Diego Garcia Military Base and British Indian Ocean Territory Bill

Debate between Lord Hannan of Kingsclere and Lord De Mauley

Report stage
Monday 5th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord De Mauley (Con)]

My Lords, it might help the House if I were to provide a brief overview of the International Relations and Defence Committee’s recent report, which my noble friend Lord Callanan referred to, on Chagossian views on the agreement concerning the Chagos Archipelago. What I will cover touches on many of the amendments in this group.

On 11 November last year, we were asked by the Government and Official Opposition Chief Whips to undertake a short piece of work on the impact of the Bill, including on the Chagossian community. In Committee, the Government also invited us to, and I quote the Minister,

“engage a range of Chagossians to ascertain their views on the implications of the Diego Garcia treaty, and to produce a report”.—[Official Report, 11/11/25; col. 227.]

We accepted the invitation because we thought it important to allow Chagossians to have their say and believed that our previous work on the agreement meant that we were well placed to do so.

Time, however, was very much against us. Within about a month, we had to launch a mechanism to gather views from a globally dispersed population, allow Chagossians time to respond and leave us sufficient time to analyse the responses and produce a report in time for the debate today. This time pressure shaped how we designed and conducted this exercise, leading to our decision to conduct an online survey. Had circumstances allowed, we would also have held a series of round table discussions directly with Chagossian community members, an approach we used in our previous work on the agreement.

In the end, the online survey was imperfect, but it was the only practical option available given the constraints, and it was no substitute for a proper consultation or referendum. We recognised the challenges it would pose, including potential language barriers, limited digital access and reliance on people submitting responses in good faith. Throughout the process, we have sought to mitigate these challenges, including through direct promotion of the survey among Chagossian community groups, providing translated versions in both French and Mauritian Creole, and adopting a post-collection data-checking process to strengthen the robustness of our survey results.

Our survey received over 3,000 responses from Chagossians in the United Kingdom, Mauritius, the Seychelles and beyond. This is an extraordinary response rate given the short time available and shows a high level of engagement from the global Chagossian diaspora, which is believed to number around 10,000. While we cannot claim to have provided a scientific measure of the collective will of the Chagossian people, the high volume of responses gives us confidence that the results provide meaningful insights into Chagossian perspectives on the agreement. Before going into detail on our findings, it is worth saying that, had successive United Kingdom Governments conducted a more comprehensive engagement exercise with Chagossians during the negotiations, our survey would not have been necessary.

I turn to our key findings. Our survey revealed several strikingly consistent themes. First, there was a profound and enduring sense of injustice. Many Chagossians describe the multigenerational hardships they and their families have experienced as a result of their forcible removal from the islands. Across responses, there was a powerful sense of the economic, cultural and emotional loss. Many spoke of the need for meaningful compensation to address the injustices experienced and a deep desire to return to the islands, whether to visit or to live, to reconnect with their homeland.

Secondly, the survey revealed widespread distrust of the Mauritian Government and a scepticism over their willingness and ability to meet Chagossian needs. While not universal, this sentiment was strongest among UK-based Chagossian and was shared by a significant number of respondents in Mauritius and the Seychelles. Many highlighted previous ill-treatment by the Mauritian Government and expressed concerns that Mauritian-led resettlement, financial support and environmental stewardship would not reflect Chagossian priorities.

Thirdly, Chagossians expressed a clear desire for greater agency, autonomy and voice in decisions that affect them and the future of the islands. Many felt sidelined by the negotiation process and lacked trust that the agreement would allow their needs to be met. Despite the fact that self-determination was not a subject of the survey, it was raised frequently, particularly by UK-based Chagossians who felt strongly that the Chagossian people should have a decisive say over the sovereign status of the islands.

For me, one of the starkest revelations from the survey is reported at paragraph 44. I should say before I refer to the detail that, because we did not want to raise false expectations, we deliberately asked no questions about sovereignty; indeed, there is no mention of it in the survey document we published. However, a very substantial proportion of UK respondents, and indeed some from Mauritius, used the free text boxes to make the point strongly that they would prefer the archipelago to remain under British sovereignty. What makes this so compelling is that the point is consistently and clearly made despite the appalling treatment the British Government have meted out to these people. If they would prefer British sovereignty in these circumstances, what does that say about the Government’s decision to grant sovereignty to Mauritius? I will come back to the Government’s recent Statement later, but it contained yet another example of the Government, with Mauritius, making decisions directly affecting Chagossians without involving them.

