Diego Garcia Military Base and British Indian Ocean Territory Bill

Lord Horam Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 5th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Horam (Con)]

My Lords, briefly, I support the remarks made by my noble friend Lord Callanan, and I particularly support his Amendment 47. I also support Amendment 50 from the noble Lord, Lord Purvis.

The scrutiny of this Bill by the House of Lords has been excellent, far better than in the House of Commons. What struck me, as an economist, is that this is a terrible deal. It is not just terrible; it is an absolute shocker. First, I strongly support the £40 million towards a trust fund for the Chagossians. As has been said repeatedly throughout these debates, they have had a terrible deal over many years from all Governments, and I do not begrudge a penny of the £40 million and the arrangements that have been mentioned. I am reassured by what the very capable Minister has said about that during the course of our debates.

Secondly, of course, that is small beer by comparison with the £3.4 billion or £34 billion, as my noble friend Lady Noakes pointed out earlier in the debate, which is the compensation—up to £34 billion of it—for the use of this particular site. Remember that in the original deal in 1965, conducted by Harold Wilson, the then Prime Minister, there was compensation paid. When he said, in effect, to the Mauritian Government, “You can have your independence, but we wish to keep Diego Garcia and the Chagos Islands”, he gave them £3 million in compensation. We may sniff at £3 million in 1965, but that is £75 million to £79 million in today’s money, which is very considerable compensation. Therefore, I do not see why any further compensation of billions of pounds should be paid to the Mauritian Government.

Thirdly, the treaty stipulates that the Mauritian Government will get £45 million a year for 25 years in development aid. I have been to Mauritius twice—first in a parliamentary delegation and, secondly, as a private citizen. Mauritius is a hugely successful country. My noble friend Lord Deben may castigate its environmental qualifications, but economically it is extremely successful. It started out over 50 years ago with an agricultural economy as a producer mainly of sugar. It then diversified into business, supplying Marks & Spencer, Waitrose and other sorts of companies in this country. It then went into high-end tourism, which was extremely successful, as I personally experienced on my second visit. In addition to that, it is now a big financial centre. Terry Smith, one of our biggest investment advisers, lives there and runs his entire investment empire from Mauritius, because it is a suitable place to do so—what a lovely place to run an investment company from.

All of this has contributed to Mauritius, along with the Seychelles, being the outstanding economic performer among all the African countries; for some absurd reason, it is bracketed with the African continent. Mauritius and the Seychelles are more successful in terms of GDP per head than Egypt, South Africa and Nigeria—and all the other countries—yet we are giving them development aid. That is absolutely incredible. Money can be spent only once; if it is being spent on this, it is not being spent on the NHS. The Government maintain that they are putting the people of this country first, yet they are spending billions of pounds overseas quite unnecessarily. My noble friend Lord Callanan is absolutely right to seek to have this investigated. In fact, in my view, there is a reason why this particular treaty should not be ratified unless we have gone down that path; we certainly should have much greater transparency around its economic and financial consequences than we have already.

[Baroness Noakes (Con)]

My Lords, I was tempted to come and do another forensic analysis of the financial aspects of the treaty, but I will restrain myself and just speak briefly in support of all of the amendments in this group.

As we heard from my noble friend Lord Callanan, the Government like to talk about an average of £101 billion a year, in 2025-26 prices, and the total cost being £3.4 billion; that is discounted using the social time preference rate. All these figures ignore the cash that is going to go out of the Treasury’s coffers and into Mauritius’s coffers. All these amendments are trying to do is get the focus back on cash because, at the end of the day, cash is what is important. It is cash that will end up in the Government’s accounts. It is cash that will be leaving our economy.

Amendment 39 would require a schedule of the amounts likely to be paid, which would show no single year in which £101 million will be paid—it will always be more than that—and would show that the total will be not £3.4 billion but closer to £35 billion. It would also show that, in the first five years, the cost will be nearly £900 billion; of course, that is a really big sum of money in the context of a cash-constrained Budget. I note in particular that Amendment 50 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed, would ask for that schedule to be updated every five years. This is also very important because inflation expectations can vary. For example, if there were just a small inflation spike, as occurred in 2023, you could change the overall numbers by £1 billion or £1.5 billion; that is a very modest assumption.

It is really important to keep a strong focus on cash and not to talk in these funny money terms, which try to divert attention from how much money is really involved.

Royal Navy: Aircraft Carriers

Lord Horam Excerpts

Monday 12th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Minto (Con)]

My Lords, the answer to that question is that there is planned maintenance and a certain amount of ships are out of service at any one time. However, force protection is considered paramount at all times, and there is sufficient cover to ensure that is the case.

[Lord Horam (Con)]

My noble friend raised the question of risk in the Ministry of Defence. Is there not also the question of efficiency, particularly an ongoing question of the efficiency of procurement in the Ministry of Defence? This is a vital issue, given the state of the world at the moment. Will he take this point to his friend the Minister in the department so that we can consider this carefully?

[The Earl of Minto (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for that. I certainly will; the question of procurement is a deep and difficult one to get your hands around, but it is certainly something we should all take very seriously.

