Diego Garcia Military Base and British Indian Ocean Territory Bill

Lord Jay of Ewelme Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 18th November 2025 Lords Chamber

That is an extremely bad principle for international law, because it elevates not the rule of law, not a disinterested forensic process, but the idea that a kind of majority vote of angry anti-colonialist Governments in the United Nations is supreme over the basic legal principles that should govern the international order. That is the international equivalent of an Act of Attainder —a simple vote rather than proper legal process.

[Lord Jay of Ewelme (CB)]

My Lords, after the history lesson from the noble Lord, Lord Hannan, I am tempted to recount my time in Malta in the 1950s or my visit to Djibouti in 1965, but I will resist that temptation—at least this evening.

As I said at Second Reading, I support this necessary and sensible Bill, but I want to pick up something that the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, said. I do not agree with the proposed Amendment 1 of the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, but, as I said at Second Reading, the Government need to give very serious thought to how the rights, interests and wishes of the Chagossians— I say Chagossians in the plural to mean not just those who have written to us from the United Kingdom but those from elsewhere as well—need to be taken very seriously into account by the Government. I look forward to hearing more about the Government’s intentions later in our discussion in Committee.

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

My Lords, for fear of treading on the toes of my noble friend Lord Hannan, I want to add to the debate that took place a moment ago concerning the intervention by the noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed, on my noble friend Lord Callanan’s amendment. I invite noble Lords to look at Clause 1. Clause 1(1) provides that the treaty is the treaty that was considered by Parliament. Clause 1(2) expressly provides that:

“When the Treaty comes into force, so do sections 2 to 4”


of the Bill.

The Bill is indivisibly connected to the implementation of the treaty, as the Minister will no doubt tell us in her closing speeches to all the groups that we have today. This is reflected in the Explanatory Notes to the Bill. I commend to the noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed, paragraph 18 of the Explanatory Notes, which sets out in crystal-clear detail that:

“Entry into force of the Treaty is defined in Article 18 of the Treaty, as being the first day of the first month following the date of receipt of the later note”.


There is nothing in the fact that this Parliament has considered the treaty that precludes an amendment of the type advanced by my noble friend Lord Callanan, because it is a statement of the purpose of the Bill. Purpose clauses have become something of a norm in legislation, and there is nothing wrong in principle with such a statement being placed in the Bill. Indeed, the purpose of the second part of his amendment is simply to state, as a matter of fact:

“Nothing in this Act grants or recognises that Mauritius has sovereignty over the Chagos Archipelago”.


That statement is absolutely correct. I give way to the noble Lord.