Diego Garcia Military Base and British Indian Ocean Territory Bill
Tuesday 18th November 2025
(1 day, 11 hours ago)
Lords ChamberDiego Garcia Military Base and British Indian Ocean Territory Bill 2024-26 View all Diego Garcia Military Base and British Indian Ocean Territory Bill 2024-26 Debates Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Amendment Paper: HL Bill 139-I(a) Amendments for Committee (Supplementary to the Marshalled List) - (17 Nov 2025)
Lord Callanan
“Purpose(1) The purpose of this Act is to—(a) cede sovereignty over the Chagos Archipelago,(b) dissolve the British Indian Ocean Territory,(c) provide for the continued British administration of Diego Garcia, and(d) limit the citizenship rights of the Chagossians.(2) Nothing in this Act grants or recognises that Mauritius has sovereignty over the Chagos Archipelago.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment seeks to add a purpose clause to the Bill to demonstrate more clearly the Government’s intentions in bringing forward this legislation.
Lord Callanan (Con)
My Lords, as my noble friend Lady Noakes said at Second Reading, this Bill is right up there in contention for the title of “worst Bill of this Session”. It is a surrender Bill and the Government should be ashamed of having brought it before your Lordships’ House. The sparsely populated Labour Benches—congratulations to the three Members who have turned up—illustrate how unpopular it is on all sides. We now begin the detailed scrutiny to seek to improve the Bill and to see just how far the Government are willing to move, if at all, to deliver a better deal for the British people and, crucially, for the Chagossians.
My Amendment 1 would put a clear statement of the Bill’s purposes on the face of the Bill. In essence, it is a clear and faithful description of the effects of the provisions of the Bill. It delivers clarity. The Bill does cede sovereignty over the islands, seek to dissolve the British Indian Ocean Territory after 200 years, provide for the continued British administration of Diego Garcia and limit the citizenship rights of the Chagossians.
Strangely, the Bill is completely silent on who shall have sovereignty over the Chagos Archipelago in the future, which is against the precedent set in previous Bills where territory has been conceded. By bringing this Bill, the Government are saying that presumably all these changes are good things that they are justly proud of. I therefore see no reason why the Government should resist this amendment on the grounds of fact. The Minister always seeks to be constructive in her work in your Lordships’ House, so I am sure she would not resist an amendment that delivers essential legislative clarity simply for the sake of delivering an unamended Bill at the end of the scrutiny process.
Against this context, should the Government oppose my amendment we will be led to assume that the Government are in fact embarrassed by the reality of their legislation being set out in simple terms. If they are indeed proud of the Bill, they will have no cause to be embarrassed and should accept the amendment.
Amendments 8 and 9 in the name of my noble friend Lord Lilley put the Government’s fundamental motivations under scrutiny. I certainly will not presume to make my noble friend’s argument for him before he has spoken to his amendments himself, but the question of whether a court exists that could deliver a binding and enforceable judgment on the sovereignty of the Chagos Archipelago is essential to the fundamental purpose of the Bill. I am not aware of such a court, and without such a court the Government’s argument for the necessity of the Bill falls apart.
As we all know, this Bill is not necessary or essential. It may have been framed as such by the international lawyer friends of the Prime Minister and the Attorney-General. It may be the deep conviction of the Foreign Office officials who seem determined to act against Britain’s interests on this issue. It may even be the view of the Attorney-General. But ultimately it is a political decision of this Government. Ministers should not hide behind legal advice. They should come to the House with a positive message of whatever benefits they think the Bill provides to the British people and the Chagossians. That is what normally happens with any other Bill before this House.
While we are debating the subject of international law, as I am sure we will be, I would like to ask the Minister a question. I draw her attention to a 1967 international agreement concerning the availability for defence purposes of the British Indian Ocean Territory. This is an agreement between the United Kingdom and the United States in which we agreed that the British Indian Ocean Territory
“shall remain under United Kingdom sovereignty”.