Brexit: Common Security and Defence Policy Missions and Operations (European Union Committee Report)

Lord Horam Excerpts

Wednesday 15th May 2019 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Horam]

That this House takes note of the Report from the European Union Committee Brexit: Common Security and Defence Policy missions and operations (16th Report, HL Paper 132).

[Lord Horam (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to move the Motion at the request of my noble friend Lady Verma, who sadly cannot be with us today and in whose name the original Motion stood. In doing so, I place on record my thanks to her for her thoughtful and inclusive chairmanship of our committee, as well as to my committee colleagues and our invariably excellent and conscientious staff.

Our report focused on the UK’s role in the European Union’s common security and defence policy—CSDP—post Brexit. The report was published no less than a year ago but, like a good wine, it has matured satisfactorily in the past 12 months. In any case, defence and security are always front-page news, and rightly so. The European Union deploys these overseas missions and operations in support of peacekeeping and conflict prevention, with the aim of strengthening international security. Currently, there are no less than 16 such missions; six are classified as military and 10 as civilian. Despite this difference of nomenclature, their value by comparison with a typical NATO or UN mission is in their comprehensiveness: they bring together military, political, diplomatic, economic and legal expertise, which the UN and NATO are sometimes unable to do.

The UK has played a significant role in many of these missions. A particularly good example is Operation Atalanta, the anti-piracy operation off the Horn of Africa. Some Members may have seen “Captain Phillips”, in which a Maersk container ship was stopped by a small piratical boat packed with Somalis. The hero was played by Tom Hanks who, of course, managed to beat off the attack. The film is fascinating, for anyone who has not seen it, to see exactly how it all worked and how a small boat could literally stop in its tracks and invade or attack a large container ship. Being a US film, no Brits are mentioned in the episode but the fact of the matter is that our naval forces deployed off the Horn of Africa have led to a dramatic drop in the amount of piracy in those waters. We did not think it wise necessarily to go to the Horn of Africa—we thought about expenditure as well—but we went to our services HQ in Northwood and how it had all been done was demonstrated to us.

The amount of seaborne traffic travelling off the Horn of Africa is enormous, frankly; it is adjacent to the Strait of Hormuz, with its equally huge amount of seaborne traffic. A high proportion of the world’s seaborne traffic goes through those waters; it is therefore extremely important that it is safe. In fact, I believe that the US Navy now contributes a huge proportion of its assets to defending the Strait of Hormuz. I will not take that point any further; otherwise, President Trump will no doubt ask us to contribute more to the cost. It is important that we remain involved with that sort of task. It is very much in our interests as both a trading nation and a good international neighbour.

We made three recommendations in the report for the post-Brexit situation. The first is that the Government should develop and submit “detailed proposals” for the future CSDP consultation. Secondly, they should,

“seek to negotiate observer status in the EU’s planning and decision-making bodies, such as the Political and Security Committee”.

Thirdly, they should invest extra resources in Brussels and the other European Union capitals.

On the first point—proposals for consultation—the political declaration which was endorsed by the Government and the 27 other nations of Europe last November allows the UK to participate in the CSDP on a case-by-case basis. That will be formalised in a so-called framework participation agreement. It also envisages that if the UK does contribute to a specific CSDP mission, it will participate in the force generation conference, the call for contributions and the Committee of Contributors. I ask my noble friend: is this the sort of arrangement that third countries get automatically when they contribute to European Union operations or is it special, different or enhanced in any way beyond what has been the standard procedure so far? I ask this in the light of the fact that in the Government’s own White Paper last year, it was said that the UK should deploy its forces subject to contingent agreements about how it will be involved in the planning process. Obviously, the earlier we can be involved in the planning process, the better. If we can be involved from day one, that is good. Is that going to be the standard pattern that the Government are trying to arrive at with the European Union?

On the second point, about observer status, the Government’s response to our report said that there will be “regular dialogue” and ad hoc meetings with the EU Political and Security Committee in informal sessions. That is fine, but it is certainly not about trying to get observer status. Is it still the Government’s objective to try to get that status on the EU Political and Security Committee? On resources, I welcome the fact that seven ambassadorial posts inside the EU have been upgraded and no fewer than 50 new diplomatic post have been created. Can my noble friend update us on that very welcome situation?

Finally, we believe—and intend—that we are going to have a new political relationship with the European Union, but the geography has not changed. We are small. We are a group of islands off the coast of continental Europe and it is therefore absolutely in our interests on security and defence grounds that we co-operate as much as we possibly can, and we have important assets to bring to the game. That is the burden of our report. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Horam]

My Lords, I will wind up briefly by thanking all noble Lords who made contributions to this debate. It has been a genuinely interesting and well-informed session. I also thank my noble friend the Minister for the clarifications he was able to bring on a number of subjects. The theme throughout, endorsed by everybody, was that as we leave the European Union it is absolutely in the UK’s interests that we continue to play a significant part in common security and defence operations. As the Minister himself just said, Europe’s security is our security. It is in our interests and, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Portsmouth said, it is also the right thing to do.

Motion agreed.