and that is one of the possibilities, but I will tell the House what I would do if I was in government. I would say to the Chagossians, “Listen, we’re not going to do the deal with Mauritius; we’ll do the deal with you. You’ll be allowed back to the islands, with full rights, and we’ll negotiate with you on how we will work together, with British control overall but with you being paid.” I would rather pay the money to them, so that they can live their lives better, than to Mauritius. We know that many of the Chagossians have had terrible problems in Mauritius and have been treated like second-class citizens. For that reason, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has come out and said that the treaty should not go ahead, and I agree with that.

There is both a factual problem and a human rights problem with the treaty, and there is an overarching threat to our freedom and to the freedom of those elsewhere in the free world. If we give way, let the treaty go through and do not end this nonsense, we will forever have it over our heads that we lost control of the most critical area in the world.

15:00

[Andrew Rosindell (Romford) (Reform)]

I am very pleased to follow my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith). I only wish that, when he was the leader of the Conservative party, he had gone on to become Prime Minister, because then we would not be sitting here debating this issue today. The last words of his speech said everything that needed to be said.

All Governments of all political parties have failed to do the right and moral thing over many decades. The Chagos islands were depopulated—cruelly depopulated—and the people of the Chagos islands were never given any say or any right of self-determination. Had that happened, decolonisation would have taken place, and there would never have been an International Court ruling. The Chagos islands would have stayed British and, as the Falkland Islanders and the Gibraltarians have done, they would have proudly voted in any referendum to exercise their right of self-determination and stayed British. However, all Governments of all parties ignored the whole issue for decades, despite all the appeals of a small number of us who tried again and again and again, but were ignored. That is why we are in the position we are in today.

I cannot disagree with almost anything my former colleagues have been saying about this issue. They have analysed it correctly, and I only wish that we had done something about it during our 14 years in government.

[Mr Francois]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Andrew Rosindell]

I will not give way at this stage.

As I think all Members on both sides of the House will know, few issues have consumed so much of the 25 years of my parliamentary life as the British Indian Ocean Territory, the Chagos islands and, more importantly, the Chagossian people. For more than two decades, I have fought for the Chagossian right of self-determination, as with all overseas territories and former colonies. I chaired the Chagos Islands (British Indian Ocean Territory) all-party parliamentary group. In fact, I was previously the deputy chairman to the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), so trying to get cross-party consensus on where we were heading was a bit of a juggling act.

The one thing that united that all-party group was the belief that the Chagossians should have the right of resettlement. I argued strongly for self-determination and that ultimately, whatever the options are and whatever happens, the Chagossians should have the final say. The right hon. Member had a different view, but members of that group—representing seven political parties—came to the view that the first thing needed was resettlement. However, the Conservative Government, over 14 years, absolutely refused even to consider any option for the resettlement of those islands.

I also dealt with this issue as a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee over 15 years. Unlike the many who now speak with great certainty but remained silent during that period, I did not remain silent. I have also been to the British Indian Ocean Territory. I have walked around those islands, and seen the abandoned churches and schools. I have walked around the ancestral graves of the Chagossian people and the derelict homes. I have seen the visible traces of a community expelled from its homeland and denied the right to return. I have raised this with every Foreign Office Minister in every Government over and over again, and I have been ignored. A small number of us were ignored; I pay tribute to Daniel Kawczynski, the former Member for Shrewsbury, and Henry Smith, the former Member for Crawley, for raising this matter. We all raised it, but, sadly, over 14 years the last Government just dismissed it and refused even to consider it.

I went to Peros Banhos, the outer islands, which are 160 miles away from Diego Garcia. There is no security threat there. It took me four different boats to get to the outer islands. People could live there with no issues whatsoever, because they would be a long way from Diego Garcia. Despite the line from the Foreign Office, when I went to the State Department and raised this matter directly with the Americans, they said, “We have no objections to the Chagossians living in the outer islands.” Our Foreign Office has been puppeteering this policy for years, and our Ministers just went along with it. They did nothing and they ignored the facts.

I went to Mauritius in 2002, accompanied by the then leader of the Conservative party, my right hon. Friend Michael Howard—Lord Howard of Lympne. It was not part of the official programme, but I asked, “Please can we go and visit the Chagossians in Port Louis?” After a bit of a flurry from officials, in the end we insisted, and we went to meet the leaders of the Chagossian community. That was in 2002, which was pretty much my first year as a Member of Parliament.

So when I speak about the Chagos islands, I do so from long experience, having visited Diego Garcia and the outer islands, and I conclude that the current position represents—sadly, by all parties—a shameful betrayal of the loyal British Chagossian people. The Government’s Bill is nothing short of a surrender. It hands away British sovereignty over a territory that we have administered for more than two centuries. It binds generations of British taxpayers to a grotesque financial settlement, with tens of billions of pounds paid to a foreign Government simply so we may lease back the military base that we already own. It is vital to our security and that of one of our closest allies, yet we are prepared to risk that vital military and security base for the next century because of this shabby deal.

Ministers justify this capitulation by sheltering behind so-called international law. They insist that a non-binding advisory opinion of a Court, whose jurisdiction is explicitly excluded from intra-Commonwealth disputes, is somehow beyond negotiation, yet at the same time they are content to ignore the 1966 agreement between the United States and the United Kingdom—an actual binding international treaty—which states plainly in its very first clause:

“The Territory shall remain under United Kingdom sovereignty.”