Do the Government accept that their proposals to cede sovereignty over the territory to Mauritius would involve a breach of their obligations in this treaty? They are always lecturing us on the importance of abiding by international agreements and treaties, so I assume they would not wish to be in breach of an international treaty. I would be grateful if the Minister could tell me what they are proposing to do about that international agreement.
Amendment 21 is designed to improve parliamentary scrutiny of the Government’s actions on Chagos by requiring a ministerial Statement to Parliament when the treaty comes into effect. We know that the Commons were, in fact, denied a substantive debate on ratification, despite long precedent under CRaG requiring that debates should indeed be granted. We know the Government are likely to press ahead with the treaty irrespective of any opposition from these Benches, but their conviction to deliver a deal that is good for no one but Mauritian taxpayers should not mean that we have less parliamentary scrutiny. In fact, as I have said before, if they are so proud of their record, I am sure they would be delighted to come to Parliament to talk about exactly how they are pressing this issue.
Finally, I have indicated my intention to oppose the Motion that Clause 1 stand part of the Bill. In my view, this is a bad Bill that should rightly be consigned to the pile of other uncommenced legislation. If it lacked a commencement clause, I think that would be a very sensible outcome.
Before I give way to the noble Lord, I give Ministers advance notice that I intend to degroup Amendments 14, 64 and 84, and I believe my noble friend Lord Lilley will add Amendment 25 to that, on the subject of a referendum. We will take them out of the next group and talk about them when we get to them. I give way to the noble Lord.
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. Given that the Bill is to give effect to the treaty, I wonder whether the noble Lord could say a little more, because in introducing his amendment he did not, about how his amendment interacts with Article 1 of the treaty that Parliament has ratified?
Lord Callanan (Con)
Well, the Government have said on a number of occasions that ratification does not come into effect until this legislation comes into effect.
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
It has been ratified; Parliament has ratified the treaty. It has not been brought into effect, but the treaty, which states that Mauritius is sovereign, has been ratified by Parliament. That is the treaty that the United Kingdom has entered into, and which Parliament has ratified. What is the interaction between that and proposed new subsection (2) of the noble Lord’s amendment, which says:
“Nothing in this Act grants … that Mauritius has sovereignty”?
He is seeking to have an amendment to a Bill which overrides a treaty commitment that Parliament has ratified, is he not?
Lord Callanan (Con)
It is a statement of fact that this legislation gives up British sovereignty of the Chagos Archipelago, but it does not say who should have sovereignty—the treaty is a separate matter. The treaty cannot come into effect until the legislation is approved, as I said.
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
The noble Lord is just factually wrong. The treaty has been ratified—it is now a treaty. His amendment is seeking to alter the treaty. Article 1 of the treaty, which Parliament has ratified, says that Mauritius is sovereign over the Chagos Archipelago in its entirety, including Diego Garcia. Is he seeking for Parliament now to try to change the treaty which it has ratified?
Lord Callanan (Con)
I am saying that we have every right to oppose this legislation. The legislation has come as a result of the treaty that the Government have agreed. We opposed the treaty; we think it is unnecessary. We also oppose the legislation, and we are entitled to table amendments to it because, as the Government have stated, the treaty cannot legally come into effect until the legislation is approved. I beg to move.
Lord Lilley (Con)
My Lords, Amendments 8 and 9 are in my name. Amendment 8 says that the treaty shall not come into force until a binding case in an international court requires us to cede sovereignty over the Chagos Islands. Amendment 9 requires the Government to spell out their legal position on why they believe such a ruling to be possible, let alone likely.
The whole basis of the Government’s case is that
“without this deal … within weeks we could face losing legal rulings, and within just a few years the base would become inoperable”.—[Official Report, Commons, 22/5/25; col. 1284.]
