Diego Garcia Military Base and British Indian Ocean Territory Bill

Debate between Lord Morrow and Lord Hannan of Kingsclere

Committee stage
Tuesday 25th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)]

That was my understanding, but even that was too much for me. Even if we had been able to get continued sovereignty on the base and some kind of shared sovereignty on the outer atolls, that would still have been exchanging a freehold for a leasehold. It is a preposterous thing to do when we are being told to do it by a court that has expressly been denied jurisdiction in cases between Commonwealth states. We would be doing it, setting a terrible precedent, to satisfy a tribunal that has no authority.

I was very critical of the previous Government for countenancing these changes. I have told the people involved what I think of it. I am equally critical of this Government, as I suspect are quite a lot of the people on the Labour Benches. I look at the expressions of some noble Lords opposite. I know they are decent patriots and democrats, and I know they feel a sense of obligation to our dispossessed Chagossian colleagues. Of course, they have to do their duty, such is the essence of politics.

I finish by holding out the prospect—just the vision—of people coming back: of civilian and military life coming back; of stories told again by grandmothers under newly thatched roofs, their voices stitched with salt and memory; of footsteps remembering the pale coral paths; and of the islands themselves remembering their old inhabitants, as the tides remember the moon.

[Lord Morrow (DUP)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 31 standing in my name. I want to place on record my appreciation for the noble Lord, Lord Hannan, stepping in last week during the difficult situation I had back home. It again demonstrates clearly that, when you throw an awkward ball to a good player, he will pick it up, make you look good and carry on as if nothing has happened, but I appreciate his assistance in that instance.

I was about to say three lines on this amendment, but then I thought I was perhaps being too presumptuous, because I hoped that the Government, just by reading the amendment, would simply have said that there was no reason why they could not support it. I hope that that is exactly what they will say at the end of the debate, but I think I had better say more than just one or two lines in relation to it before sitting down.

Even if one accepted that it was just £101 million every year for 99 years and considered the proposition in its own terms, without regard for the preceding history, the contrast between this and a one-off payment of £40 million to the Chagossians conveys the message that, while the Mauritians are important and worthy of respect, the Chagossians are, by contrast, worthy only of a few crumbs from the table, relatively speaking, which is deeply hurtful and insulting.

Secondly, to really understand the injustice presented by the arrangement, it obviously needs to be seen in the context of history. The Chagossians do not, for the most part, regard themselves as Mauritian.

I have heard what the noble Lords, Lord Weir and Lord Jay, have said. As the noble Lord, Lord Weir, rightly said, across the United Kingdom there is a multiplicity of views on many issues, so it is difficult to get a concise, exact and single supporting view on this, but I will say these things anyway. In this context, the decision to also pay Mauritius a fantastically large sum of money for the use of just one of the Chagos Islands, while the Chagossians are afforded just £40 million, compounds the present injustice.

To appreciate the menacing nature of the way this monetary injustice greatly compounds the underlying injustice, one must point out that the monies for resettlement set out in the KPMG report are significantly less than the monies it is now proposed the Republic of Mauritius be paid for the UK to lease just one of the Chagos Islands.

Finally, the funding for the Chagossians is also important. Article 11 of the treaty undermines the UK Government’s argument for it by addressing the Chagossians apart from the Mauritians. They are, in effect, saying that it is right to return the islands to the Republic of Mauritius because the pre-8 November 1965 boundaries of the colony express the self-determination of the people of the territory, which implies that everyone, at least from a civic perspective, can be happily Mauritian. However, in that context, there would be no need to address the Chagossians separately and allocate payment to them. In addressing the Chagossians separately, the treaty, in effect, hoists itself with its own petard.

Social Fund Winter Fuel Payment Regulations 2024

Debate between Lord Morrow and Lord Hannan of Kingsclere

Wednesday 11th September 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Morrow (DUP)]

My Lords, I have a few brief comments in relation to what is before the House. As far as my party is concerned, we will not have any trouble supporting either the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman-Scott, or the noble Lord, Lord Palmer, because we are infuriated by this matter.

The decision to discontinue paying the £300 winter fuel payment to pensioners is a shock and a surprise, as it comes after just 68 days in office by the Labour Administration, who often declare their support and concern for the most vulnerable in our society. I suspect that this is an opportunity at the start of their tenure to get the bad news out of the way quickly so that, when they come back for another mandate, most people will have forgotten who “done them in” and when it happened. However, I suspect that people will not forget. I implore the Government to think carefully, even at this late stage.