That consideration tells us everything we need to know: this was never really about international law. An act of “total weakness” is how this has been described by the President of the United States of America, and does that not just say everything about this Government’s approach? All this is being done without the consent of or a genuine consultation with—and even without the courtesy, which every other territory has been afforded, of a democratic vote for—the Chagossian people themselves.

As disgraceful as the Bill is, it did not emerge from a vacuum. For over two decades and, as I have mentioned, for 14 years from the Government Back Benches, I urged Foreign Secretary after Foreign Secretary and Minister after Minister—speaking to them in the Lobbies, going to the Foreign Office and talking to officials; and discussing it over and over again by calling them into all-party group meetings and raising it at the Foreign Affairs Committee—to consider the Chagossians’ right of resettlement and self-determination, but I was ignored all the way through.

[Sir Julian Lewis]

I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend—as I will always regard him, having known him for the past 40 years and knowing that his patriotism is beyond question—for giving way. Does he agree with me that there is a bit of a pattern here? The Government clearly want to do this surrender deal or giveaway, yet try to shelter behind inconclusive legalistic analysis. Is that not exactly the same as the betrayal of our Northern Ireland veterans, as the Government, when pressed, admit that they wanted to remove the immunity for our veterans anyway, but still seek to shelter behind questionable legal considerations that have not been fully tested? Why, when the Government want to do these terrible things, will they not at least have the guts to stand up and admit that that is what they want to do, and that they are not being forced to do it by lawyers whose credentials and jurisdiction are in question, to put it at its mildest?

[Andrew Rosindell]

I agree with every word my very dear and long-standing friend has said. I sit on a different Bench now, but as I look around the Chamber, I see colleagues on the Conservative Benches who I still agree with on most things, but I see some people on the Labour Benches—and certainly some of those in the Government—who seem to hate everything about this country and want to undermine this country, including when it comes to Northern Ireland veterans, and this particular issue, of the surrender of one of His Majesty’s territories against the wishes of the people, is exactly what I am talking about.

[Mr Francois]

Both the hon. Gentleman and I have visited the Falkland Islands, although on different occasions. There is a strategic runway and base there at RAF Mount Pleasant. Would he agree that what the Government are doing is analogous to paying Argentina £35 billion to rent back that base and the Falkland Islands, which also belong to us and wish to be British?

[Andrew Rosindell]

My right hon. Friend is completely right. There is a precedent here. The Falkland Islands could have gone the same way. Gibraltar could have gone the same way—indeed, the Government tried to make that happen. In 2002, one of the biggest campaigns I have ever fought was against the joint sovereignty plan by Tony Blair, which was against the wishes of the Gibraltarian people. I commend Mr Speaker, who at the time I worked with very closely in order to keep Gibraltar British, as happened in 1982 in order to keep the Falkland Islands British—but always on the basis of self-determination.

[Tom Hayes]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Andrew Rosindell]

I will make some progress.

With assurances from the United States, and given precedents around the world where indigenous people live alongside military installations, in 2016 I tabled an urgent question calling for self-determination. The response from the then Conservative Foreign Office Minister, Sir Alan Duncan, was this:

“we do not consider that the right of self-determination actually applies to the Chagossians.” —[Official Report, 17 November 2016; Vol. 617, c. 386.]

What a colossal disgrace. Sir Alan compared Chagossian resettlement to Pitcairn—another British community that the then Conservative Government were willing to discard to another nation, even though Pitcairn later proved strategically vital for our accession to the comprehensive and progressive agreement for trans-Pacific partnership.

I am sad to say that the Government are correct that it was my Government—the Conservative Government at the time—that began this scandal, conducting 11 rounds of negotiations with Port Louis. I commend Lord Cameron, who rightly ended those talks, but they should never have begun in the first place. Why did my former party not repudiate that whole policy entirely afterwards? Why did they not say, “That’s the end of it. Never again.” and repudiate the failure of Sir Alan Duncan to give self-determination? Why did we not jettison that entire policy? We did not do so.

Even from within the shadow foreign affairs team, I argued very strongly that the policy was fundamentally and morally wrong, and that self-determination must be central to our response, but I was shut down. The Conservatives’ opposition to this Bill, I am afraid, does comes not from principle but from convenience. The cost of this surrender is indeed eye-watering and has been the focus of the Opposition for the last year, but no amount of money compares to the dishonour of selling out British people.

Self-determination is fundamental to everything I believe in—so fundamental that it rendered my position as shadow Minister untenable. I was pleased to hear the words of self-determination used earlier by the shadow Foreign Secretary, the right hon. Member for Witham (Priti Patel), because when I asked we take that position in the past, I was told it was not party policy. I am thrilled if now, at long last, self-determination for the Chagossian people is official Conservative party policy. I hope that is the case—if it is, then everything that I have been fighting for over the last 25 years has been worth it—but the Bill and its origins, under both this Labour Government and the previous Conservative Government, represents the moment that I had enough over this issue and needed to say clearly that country has to come before party; and I believe that the Chagossians deserve the same democratic rights as every other British citizen.

A few weeks ago, I was genuinely horrified and upset to be prevented, on Conservative Whips’ instruction, from voting for the amendment tabled by the hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Dr Pinkerton), who is a fine addition to the House and has campaigned wonderfully for the rights of the Chagossian people. His amendment sought to guarantee a referendum for the Chagossian people. I went to the doorway of the Lobby, but was told that I could not go in and vote for it. I apologise to my Chagossian friends that I let them down on that, but I was told not to and I felt deeply upset that I did not. I made it clear to the hon. Member for Surrey Heath that he had, and still has, my support.