At Second Reading, the possibility of such a ruling was contested not just by me but by several other noble Lords, on the basis that there is no international court which can rule against our sovereignty in this way. Yet Ministers failed to address that issue and those arguments. Even noble Lords who have held the highest office in the FCDO—mandarins of our diplomatic corps who tenaciously defended this deal—failed to answer or address the question of which court could reach a binding judgment against us.
First, everyone acknowledges that the ruling of the International Court of Justice was purely advisory and not binding on us. Secondly, it was based on resolutions of the UN General Assembly which themselves are not legally binding; nor have they ever been endorsed by the Security Council. Thirdly, when Britain signed up to the ICJ, it specifically precluded disputes between the UK and present or past members of the Commonwealth. So the ruling was triply non-binding, and the ECJ cannot rule against us on this in future because it is a dispute with a Commonwealth country.
Ministers have chosen to ignore these arguments and not dispute them, although it is not clear that they were aware of this situation when they plunged into these negotiations. I rather suspect they were not. They have tacitly acknowledged the truth of these arguments by moving on to assert that the tribunal of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea could rule against Britain and in favour of Mauritius on the issue of sovereignty. As the noble Lord, Lord Murray, spelled out in forensic detail, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea has no such power. Britain has invoked Article 298 of the convention, which excludes military matters, so it is outside its wherewithal.
Even when the Philippines brought a case about artificial islands built in the South China Sea, ITLOS ruled that it cannot rule on the sovereignty of the area around those artificial islands—that is not within its purview. It can rule whether the islands are artificial or real and therefore have some territorial waters or not, but not whose they are and who they belong to.
We wonder why the Government got into this position. If the court has no power to rule on matters of sovereignty and the UK insists on exercising its rights under Article 298 of the convention, it just cannot do so. The Government’s silence on all these arguments must be deemed tacit acceptance that they are true. If there is some court or some hidden clause in the agreements that none of us knows about which overrides the points I have made, Amendment 9 will be no problem for them because they can implement it. According to them, within weeks, an adverse ruling will occur in a court which is binding on us. Since they have quite a long time before they can complete even these processes, we will get to know the answer to that conclusion. Alternatively, they could accept Amendment 9 and spell out the legal basis on which they believe an international court—which international court, why and on what grounds—could find against us.
If the Government reject this amendment, we will know that they do not even believe their own case. We will be forced to conclude that they are following, wittingly or unwittingly, the long-standing view of the Foreign Office—expressed very eloquently by the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, in the Second Reading debate—that, unless we accept even an advisory ruling, we will not be able to persuade other countries to accept legally binding rulings. That is perhaps how diplomats think, but it ought not to be how this House thinks.
We ought to reject that doctrine and be very cautious about allowing ourselves to be driven along by long-standing arguments of the Foreign Office. Thinking back, it was very keen on us giving up the Falklands to the Argentines, so it is perhaps no surprise to find that it is very keen nowadays on us giving up Chagos to Mauritius. But none of them—and none of the great mandarins who spoke in the debate—spelled out why we are legally obliged to do so. It was all on the basis that the Foreign Office position would be easier to maintain logically and would be more persuasive with Governments that, otherwise, we were recklessly following.
Lord Grocott (Lab)
How far back is the noble Lord going to go in his historic examination of British Governments? Is his position that the British Government should never ever cede sovereignty to any former colony? I am thinking of Australia, South Africa or Canada. How far is he going back in saying that it is absolutely wrong to cede sovereignty?
Lord Lilley (Con)
If the noble Lord wants me to go back further, I think it is a shame that we did not follow the advice of Edmund Burke and reach an agreement with the American colonists to give them independence earlier on.
But we are not talking about giving independence to the inhabitants of the Chagos Islands; we are talking about giving the Chagos Islands to a country which has never ruled them and is 2,000 kilometres away. To do that simply on the basis of long-standing Foreign Office doctrine is, surely, unwise. I hope your Lordships’ House will consider seriously these amendments because, if they are passed, we will know once and for all whether the Government have a strong case or not. If they are rejected, we can be certain that they do not have a strong case for giving away these islands.
Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)
Before the noble Lord sits down, I wonder if he could correct some remarks he has been making about people he has given a Chinese name to. I am not quite sure why he thinks that that is so telling. The arguments advanced were drawn from the testimony of Sir Christopher Greenwood, a former British member of the International Court of Justice. If he read his testimony—which, of course, is all available in the report from the International Agreements Committee of this House, which is being totally ignored by him and the noble Lord, Lord Callanan —he would see what the case is, which was set out very fully. It was set out not by the FCDO but by Sir Christopher Greenwood.
Lord Lilley (Con)
I am certainly very happy to mention that the noble Lord himself mentioned Sir Christoper Greenwood’s testimony in his speech, but his primary reasoning was that we should accept even purely advisory rulings of foreign courts in order that we be able better to uphold the rules-based international order. I remind him that the chairman of the committee that heard that evidence said in the debate that, although the committee was divided on the evidence it heard, he was inclined to agree with the arguments I had put forward.
Lord Grocott (Lab)
My Lords, I shall speak briefly to Amendment 1 by the noble Lord, Lord Callanan. I take it that he was not entirely serious when he dreamt up this particular innovation, which is right at the start of the Bill, whereby the purpose of the Bill should be presented in the way that the opponents of the Bill would find most attractive. It is a novel constitutional idea. In his reasons for the purposes of the Act, he has included only things that obviously he agrees with, but he has not included, for example, that this will secure the base for the UK and the USA for the next hundred years. There are arguments for and against, as there with any piece of legislation, but to think that you should state at the beginning of a Bill that the purpose of the legislation is what the Opposition would like to see enacted is novel. The only parallel I can think of would be if the sundry privatisation measures that were passed by the Thatcher Government had said, “The purpose of this Act is to sell off at knock-down prices the assets of the British people”. I do not know whether the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, would have been in favour of that kind of constraint when that legislation was going through. I do not take this as a serious amendment, and I am sure he will not press it to a vote—it might be fun if he did, but we will see anyway.
One part of the noble Lord’s proposed new clause that is contentious—well, a lot of it is contentious—on which I would certainly like to hear more from my noble friends on the Front Bench is paragraph (d), which suggests that the Bill will
“limit the citizenship rights of the Chagossians”.
I do not think the Bill as it stands does that, and I want to be clear about that, but I think it raises an issue which we will come to later in the Bill, which is of concern to a number of us here, about what further rights for the Chagossians are appropriate, given the appalling way in which—we are all agreed—they were treated when they were basically thrown out of their own island.
My specific query, which if my noble friend cannot answer at the moment I would certainly like to hear later on in subsequent amendments, is that I still cannot understand why the military requires the whole of the island of Diego Garcia without any other settlement on it other than what is required for military purposes. I have asked that question of Ministers. The last time I asked my honourable friend Stephen Doughty, the Minister, he answered by saying,
“it is impossible for that to take place”—
that is, to have permanent settlement of Chagossians on Diego Garcia—
“operationally. It is not suitable or appropriate”.
I am very fond of the Minister, but just saying something is not suitable or appropriate, without any further clarification or explanation, is not good enough, as far as I am concerned.
The best I have got so far is to be told that, operationally, it is very difficult if you have civilians alongside the military, and it is much more convenient to the military if they have it all to themselves. In response to that, I can say only that repeatedly, in all parts of the world, including in my former constituency, civilian workers at a base quite happily live adjacent to the base and do a job that is of mutual benefit to the military and the civilian workers.
I think it would be a huge step forward to be able to say to the Chagossians—there may not be many who would want to do it—that those who would really like to settle in the land of their forefathers on Diego Garcia would be able to do that and work at the base or, if necessary, work in other activities as well. So far, I have not had a good argument against that happening, and I hope that at some stage during the passage of this Bill my noble friends can provide me with one.
