Diego Garcia Military Base and British Indian Ocean Territory Bill

Baroness Foster of Aghadrumsee Excerpts

3rd reading
Monday 12th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Foster of Aghadrumsee (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, when I first started to ask questions about the treaty in this place, I asked about the trust fund. I am sure the Minister will remember that question because, in her answer, she accused me of not respecting national security, which was quite a thing for me, having spent all my political life standing up for self-determination and, indeed, security in its widest possible sense.

To echo what the noble Lord, Lord Kempsell, said, the greatest problem with this treaty is the idea that we cannot have national security alongside respecting the rights of the Chagossian people. I do not accept that that is the case. We could have respected the Chagossians’ very clear desire. I know there are some here who will say there are different views among the Chagossian communities, but, given the recent report by the International Relations and Defence Committee of this House, which we heard about on Report, it is clear that those who communicated volunteered the fact that they wanted the Chagos Islands to remain British.

There are many reasons, which we have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, why the treaty is a bad treaty, and the Bill is a bad Bill. There are fiscal reasons, which were made by the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, in Committee and echoed again today by the noble Lord, Lord Altrincham. There are environmental issues on a monumental scale, which we heard about from the noble Baroness, Lady Cash, and the noble Lords, Lord Deben and Lord Goldsmith. There are, of course, defence issues, which the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, rightly mentioned again today. This is all in the context of a live judicial review, which has still not given a judgment, and, of course, the report by the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination in December. Yet, the Government are determined to push ahead.

This is a bad Bill. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, for tabling his amendment to this Third Reading Motion, because reasonable questions about the Bill were put to the Government in Committee and on Report, and were met with a wall of denial. Now, the Chagossian people have set up a Government in exile. What does it say about the United Kingdom that the Chagossian people have to do that? Many of them are here again today in the Gallery.

Even if Third Reading goes ahead, the denial of rights will not disappear and the Chagossian people will not disappear—that is very clear. I plead with the Government, even at this late stage, to think again.

[Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)]

My Lords, what are we here for if not to think again? We are wriggling painfully on a hook. In the early days, a lot of people, hearing that the Chagos Islands were to be handed over, understood it to be some kind of restitution to the indigenous Chagossians, whom we all agree were very badly treated in the late 1960s and early 1970s. But, with every week that has passed since that initial announcement was made, the arguments have crumbled.

It has become clear that the Chagossians do not want to be handed to a foreign power that has never governed them and whose interest in the archipelago is financial. The Chagossians are here, as always, watching in the Gallery—their silence a neat symbol of how they have been overlooked in this entire debate. It has become clear that Mauritius does not have the capacity to maintain, as my noble friend Lord Deben says, the world’s greatest marine conservation area. It has become clear that the price tag is vastly higher than we were initially led to believe. It has become clear that foreign powers and unfriendly foreign powers are in favour of this deal. It has become clear that we are steamrolling over democracy.

If, as the upper House and the revising Chamber, we are not prepared to take a stand on something of this magnitude and as permanent in its impact in changing the size of the United Kingdom and changing the maps—this is going to be remembered long after people have forgotten what the inflation rate was in 2026 or whether we banned X—then what on earth are we here for?