Meanwhile, genuine opposition on the Benches from which I speak now has put aside party squabbles, because national interest must always come before party—there is not really much in common usually between the Reform and Liberal Democrat Benches, but this is a matter of principle. Colleagues in my new party voted for the amendment in the name of the hon. Member for Surrey Heath, and I commend them for doing so. It asked simply to give a displaced people the right of consent before their homeland is gift-wrapped and donated to a foreign country. That is all we are asking: let the people decide. Who can seriously disagree with that principle? We rightly insist on self-determination for the Falkland Islanders, we strongly uphold it for Gibraltar, and we defend it for every other British overseas territory and former colony. The Government are happy to support that principle over Greenland, it seems, but not for their own British Chagossian people. It makes no sense and it is morally reprehensible.

What took place in the House of Lords on Third Reading was shameful. Peers repeatedly called for a Division, shouts of “Not content” were heard again and again, yet the House was denied the opportunity to vote. A Bill of immense constitutional, financial and strategic consequence—one of the most important pieces of legislation of this Parliament—was nodded through on a procedural manoeuvre, squandering a chance to kill it.

I was further disturbed to learn from many very angry Conservative peers who contacted me that they had been instructed not to vote the Bill down, not because the arguments were weak or because the numbers were lacking, but because of a quiet understanding that sovereignty should not be defended too robustly today, lest it cause inconvenience for tomorrow. Many Members of the House of Lords contacted me absolutely in despair at the instructions that they were given by their Whips. This is not coming from me, because I am not in the Lords, but from those who were there who were deeply upset by that. That crossed the line. A Conservative Government denied the principle of self-determination.

This Labour Government have gone much further, surrendering the homeland entirely without the consent of the Chagossian people. This is a bipartisan failure. The legislation sells out the King’s islands, binds future generations to vast financial liabilities and ignores the rights of an exiled people. I could not in good conscience remain silent and complicit, disarmed of any meaningful say in the deliberations of my former party and ashamed that the party of Margaret Thatcher—the party that took back the Falkland Islands in defence of the principle of self-determination—would be implicated in this betrayal.

Perhaps the Prime Minister will keep to the word of his own Deputy Prime Minister, who stated on ITV last February:

“If President Trump doesn’t like the deal, the deal will not go forward.”

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

Order. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman is aware of pressures of time, and that he will bringing his remarks to a conclusion shortly.

[Andrew Rosindell]

Given that the President believes this deal to be

“an act of GREAT STUPIDITY”,

perhaps the Prime Minister should show some courage, withdraw this legislation and scrap this atrocious deal altogether.

In conclusion, this deal should be cast into the dustbin of history where it belongs, mark an end to the Government’s policy of managed decline, and prove that when it comes to the sovereignty of people over their homeland, whether it be Chagos—the British Indian Ocean Territory—or any other territory that is being decolonised around the world, it is the people themselves who must decide, have the final say and be given the right of self-determination.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. Members should be aware that I am planning to start Front-Bench contributions at 3.40 pm.

15:19

[Lincoln Jopp (Spelthorne) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell). With his final words on self-determination echoing in my ears, I have no doubt he will be reflecting on whether he is going to afford the people of Romford the same rights that he is demanding for the Chagossian people.

[Tom Hayes]

The Conservatives have argued against the Government’s position and have done so believing that that is what is right. They have never impugned the patriotism or the loyalty of the Labour party to this country, unlike the hon. Member for Romford. Does the hon. Member for Spelthorne (Lincoln Jopp) agree that we should take no lessons from Reform, who take their line from either Musk or Moscow?

[Lincoln Jopp]

I thank the hon. and gallant Member for his intervention. If he wants to do so, I suggest that he takes it outside, as they say.

I am very time-constrained, but I want to pay tribute to my hon. Friends on the Conservative Benches who have informed the debate with incredibly detailed research and knowledge. I have been delighted to see the Minister’s PPS running backwards and forwards from the officials’ Box, because I was rather hoping that the summing up would not simply be a reheating of the opening remarks made by the Minister with responsibility for the Indo-Pacific, the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, the hon. Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra). There have been substantive points made from these Benches, which I hope will be answered in the summing up.

I am very time-constrained and a lot of points have already been covered. In search of inspiration I was wondering what I might add to the debate, so I will read out a piece of casework which, although not relevant to the Chagos islands, is an interesting comparator. It comes from a member of the public who had written to his bank manager. I suppose I owe it to him to anonymise him, so I need to come up with some sort of pseudonym. I will call him Mr Powell.

Mr Powell wrote to his bank manager: “Dear Sir, a number of years ago, I inherited a large seven-storey home in Mayfair. I am incredibly lucky and I acknowledge that fact. It is far too big for me to live in. I live solely in half of the ground floor. For as long as I can remember, I have had Americans living on the other floors. I like these Americans, so they live there rent-free. What I am proposing, sir, is that I give you, the bank, this house. I then propose to pay you, the bank, rent above the market rate not only for me, but for all the Americans who live upstairs. I would be very grateful for your advice on this issue.”

