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Diego Garcia Military Base and British Indian Ocean Territory Bill

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 11, 12, 13 and 16, in the name of my noble friend Lord Lilley, who is detained by difficult transport situations in France—he is perhaps not the only person in that situation—and, in the interest of brevity, to my own Amendments 24 and 25. Some of them would make Mauritius responsible for any outstanding reparation claims—it seems odd that that needs to be said, but such is the asymmetry of this deal in every other regard that it is worth setting out that it would be very strange if Britain remained liable despite having handed away the territory—while some ask for ratification to be delayed until after we have heard from your Lordships’ International Relations and Defence Committee.

In the interests of brevity, I shall talk about just three points in this group. The first is the timing of the ratification process. A judicial review was brought on 26 October by some diasporan Chagossians, some of them born on the Chagos Islands and some born in exile. Lengthy and detailed arguments were heard that day, and the judgment was initially expected on the same day. Then we were told that the ruling would come the following week, and then that it would come before Christmas, and now that it will come on 12 January. So why are we breaking with precedent and convention and rushing ahead with Third Reading without the customary lapse of at least three days between Committee and Third Reading?

It seems to me unfortunate that we are creating the appearance of collusion. We are creating the appearance of rushing through the Bill so that the judicial review will be ineffective. That criticism could easily have been anticipated—the noble Baroness, Lady Anderson, said she had never heard about prebuttal, but there will be a lot of prebuttal and rebuttal and some fairly crucial “buttal” in all this, I suspect—by our observing our normal timetables and allowing a reasonable time to elapse.

The second is the point referred to by my noble friend Lord Callanan: the decision on 8 December by the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, which called on

“both Mauritius and the United Kingdom to suspend ratification of the agreement, and to engage immediately in a renewed dialogue to ensure the free, prior and informed consent of the Chagossian people”.

Given that the entire Bill is predicated on this Government’s exaggerated deference to non-binding opinions by courts that have no jurisdiction, that

alone ought to have put an end to the entire business. If we are so in hock to UN bodies—without jurisdiction, in this case—telling us what they think, which we treat as final and binding, why did we do so on the first but not on this?

4.30 pm

That brings me to my third point and the bulk of what I want to talk about. Exactly as that committee suggests, why are we not consulting the people most concerned in a meaningful way—the only people who have ever constituted a permanent population of the Chagos Archipelago? This should be an utterly uncontentious point. I hope that all of us believe in the basics of democracy and self-determination. Every party here, according to its principles, should be standing up for the rights of the Chagossian people: my party, because we believe in sovereignty and take the security interests seriously; for the Liberal Democrats the clue is in their name, as the party pioneered the spread of representative government; and Labour has always argued for the spread of the franchise to include everybody, every group, and to empower people who otherwise did not have a voice. As I see my old friend the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, leaving the room, I add that there are considerable ecological objections to handing over maritime preservation. In fact, everyone, other than the one or two former Permanent Secretaries of the FCDO from whom we heard earlier, should be in favour of asking the people most concerned.

In all the hours of this debate, I have never really heard a strong argument to the contrary. The Minister, as my noble friend reminded us, is worth quoting again. She said that

“history has taken us to a position where, much as we do not like it and it goes against some of the things that we feel and what we may even argue is the moral case, the legal situation is, I am afraid, as it is

”.—[Official Report, 25/11/25; col. 1292.]

For a whole bunch of reasons, I do not believe that the legal position is “as it is”. I am not going to make another Second Reading speech, but the jurisdiction of this court expressly excludes it from disputes between two Commonwealth countries, and a number of the premises on which the original decision was made have subsequently been falsified.

However, even if all that were true, what are we here for? What is the point of having representative government in this country if we are simply to channel decisions by some overseas court? There is nothing deterministic about this. We have a process and we can use it, and your Lordships can use it today by supporting the right of the Chagossians to have a voice in their own future.

We just heard from my noble friend Lord De Mauley about the extraordinary and touching loyalty of this population, who were doing a write-in option about British sovereignty when they were not asked about the sovereignty issue in the consultation. Despite how they have been treated and the forcible removal of the population in the late 1960s and early 1970s, they would still rather return to their ancestral islands as British overseas subjects. Let us at least apply the most basic principle of self-determination, on which the entire international order rests, and allow them a say.

If I am wrong, and they are happy to be numbered as so many Mauritian citizens, so be it. I do not think a single voice would be raised against a deal of the kind proposed if that were the case. However, if, despite all the wrongs and grievances that they have suffered, the people most involved want to retain British sovereignty, should we not, in a structured and formal way, allow them to make that position clear in a referendum?