Diego Garcia Military Base

James Cleverly Excerpts

Thursday 22nd May 2025 Commons Chamber

[Sir James Cleverly (Braintree) (Con)]

Shameful.

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I will decide what is and is not shameful. I am going to say this once and for all: Mr Cartlidge, you have been pushing and pushing for quite a while. Emotions are running high, but I do not want a continuous barracking and that level of noise coming from you. You should be setting a good example as the shadow Secretary of State, keeping calm and being effective, not bawling.

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[John Healey]

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. He makes a powerful point in a judicious way. The shadow Defence Secretary could learn a bit from him.

[Sir James Cleverly (Braintree) (Con)]

Both the Prime Minister—in his extensive press conference prior to the Secretary of State for Defence coming to the House—and the Secretary of State have said on numerous occasions that this deal is the only way of protecting the military operations on Diego Garcia. When I was Foreign Secretary, I did not see anything to make me agree that this is the only way of protecting military operations on that base. The Defence Secretary suggested in his statement that a judgment could come within weeks that would undermine the operations of the base. From which binding legal authority does he fear that jurisdiction may come? We know it is not the International Telecommunication Union or the International Court of Justice. Who does he believe would prevent us from military operations on that island?

[John Healey]

The right hon. Gentleman was a formidable and very senior figure in the previous Government. He was in the post of Foreign Secretary during the period when there were negotiations on this deal. By entering into the negotiations, his Government accepted and conceded the principle that a negotiated deal was the way to secure the full operational sovereignty of this base for the long term.

The right hon. Gentleman may well not have been satisfied with the deal that his own people could have negotiated at the time, because when we picked up the negotiations, there was no agreement on an effective UK veto across the archipelago, which we have now; there was no buffer zone accepted in that agreement, which there is now; there was no agreement in that text for 99 years, or the option of an extra 40 years, which we have got in there now; and there was also not an agreement for Mauritius to take on responsibility for any migrants, but there is now. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman looks at the new text of the treaty, and I hope he will back it when it comes before the House.

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[Josh Fenton-Glynn]

Will the hon. Member let me finish? I have on a number of occasions intervened on Conservative Members to ask them to name the Chagos islands, and they have been unable to tell me that there is Diego Garcia, Peros Banhos, the Salomon islands, the Egmont islands—

[Sir James Cleverly]

Well, you had to write them down.

[Josh Fenton-Glynn]

I do not share the right hon. Member’s passion.

Similarly, the Leader of the Opposition first tweeted about the Chagos islands in October 2024. That was five years after the ICJ ruling and two years after negotiations started. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the Conservatives’ new-found passion for the Chagos islands perhaps owes more to political opportunism than to any deeply held conviction?