The bank manager wrote back to Mr Powell: “Dear Mr Powell, are you okay? I am concerned for your mental state, because what you are proposing would appear to be an act of GREAT STUPIDITY.” [Laughter.] The bank manager went on to make the following four points: “First, you do not need to do this at all. Secondly, it will cost you a fortune. Thirdly, you do realise that at the end of all this you will have given away your house? Fourthly, on a personal note, were these arrangements ever to become public, I fear that your neighbours would laugh at you. Yours, the Bank Manager.”

I simply leave that analogue there, to let my colleagues in so that we may wrap this debate up.

15:23

[Aphra Brandreth (Chester South and Eddisbury) (Con)]

On every level, this is a bad deal. From the absurdity of paying £34.7 billion for the privilege of ceding our own territory to the implications for defence, from putting at risk one of the most pristine marine environments in the world to the complete disregard shown to the British Chagossians themselves, there is so much I could focus my remarks on today, but I want to highlight two issues in particular: perception and national security.

Perception matters in geopolitics. The messages we send, intentionally or otherwise, are read closely by our allies and by our adversaries. They carry very real consequences. I need not remind the Minister of the comments made by the President of the United States just last week. Those remarks materially change the context in which this House is considering the deal.

The 1966 treaty between the UK and the US agreed to retain sovereignty over the British Indian Ocean Territory. It is clear that any attempt to surrender sovereignty violates international law and I commend my Conservative colleagues in both Houses for delaying the Bill’s passage. But delay is not enough. The surrender Bill should be pulled in its entirety. The UK-US relationship is built on trust, particularly in defence and security. When the President states publicly that a deal will damage that relationship and should not proceed, that this deal is an “act of great stupidity”, the Government should listen and act. I am not suggesting that the United States sees the UK as an unreliable partner—we have stood shoulder to shoulder for decades—but this deal is different. If it proceeds, it will reduce the operability of UK and US forces in the region, diminish our strategic reach, and weaken our influence. Responsibility for that lies squarely with this Government.

The Prime Minister is in China today. Beijing will also be watching closely. China will welcome any increase in autonomy in the region and, with it, the opportunity to decimate the marine protected areas surrounding the Chagos islands with its fishing fleet. We know that those vessels will not simply be there to fish. They will be there to gather intelligence, probe our defences and gain strategic advantage near Diego Garcia. The message this deal sends to our adversaries is clear: the UK is retreating, diminishing and weakening. That is not the message we should be sending in an increasingly hostile and unpredictable world.

I want to make one brief point on national security, which I have raised in previous debates and on which we have heard from many Members today. Under the Pelindaba treaty, neither the UK nor the US will be able to store nuclear weapons on Diego Garcia. We now have confirmation of that from the Deputy Prime Minister of Mauritius. That restriction significantly reduces our capability in a critical region, and weakens the security of both ourselves and our allies.

Ultimately, the deal is not in the interests of the United Kingdom. It is not in the interests of protecting one of the most important marine environments on the planet, it is not in the interests of the British Chagossians, who have been ignored throughout this process, and it is certainly not in the interests of the British taxpayer. Those on the Labour Benches know that another U-turn is looming. The deal is indefensible. Today, Members have an opportunity to do the right thing, support this motion and bring this surrender deal to an end.

15:27

[Ben Obese-Jecty (Huntingdon) (Con)]

So wrote the President of the United States only a week ago:

“The UK giving away extremely important land is an act of GREAT STUPIDITY.”

For once, he is not wrong. I have lost track of the number of times I have spoken about the Chagos deal in this House, but each time brings a new stick with which to beat the Government. It is genuinely difficult to see how the Government have got to this point, but their kamikaze negotiating tactics have led them to a situation where they can no longer even muster the collective energy of their Back Benchers to defend it. The dogged determination of the Government to capitulate to a 2019 advisory ruling by the International Court of Justice would be commendable, were it not so timid. The UN General Assembly adopted resolutions urging the UK to comply with the ICJ’s advisory opinion, but crucially, the US voted in support of the UK, clearly not fearing the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, of which it is not a member.

As I am sure everybody here already knows, the United States’s support is significant because of the presence of the naval support facility, Diego Garcia. It is a strategically important location that is effectively a persistent aircraft carrier in the Indian ocean, critical for force projection in the southern hemisphere and across INDOPACOM—the United States Indo-Pacific Command. On Monday, the Minister of State responsible for the overseas territories, the hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth responsible (Stephen Doughty) was quick to imply that discussions regarding the deal with the United States were an almost daily occurrence. With that in mind, perhaps the Minister in his summing up could outline to the House what discussions the Government have had with their US counterparts regarding the limitations placed on operations by compliance with the Pelindaba treaty.

This was the answer I received to a recent written question:

“Both the UK and Mauritius are satisfied that our existing international obligations are fully compatible with the Agreement”,

but what precisely does that exclude going forward? The African nuclear weapon-free zone treaty was signed by Mauritius in 1996 and prohibits myriad functions relating to nuclear weapons, including possession or control of nuclear weapons. There are obviously no intercontinental ballistic missiles based at Diego Garcia, but the US nuclear triad is designed to provide a second-strike capability that includes air-launched warheads.

Naval support facility Diego Garcia is a strategic waypoint for the US air force bomber fleet, the B-1, B-2 and B-52 bombers. Following 9/11, the US used Diego Garcia for operations in Afghanistan, and subsequently during the start of the Iraq war. As recently as last May, the US air force had B-2 bombers stationed on the island. This is critical because the B-2 Spirit is the delivery method for the Mod 11 B61-12 thermonuclear gravity bomb, the primary weapon for the ground-penetrating mission. This capability matters, and while it will likely never be used, we cannot afford to let enemies in the region know that that will never be on the table.