We have all heard much about the £22 billion black hole in our finances. If this is the case, one is left wondering why the most vulnerable should be targeted in an attempt to balance the books. Surely there are other ways, as the noble Lord, Lord Empey, has just mentioned. Why pick on the most vulnerable, on those who cannot answer back? It is very difficult to take this.

Pensioners who already find it very difficult will find it even more difficult to survive following this measure by a Labour socialist Government. I was speaking to some folk today who said to me, “I voted for the Government, a new Labour Administration, for change, but I didn’t realise that this was the change they had in mind”. They are now learning that they may have made a mistake and misplaced their vote on this occasion. They were quite moderate in their condemnation of the Government, but they said, “I did not expect to get this slap in the face, and I certainly did not expect it within two months or so of Labour taking over”.

The Government say, “We didn’t know that we were going to be confronted with a £22 billion black hole”. I suspect that we will hear some of that when the Minister responds. I used to sit in a degree of awe when the Minister was on the other side of the House, and every time she finished, I used to say, “Well, there is one Peer at least with a social conscience”. I am not saying that she has now lost her social conscience, but she has a wonderful opportunity now to demonstrate it. I look forward to hearing what she has to say.

Now that this Administration are in office, it seems that the rich will get richer and the poor will get poorer. In my part of the world, they will say, “Well, when was it ever any different?” I said to them that Labour is now in and has promised that there will be change. The footnote to everything that they said was that they wanted change. Well, this is a change in the wrong direction. I am sure that the Minister will give us the reason why they had to change and hit, below the belt, the weakest and the poorest in society. I look forward to hearing it.

Was there a single word in the manifesto that this is how it would be? Labour has been returned with a very convincing majority—overwhelming, some of us would say. However, I suspect that, had they hinted that they were going to target pensioners, that majority would not have been so overwhelming; it would have been much less, if it existed at all.

I suspect that many Labour Peers here today are uncomfortable with this and they will find it difficult to walk through the Lobbies here this evening and say, “This is exactly what I came into this House to do: to punish, punish, punish the weakest in society”. I implore Labour now to step back and think again. How many more punitive measures will this Government foist upon us and particularly on the vulnerable? Balancing the books is important, but balancing the books on the weakest in society is not the way to go. I say to the Government, “Please rethink your goal”.

When Labour was in opposition, it boldly declared—and these are the figures not from the bad Tories, my colleagues or the Lib Dems—that to scrap the £300 fuel payment would cost as many as 4,000 lives, as OAPs would be unable adequately to heat their homes. Are they still saying that? Is that still their position? If not, why has it changed so quickly? Just when they get their hands on the levers of power, they decide, “We’ve a very convincing majority: we can think, do and say what we like and show everybody who’s in control”. Yes, they can, but please can they reconsider what they are doing here? They have not endeared themselves to very many.

That £1.5 billion is a small amount in the scheme of things. My noble friend Lord McCrea has already alluded to the fact that there will be no savings at the end of the day. What about those who get cold, are taken to hospital and must be cared for? Where will the savings come from? I am sure that the Minister will outline in some detail where she sees them coming from.

[Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)]

My Lords, I will not detain the House for long, but I want to just say one thing. I may be the only person who speaks up for the Government Front Bench, for which I do not expect them to thank me.

It is appalling to suggest that Members of this House are somehow personally lacking in social conscience when it is other people’s money, rather than their own, that we are talking about. Again and again, we see this conflation between the public need for economy and people’s personal morality, as though it was their own meanness or generosity. We had the noble Lord, Lord Palmer, talking about them as Scrooge. Scrooge was dealing with his own assets, not somebody else’s. The noble Lord, Lord Morrow, who knows how much I admire him, just said that the Minister has a chance to re-establish her social conscience. It is not her social conscience.

We can disagree with this policy. I would have done many things differently from this Government, as they know. One thing, which will make me even more unpopular, is that I would not be putting up the cost of energy as we do in this self-congratulatory way in vote after vote and then complain about the consequences, as we have been doing today. But can we please conduct our debates on the basis that, if you happen to favour the idea of benefits as a last resort for the needy rather than a universal entitlement, that does not make you a bad person? People on both sides of this issue are motivated by humanity and decency and, ultimately, by a concern for the welfare of the nation as a whole.