UK-Mauritius Agreement on the Chagos Archipelago
Debate between Lord Wolfson of Tredegar and Lord Goldsmith(3 days, 18 hours ago)
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Lord Goldsmith (Lab)
Has the noble Lord considered the evidence given by Sir Christopher Greenwood, former judge at the International Court of Justice—in a sense, our former judge—who dealt with specifically that point, as well as other points that have been discussed?
Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)
I have; I read absolutely what Sir Christopher said about Article 4, but it did not find his way into the final report.
Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)
The point I have made about Article 4 is absolutely right. Mauritius can take measures in response.
I will wrap up because of the time. My noble friend Lord Callanan reminded us of the price we will have to pay for this legal farrago. Thanks to the approach taken by the Attorney-General, whose advice, properly, cannot be disclosed, the ultimate position is that we are not just giving up the Chagos Islands to a country which never owned them and is thousands of miles away but are paying it handsomely for the privilege.
I do not know whether my friend, the Attorney-General, is thinking about doing his bit to get our sluggish economy going by deciding to move home and increase transactions by putting his property on the market, but if he does, I hope that he might allow me to enter negotiations with him about the ownership of his house. I suspect that the result might be that I end up as the owner of his house having used his own money to pay for it.
The truth is that this is a legally unnecessary and badly drafted treaty. It is a treaty with holes in, and which contains within it the seeds of further disputes. It is a treaty under which we are paying Mauritius to take our sovereign territory off our hands, and we are paying it very handsomely for that purpose. For those reasons, I urge the House to support the Motion in the name of my noble friend Lord Callanan.