We should bear in mind that the Prime Minister is in China this week. Strategic posture across the Pacific, particularly in Taiwan and the second island chain, will surely come up in conversation. Ceding the Chagos islands to a country within China’s orbit is yet another strategic mis-step in the Prime Minister’s inability to deal with China robustly.

On the ongoing issue of sovereignty, in note No. 25 between the ambassador of the United States of America and the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, written on 30 December 1966, point (1) states very clearly:

“The Territory shall remain under United Kingdom sovereignty.”

This time last year, I asked the Government whether the 1966 exchange of notes would require amendment as a result of the change in sovereignty, and they answered:

“The 1966 Exchange of Notes between the UK and US regarding the joint UK-US base on Diego Garcia has been subject to routine amendments and supplementation since signature. Any amendments resulting from the proposed agreement with Mauritius will be factored into this existing process.”

Can the Minister outline what progress the Government have made? I asked that question on 5 February last year, and here we are, a year letter, with the treaty on the brink and no update from the Government, other than through a slightly churlish appearance from the Minister at the Dispatch Box in Monday’s urgent question. Crucially, the legislation was pulled from the other place that afternoon.

Throughout the passage of the Bill, the Government have deflected, obfuscated, been dragged to the Chamber, given us the run-around on detail, gaslit us, and generally tried to force this deal through. The lack of speakers on the Government Benches is testament to the fact that Labour MPs simply do not want to put their name to this legislation. All it achieves is a weakening of our military options in the southern hemisphere, and the exemption of 80% of Mauritian workers from income tax. Kudos to Mauritian Prime Minister Navin Ramgoolam, clearly a savvier negotiator than our dear Prime Minister.

“There is no doubt that China and Russia have noticed this act of total weakness”,

said President Trump. Perhaps the Prime Minister could ask Xi Jinping about it before he offers him a state visit.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

That brings us to the Front Benchers. I call shadow Secretary of State James Cartlidge.

15:31

[James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)]

May I begin by offering the Opposition’s condolences to the family of Captain Philip Muldowney of the Royal Artillery, who tragically lost his life training with the British Army this week?

It is a pleasure to close today’s debate on the Chagos islands, and to hold the Government to account for the total meltdown of their attempt to surrender sovereignty of the British Indian Ocean Territory without opposition. Well, today they are getting that opposition, and they are getting it from the Conservatives, because it is we who have exposed the total fallacy of the legal argument used to justify this crazy deal. And let us be clear: it is a truly crazy deal—one of the worst ever proposed to this Parliament. As every single one of my colleagues said in their excellent speeches, this deal involves our hard-pressed taxpayers, struggling as they are with an ever-growing tax burden since Labour came to power, handing over another £35 billion to lease back land that we already own freehold. It is our land, over which we have sovereignty, the ultimate guarantor of legal security in a dangerous world. Given that we need that money for our own armed forces; that billions of pounds is to be given to Mauritius, and will be used to cut taxes for its people; that Labour knows that the threats that we face are growing, and that we need Diego Garcia more than ever; and that the policy treats the Chagossian people with contempt, the public will be scratching their heads, and will ask a simple question: why are the Government doing this?

To be fair to the Minister for Defence Readiness and Industry, last September, he tried to spell out the reasons, and I will quote exactly what he said to justify this crazy deal:

“Had we not signed the treaty, we could have faced further legal rulings against us within weeks...Further legal rulings might have included arbitrary proceedings against the UK under annex 7 of the UN convention on the law of the sea, known as UNCLOS.”

He went on to say that such a judgment would ultimately threaten operations on the base, because it would

“impact on our ability to protect the electromagnetic spectrum from interference”—[Official Report, 9 September 2025; Vol. 772, c. 741.]

It is bad enough that the Government’s case rests entirely on rulings that “could” and “might” be made; worse still, the Government are failing to take into account our clearcut ability to reject any such hypothetical ruling.

We understand that the Government are afraid of legal action relating to the United Nations convention on the law of the sea, but article 298 of UNCLOS states very clearly:

“When signing, ratifying or acceding to this Convention or at any time thereafter, a State may, without prejudice to the obligations arising under section 1, declare in writing that it does not accept any one or more of the procedures provided for in section 2 with respect to one or more of the following categories of disputes”,

including, under (b),

“disputes concerning military activities”.

On operational threats to the base, the Government’s argument is that hypothetical action by UNCLOS might lead to further hypothetical action by the International Telecommunications Union, leading, hypothetically, to a threat to the electromagnetic spectrum on the base at Diego Garcia. Well, article 48 of the “Constitution of the International Telecommunications Union”, which is entitled “Installations for National Defence Services”, states, under section 1:

“Member States retain their entire freedom with regard to military radio installations.”

To clarify further, the telecoms Minister, the hon. Member for Rhondda and Ogmore (Chris Bryant), who is always a helpful soul, confirmed, in a written answer from last February to my right hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois), that

“Individual countries have the sovereign right to manage and use the radio spectrum, within their borders, the way they wish, subject to not causing interference with other countries…The ITU cannot challenge the UK’s use of civilian or military spectrum.”

