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Diego Garcia Military Base and British Indian Ocean Territory Bill

I certainly will, and I will come to that in short order.

The opportunity for marine tourism is massive; it is worth billions of pounds a year, and it would provide a lot of jobs for Chagossians. On top of that—perhaps more controversially—I have little doubt, having spoken to some geologists who work for the world’s biggest mining companies, that within those waters we would find cobalt and many of the minerals needed for the very green revolution that this Government say that they are in favour of, so economically we are not just paying £50 billion or whatever the number is; we are losing out on a huge future opportunity.

7.45 pm

As was mentioned by the hon. Member for South Shropshire (Stuart Anderson), strategically this is a disaster. Right at the moment, the American President is somewhat busy, having recently struck a remarkable peace deal in the middle east, and—whichever way people think he is going on it—being obsessed with ending the Ukraine war. This issue is very low down on his agenda, but he and America will wake up and realise that something they think now to be minor and not worth spending their time on actually will imperil the safety of their base. India has already negotiated a satellite observation deal, and China is currently negotiating.

It does not matter what the Minister says about what is in the treaty; Mauritius will not honour the terms of this treaty. Mauritius is poor. It is on the verge of bankruptcy. It will be bought by Chinese money, and China is negotiating leases already. If you want further proof of what will upset the American President, Huawei, which of course he railed against getting into the UK’s 5G system, is already installing its “safe city” cameras all over Mauritius. None of this makes any sense. I do wonder what the role of our National Security Adviser, Jonathan Powell, is in all of this.