Our survey provided insights into Chagossian views on the technical aspects of the agreement. On resettlement, respondents asserted the importance of employment opportunities and infrastructure as key enablers for resettlement. The absence of healthcare, education, housing and other basic services were seen as significant obstacles. The exclusion of the island of Diego Garcia, the only island with any real infrastructure, was a particular source of frustration for some.

On financial support mechanisms, respondents emphasised the need for direct financial support and for Chagossian-led oversight of the £40 million trust fund established under the agreement. Respondents were clear that meaningful financial support for the Chagossian community is not simply a matter of easing material hardship but a moral obligation. Chagossians see financial payments as a way to deliver justice and provide redress. In that context, many felt that the £40 million allocated to the trust fund falls short of the scale of harm endured and does not represent adequate reparation. There was scepticism that Chagossians living in the UK, but also those living elsewhere, would be able to benefit from the fund, given that it is to be administered from Mauritius.

On marine conservation, respondents advocated strongly for approaches that include Chagossian co-stewardship of marine resources. The importance of integrating traditional Chagossian knowledge into modern conservation frameworks was highlighted.

We offer a cautious welcome to the Government’s Statement of 15 December. It addresses some of these concerns but by no means all, and I am sure that the remaining ones will surface in the debates to come. The Statement confirms Chagossian stewardship of the trust fund, albeit with just one UK representative on the 12-member board, which in my personal opinion, given the likely relative distribution of the Chagossian diaspora, does not seem fair.

The Statement clarifies the resettlement criteria, which will extend resettlement rights to Chagossians born on the islands and their children but not their grandchildren, and confirms that Chagossians will be able to hold British and Mauritian citizenship. Nevertheless, full-scale resettlement remains a distant prospect, so heritage visits will continue to be a vital means for Chagossians to be able to re-establish a connection to the islands and should therefore be reinstated without delay. It is essential that the Government continue to explore ways to increase support for Chagossians in the UK and ensure that they too really can access the benefits of the trust fund.

Finally, I thank my fellow committee members and all the committee staff, who worked hard to deliver this challenging piece of work against such a difficult timeframe. Most importantly, the committee thanks the Chagossian people who engaged with our survey. We hope that, in a small way, we have provided them with a long overdue opportunity to have their voices heard.

[Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 11, 12, 13 and 16, in the name of my noble friend Lord Lilley, who is detained by difficult transport situations in France—he is perhaps not the only person in that situation—and, in the interest of brevity, to my own Amendments 24 and 25. Some of them would make Mauritius responsible for any outstanding reparation claims—it seems odd that that needs to be said, but such is the asymmetry of this deal in every other regard that it is worth setting out that it would be very strange if Britain remained liable despite having handed away the territory—while some ask for ratification to be delayed until after we have heard from your Lordships’ International Relations and Defence Committee.

In the interests of brevity, I shall talk about just three points in this group. The first is the timing of the ratification process. A judicial review was brought on 26 October by some diasporan Chagossians, some of them born on the Chagos Islands and some born in exile. Lengthy and detailed arguments were heard that day, and the judgment was initially expected on the same day. Then we were told that the ruling would come the following week, and then that it would come before Christmas, and now that it will come on 12 January. So why are we breaking with precedent and convention and rushing ahead with Third Reading without the customary lapse of at least three days between Committee and Third Reading?

It seems to me unfortunate that we are creating the appearance of collusion. We are creating the appearance of rushing through the Bill so that the judicial review will be ineffective. That criticism could easily have been anticipated—the noble Baroness, Lady Anderson, said she had never heard about prebuttal, but there will be a lot of prebuttal and rebuttal and some fairly crucial “buttal” in all this, I suspect—by our observing our normal timetables and allowing a reasonable time to elapse.

The second is the point referred to by my noble friend Lord Callanan: the decision on 8 December by the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, which called on

“both Mauritius and the United Kingdom to suspend ratification of the agreement, and to engage immediately in a renewed dialogue to ensure the free, prior and informed consent of the Chagossian people”.

Given that the entire Bill is predicated on this Government’s exaggerated deference to non-binding opinions by courts that have no jurisdiction, that alone ought to have put an end to the entire business. If we are so in hock to UN bodies—without jurisdiction, in this case—telling us what they think, which we treat as final and binding, why did we do so on the first but not on this?