A slam dunk! Now we have it: we can challenge UNCLOS, where military bases are concerned, and the ITU cannot challenge our use of electromagnetic spectrum.

Is it not therefore the truth that there is no threat to this country if we maintain our sovereignty over Diego Garcia, but there is a massive threat if we surrender it? There are, for ourselves and the United States, clear and unambiguous threats to the most sensitive and critical things relating to our military operations—those that relate to our ability to use nuclear weapons and deter the most serious threats to our nation.

Yesterday, it was confirmed that the Deputy Prime Minister of Mauritius, Paul Bérenger, has stated that nuclear weapons could not be stored on Diego Garcia if Labour’s deal went through. That is crystal clear. That is because Mauritius is a signatory to the Pelindaba treaty, prohibiting the stationing of nuclear weapons across Africa, including all the territory of Mauritius. We repeatedly warned Ministers of the threat arising from the Pelindaba treaty, but they dismissed our concerns, and today they could not answer the questions at all.

Can the Minister tell us if anyone in Government has discussed the storage of nuclear weapons on Diego Garcia with the US Administration? In particular, has the Prime Minister at any point discussed this matter with President Trump? Is it not another example of the total madness of Labour’s crazy Chagos deal that we, who rely on a naval nuclear deterrent to keep us safe in a dangerous world, are surrendering sovereignty of one of the most vital naval bases in the world to a nation that has signed up to a treaty outlawing the stationing of nuclear weapons on that territory?

We have had some absolutely fantastic speeches today. I have to pay tribute to the hon. Members for Macclesfield (Tim Roca), and for Rugby (John Slinger), for answering the distress flare from their Whips Office. Labour had two more contributions today than it did in the urgent question the other day, when not a single Labour MP stood up in support of the Government. We Conservative Members, however, showed real passion, because none of us supports this deal; we have consistently opposed it. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Dr Mullan) said, what does it say about our strategic priorities? As my right hon. Friend the Member for Wetherby and Easingwold (Sir Alec Shelbrooke) said, this is a Government without a strategic policy on China, so what message does the deal send, especially when we have agreed the Chinese super-embassy?

I have to give special mention to my hon. Friend the Member for Hinckley and Bosworth (Dr Evans), who gave an absolutely brilliant speech that totally demolished the Government’s case around the financial position—not a flesh wound in sight after that. He referred to the sketch with the Black Knight, but increasingly we think of another Monty Python sketch. The Government think that this treaty has been paused—that it is merely resting—but we increasingly suspect that this treaty is pushing up the daisies, and I can assure you, Madam Deputy Speaker, that we will campaign with every bit of fight we have to ensure that it is an ex-treaty.

[Tom Hayes]

On the question of cost, can the hon. Member tell the House how much the Conservative Government were offering for such a deal? Was it higher or lower than Labour’s offer? If he does not know, will he table a written parliamentary question or make a freedom of information request to the Foreign Office to find out?

[James Cartlidge]

I do not think the hon. Gentleman quite understands. We did not sign a deal; we would not sign a deal, because the terms were totally unacceptable, and they have got an awful lot worse since then—35 billion times worse. The cost is £35 billion—that comes from a freedom of information release from the Government themselves. That is an absolute disgrace, and it is why we will vote against the deal.

[Andrew Rosindell]

I have one simple question for the hon. Member. Is it now Conservative party policy to give self-determination and the right of resettlement to the Chagossian people?

[James Cartlidge]

The hon. Member knows that we have opposed this deal, but on self-determination, I would like him to ask his party leader, the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage), if he believes in the self-determination of the people of Ukraine, who have been invaded and brutally bombed by Russia. His leader still says that that was provoked by NATO. The hon. Member should be ashamed of that, if he believes in self-determination.

To conclude, I asked why the Government were surrendering land that we own freehold, only to lease it back for £35 billion. Is it not the same reason why they are surrendering our brave veterans to a new era of lawfare? Is it not the same reason why Labour gave up our fishing grounds, the most critical possession of an island nation, to access an EU defence fund from which it has not had a penny? We have a weak Prime Minister who always fails to put Britain’s national interests first. If Labour was strong enough to put our national interests first, surely it would stand up to Mauritius and reject this deal. After all, if the Government did that, they could spend the money that they saved on our armed forces, at a time when rearmament at home is on hold, precisely because Labour has failed to fund defence properly.

If there is one silver lining to having such a weak Prime Minister, it is his habit of constant U-turns. We have had 13 U-turns to date from this Government. Would the best thing for our national security not be for Labour to recognise that the game is up, to turn the pause on the Chagos Bill into a permanent full stop, and to scrap this terrible deal?

15:42

[The Minister for Defence Readiness and Industry (Luke Pollard)]

What a terrible example of collective amnesia. In the entire debate, not a single Tory MP could say why they started the negotiations.

[Dr Evans]

Will the Minister give way?

[Luke Pollard]

I am happy to take interventions if Conservative MPs can start their intervention with the reason why their Government started the negotiations. If it is true, as the shadow Defence Secretary says, that this is a crazy deal, why did the Conservatives start it? If it is true that it damages our national security, why did they start it? There has not been an answer from a single one of them, but let us see if the hon. Member can give it a go.

[Dr Evans]

I am surprised that a party that represents trade unionists does not understand that when there is a dispute between one party and another, it is a good thing to try to talk about it. [Interruption.] Why did we start negotiations? Because there is a dispute, and we need to talk to other people to understand what is going on. That is exactly what any responsible country should do. There is a difference between signing off a treaty and entering into talks with someone. Trade unionists should know that.

[Luke Pollard]

It is a curious position to hold: the previous Conservative Government started negotiations because they wanted to act like a trade union. I think that is a poor example.

I was asked a number of important questions in the debate, and I am happy to reply to some of them, but I will start with some context. It is staggering that the Conservatives in government held 11 rounds of negotiations—85% of the negotiations were conducted with them—and yet seem to have collective amnesia. They seem to think that they stopped the deal, but according to a statement on gov.uk on 29 April 2024, the then Prime Minister and the Mauritian Prime Minister

“discussed the progress made in negotiations between the UK and Mauritius on the exercise of sovereignty”

over BIOT. It went on to say:

“Both leaders…instructed their teams to continue to work at pace.”

A general election was called less than a month later. It is staggering that the Conservatives are doing this.

Let me be absolutely clear: when we came into office, we inherited negotiations on this matter that had already had 11 rounds. We reinforced our terms, adding a 24-nautical mile buffer zone, so that no activity can take place there without our say so, and an effective veto on all development in the Chagos archipelago.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

I completely and utterly opposed my Government when they started this, categorically—[Interruption.] Oh, I did. I have been in opposition no matter who is in government. I have to say to the Minister, though, that it is not what you start; it is what you finish. Even though I was opposed to the negotiations, when I spoke to Lord Cameron and said that he had to stop it, he took the decision to finish it. Why will this Government not see the evidence and stop this now?

[Luke Pollard]

The right hon. Gentleman nearly got to why the Conservatives started the negotiations. It did not quite hit my bar for an intervention, but I appreciate him giving it a good go.

[Ben Obese-Jecty]

rose—

[Luke Pollard]

Let me see if the hon. Member for Huntingdon (Ben Obese-Jecty) can do any better.

[Ben Obese-Jecty]

Could the Minister explain why the previous Labour Government entered into negotiations in 2009, when the first talks took place with the Mauritian Government, which were ultimately ruled out after being criticised for being a unilateral decision around the marine protected area?

[Luke Pollard]

Again, the hon. Gentleman did not quite hit my bar, but I am sure I will get a parliamentary question from him about it.

The Conservatives started the negotiations, I am afraid, and they want everyone to forget it. They want the public to forget it; they want their own MPs to forget it. If they cannot do deals, they are in the wrong place.

Some interesting questions were asked today, and I want to try to deal with some of them.

[Dr Evans]

Will the Minister give way?

[Luke Pollard]

Madam Deputy Speaker, I have been asked to finish early so that the shadow Cabinet can sit. I do want to ensure that I can get through as many questions as I can before those on the shadow Front Bench need to go and busy themselves in a meeting.

I will try to answer a few of the questions. The Liberal Democrat spokesperson, the hon. Member for Bicester and Woodstock (Calum Miller), asked a sensible question about the amendment that his party tabled in the other place. He will appreciate that it is a wrecking amendment, so we could not support it; he will also be clear, though, that we take the issues behind it very seriously. I am glad that he continues to raise the issues of the Chagossians, which are important.

The hon. Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell), who now sits on a different Opposition Bench, raised the issue of resettlement on the outer islands. He made the case that resettlement on the outer islands will help to restore some dignity to the Chagossians, who have been treated appallingly for many decades. He will know that the deal we have signed with Mauritius includes the right to resettle on the outer islands and for visits to take place to Diego Garcia. It might not satisfy all his concerns on the matter, but I hope he can understand that that is a step forward.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield (Tim Roca) for his speech, in which he talked about uncertainty. As a Defence Minister, I am most concerned about uncertainty around the operation of the base and continuation of disruption. That is what this deal seeks to close off. He was right to raise the matter.

The right hon. Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison), a former Defence Minister, said that he learns something new every day. Every day can indeed be a school day, and what I have learned today is that when the right hon. Gentleman swapped from the Government Benches to the Opposition Benches, his opinion on the deal miraculously changed, too. He backed it when he was a Minister, and now, on the Opposition Back Benches, he opposes it. That does say something.

My hon. Friend the Member for Rugby (John Slinger) asked the very same question that I started with: why did the Conservatives start these negotiations? It is a question they still cannot answer.

I note that the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Dr Mullan) has found his voice, but only after completing his chicken run from the seat he thought he was going to lose to his new one. Let me be absolutely clear on this point: it is shameful that the Conservatives are trying to drag other overseas territories into the mess they are arguing over here. In their speeches, Conservatives have tried to create the impression that the sovereignty of the Falklands is not secure. The Falkland Islands Government have noted that the agreement has

“no impact on the self-determination of the Falkland Islands people, and the existing and future relationship between the Falkland Islands and United Kingdom”.

Let us not hear any more Conservative MPs raising questions over the future of the Falkland Islands.

[James Cartlidge]

Will the Minister give way?

[Luke Pollard]

No, I will not. The hon. Gentleman has a meeting to get to and I am trying to help him get there. [Interruption.] I think he should sit down and prepare for his next meeting.

The right hon. Member for Wetherby and Easingwold (Sir Alec Shelbrooke) was a good voice in this debate. In an important and sound contribution, he talked about the change in the geostrategic picture. His work on the NATO Parliamentary Assembly gives him an added insight into the importance not only of the base and the UK-US relationship, but of making sure that we have a strong defence. We will continue to invest in our national security. I am proud of my country and proud of our armed forces. I am proud that we are increasing defence spending under this Government to the highest level since the end of the cold war, but there is more that needs to be done.

The hon. Member for Hinckley and Bosworth (Dr Evans) spoke for a good 20 minutes, but I am afraid that he seems to have read everything but the treaty itself. He was asking questions about what can be stored on the base. Annex 1 of the treaty says that there will be

“unrestricted access, basing and overflight for United Kingdom and United States of America aircraft and vessels to enter into the sea and airspace of Diego Garcia.”

It says that unrestricted ability means

“to control the conduct and deployment of our armed operations and lethal capabilities; and to control the storage of all goods, including but not limited to fuels, weapons and hazardous materials”

The shadow Defence Secretary forgets that we do not talk about the location of nuclear weapons, but the protections were designed and tested at the highest level of the US security establishment, who supported the UK proceeding with the deal. We continue to work closely with the US to ensure that the necessary arrangements are put in place.

[Dr Luke Evans]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. The Minister specifically directed some comments at me, opening up an opportunity for me to speak. How can I respond to those comments when I cannot intervene?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

The hon. Member will know that it is entirely at the Minister’s discretion, as it would be for any other speaker, if he chooses to give way or not. It is not a matter for the Chair. I am sure the Minister has heard his comments.

[Luke Pollard]

I am very pro-Lukes generally speaking, but the hon. Member had 20 minutes in which to speak, and a few more interventions will not correct the quality of his speech.

[Sir Julian Lewis]

Very specifically, the Minister has read out something about what can be stored on the island. Can that include, and does it include, nuclear weapons? And on the earlier point about a deal, may I remind him of a saying from an earlier context—a different context—which is that no deal is better than a bad deal?

[Luke Pollard]

To help the Front-Bench team get to their shadow Cabinet meeting, I will not read out the same points again. [Interruption.] The shadow Minister invites me to do that, so I will. We are talking about the unrestricted ability to

“control the storage of all goods, including but not limited to fuels, weapons and other hazardous materials”;

I am very clear on this, but there are a few other questions that I want to get to.

The hon. Member for Spelthorne (Lincoln Jopp) spoke about value in his good, characteristic style. I liked his approach. When he spoke about comparison of value, it is worth noting that securing the continued operation of the base is roughly about £100 million a year. That compares favourably with the base that the French rent in Djibouti, which is next to a Chinese naval base. Our base secures a 24-hour nautical exclusion zone around it. Full control of the electromagnetic spectrum is something the shadow Defence Secretary does not seem to understand, but it is actually quite important.

[James Cartlidge]

On that point—

[Luke Pollard]

Oh, go on then. The shadow Defence Secretary can be late for his meeting.

[James Cartlidge]

The Minister is very kind. I have a very specific question. That annex does not mention nuclear weapons. We have asked about this repeatedly throughout the debate today. It is a matter of critical national security. The Deputy Prime Minister of Mauritius has clearly stated that nuclear weapons cannot be stored on the base. Is that correct—yes or no?

[Luke Pollard]

I feel like I have to read out the point for a third time. It is no wonder the Conservatives could not conclude the deal. Annex 1 says that it is unrestricted ability to

“control the storage of all goods, including but not limited to fuels, weapons and other hazardous materials.”

We do not comment on the location of nuclear weapons. The shadow Defence Secretary might remember that from when he was a Defence Minister.

Despite the boisterous amnesia we heard from the Conservatives in this debate, I hope that the voices of the Chagossians have truly been heard. There were some very good remarks about the Chagossians, including from the hon. Member for Bicester and Woodstock (Calum Miller) and the recently Reform-ed hon. Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell).

It is important that the Chagossians have greater involvement. That is why we have set up a Chagossian trust fund. The hon. Member for Chester South and Eddisbury (Aphra Brandreth) asked earlier whether the Chagossians will have a say in the trust fund. Mauritius has confirmed, on 12 December, that it is putting in place legislation to enact the Chagossian trust fund. It will be run by Chagossians for Chagossians, and it will include UK-based Chagossians. I hope that goes some way to providing the clarity that the hon. Member was seeking.

I said that I would finish at five minutes to 4 so that the Opposition Front Bench can get to their shadow Cabinet meeting, so I will finish at five minutes to 4, because I am a man of my word.

Question put.

15:55

Division 422

Question accordingly negatived.

Ayes: 103

Noes: 284

[Sir Roger Gale (Herne Bay and Sandwich) (Con)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is an embarrassment that a Foreign Office Minister was unable to vote during this crucial debate on the Chagos islands. I wonder if you could have a word with the Speaker and see if it would be possible to extend the time limit to allow people to get to the Chamber?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

I thank the right hon. Member for that point of order, which he will know full well is not a point of order.

[Calum Miller]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I seek your guidance. We have spent the last three and a half hours debating the UK-US base on Diego Garcia. Just before we began that debate, President Trump announced on social media that a US armada was positioned to attack Iran. Can I seek your advice on whether it would be appropriate for a Minister to come urgently to the Chamber to update the House and to clarify the Government’s position on the use of UK assets and personnel in any such attack?

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I thank the hon. Member for his point of order and for having given notice of it. Mr Speaker has received no notice from Ministers that they intend to make a statement on this matter. Ministers on the Front Bench will, however, have heard the hon. Member’s point of order.