Lord Bellingham (Con)
My Lords, I rise in support of the noble Lord, Lord Callanan. I think the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, was being a little bit unfair on him. He said very clearly that this is an appalling Bill that he wants to stop, and he has an amendment about Clause 1 standing part.
I would like to speak on one point about the Chagossians, which I know we are going to come to later. I agree with the noble Lord 100% on that point. There are quite a few Sri Lankan staff at Diego Garcia and there is no reason why there could not have been put in place some while back a scheme for Chagossians—Chagossians from Mauritius, from the Seychelles, from Crawley, from London—rather than the American airbase employing Sri Lankans. That should be the case. Of course, they did not originally come from Diego Garcia; they lived in some of the islands in the outer archipelago. Diego Garcia, as I understand it, was only sparsely populated historically. That was a very good point and we hope that the Minister will answer it.
Baroness Foster of Aghadrumsee (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I first declare my interest as a Friend of the British Overseas Territories. I support the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, in his efforts to bring clarity to the Bill, at the very beginning of the Bill.
I particularly endorse the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, in relation to his amendments. It was in the conversation about those amendments that the issue of self-determination came up. I know that we are going to talk about self-determination in relation to amendments later on in Committee. However, there is a fundamental point about self-determination. The noble Lord, Lord Grocott, asked whether we would ever cede British territory. Well, of course we have, when we have had self-determination exercised. In this case—the Minister went through this in some detail in Second Reading, because I raised it—it is deemed not applicable to the British Indian Ocean Territory.
We all received a letter today from 650 members of the Chagossian community here in the United Kingdom. In that letter they say:
“To do so, however, in the context of re-denying the people concerned self-determination while simultaneously paying a country that played a key role in denying that people self-determination in relation to their territory on the previous occasion, more money than is required to resettle the people with the rightful claim to the territory, in order to lease one of their islands, demonstrates extreme moral disorientation”.
I completely agree with that.
I also completely agree with the second point that the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, made on resettlement. We all heard at Second Reading that there had been an exercise looking at resettling Chagossians into the Chagos Islands. Back in 2015, the KPMG report gave the details of the costs and the then Government decided not to proceed, probably based mostly on cost. But now the costs we are paying to the Mauritian Government far exceed the costs of resettlement. There is an opportunity for some Chagossians, if they wish, to resettle on Diego Garcia. In other British Overseas Territories there are civilians on military bases: Ascension Island comes to mind. So it could be the case that it happens in Diego Garcia as well. We will touch on resettlement rights and the right to return in other amendments, but, given that it was raised in this context, I just wanted to make those couple of points. I support the amendments in this group.
Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)
My Lords, I will start with the amendment from my noble friend Lord Callanan and the objection to it from the noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed, which was that this wasincompatible with the decision taken by Parliament. I will just quote—because I think it is helpful—Article 18 of the treaty. It states:
“This Agreement shall enter into force on the first day of the first month following the date of receipt of the later note by which the Parties notify each other that they have completed their respective internal requirements and procedures necessary for the entry into force of this Agreement”.
In other words, it cannot enter into force until both Chambers of this Parliament have given their assent.
We have not made any bones about the fact that we do not like the treaty at all. I think it is a bit much to complain about my noble friend making this point in principle.
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
The noble Lord will recall that I had said that it is not in force. I said Parliament had ratified it. I am not sure whether the noble Lord can intervene on an intervention, but I am sure he can intervene on his noble friend in just a moment as a proxy to intervene on me. Parliament has ratified the treaty. The treaty is not in force, but treaty-making is a prerogative power, not a parliamentary power. I am sure the noble Lord will agree with that.
Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)
I will, of course, invite an intervention. I do not know what the rules are on intervening on an intervention.
Lord Callanan (Con)
I am happy that my noble friend gives way, because, since the noble Lord intervened on me earlier, I have had a chance to check the facts of the case and, unsurprisingly, he is completely wrong. Parliament has not ratified the treaty because Parliament cannot ratify the treaty. The ratification of treaties under the CRaG legislation is a matter for the Government, using the royal prerogative. Parliament can delay the ratification but cannot prevent it. Whatever this House voted, or whatever the House of Commons voted, the Government are entitled, under the royal prerogative, to ratify the treaty in any case. I hope that is helpful to my noble friend.
Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)
That is extremely helpful. I very much welcome my noble friend’s intervention.
The Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Baroness Chapman of Darlington) (Lab)
I am very much going to regret getting involved in this, but I think it is helpful to understand what this House has and has not done. Both Houses of Parliament have voted that the Government should ratify this treaty. That is the situation as it is. This debate is about making sure we have the right legislation to enable us to enact the treaty.
Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)
I think lots of positions will be endlessly stated on that; I am not going to take it any further now. I do not see anyone changing their minds about that, but I would like to address the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, who suggested that this was really about a reluctance ever to cede sovereignty and to allow any colony to go its own way.
One of the peculiar features of British rule overseas was the nature of its dissolution. The British Empire, unlike most others, had a self-dissolving quality because it had the democratic self-determination principle that was adumbrated in this House and then exported. Very few imperial moments ended so peacefully. Yes, there were tragic exceptions in Kenya, Cyprus, India and Palestine, I suppose. Ireland was a slightly different story, because it was not treated as a colony but as part of the country itself. But those were exceptional; in most places, including most Caribbean countries and Malaya, independence happened without a shot being fired in anger because there was that belief in self-determination. Quite often the imperative to decolonise, as my noble friend Lord Lilley suggests, overrode self-determination.
Some noble Lords will, I am sure, remember that in 1956 Malta voted in a referendum, by 77%, to turn itself into three Westminster constituencies and become part of the United Kingdom. It was turned down and, soon after, Malta ended up not just independent but outside NATO and the Commonwealth, and pursuing an extremely unhelpful line. During the Maltese process of accession to the European Union, I discussed this with Dom Mintoff, who was still alive. He was an old and revered figure at that time, and he said, “My wife is British and I love Britain, but how do you expect anyone to respond to being treated in that way?”
I mentioned Malta because there was a similar debate, which I do not think has come up in any of your Lordships’ deliberations, in one of the parties in Mauritius in the 1960s about whether to adhere to the United Kingdom and seek representation at the other end of this building. The idea that this is really about some kind of grasping imperial power refusing to let go is wrong in the generality and especially wrong in this case, because we are refusing to recognise the wishes of the people concerned—the only people who ever formed a permanent population of the Chagos Archipelago between 1714 and the early 1970s.
Self-determination does not always mean independence. It means exactly that: you can self-determine to be part of a larger bloc. The referendum in Scotland in 2014 was an act of self-determination; it did not stop being self-determination because of the referendum result. That is what we mean by democracy. I fear that self-determination, which is a core principle of the United Nations and of the legal order that we have defended even since the Atlantic charter in 1941, is being overridden here for no good reason at all. This is what makes me so frustrated. Every time I sit down to draft what I want to say about these amendments, I start getting angry all over again about the utter needlessness of it all, for the reasons set out by my noble friend Lord Lilley. We are surrendering to a case where there is no jurisdiction over us. If Ministers think that that is wrong, I would love to hear the Minister explain why the Government will not accept my noble friend’s amendments.
It seems that what we are doing here is creating a hierarchy of norms, not by the intrinsic importance of their jurisdictional power, but on the basis of taste and fashion. The principle of self-determination is thus ranked below the principle of general decolonisation—getting out of the way—and that is fundamentally because of a transient public mood. It is considered unfashionable to have flags with little Union Jacks in the top corner, which sets a very dangerous precedent.
It may be—I do not know—that the Government will argue that the reason we are following this non-binding resolution, which is not a legal judgment, is not because there is some hidden reason that we really have to, as my noble friend suggests, but, they may say, because we have to give an example. It would be because the international order is in danger; countries are throwing their weight around; Machtpolitik is prevailing; the whole post-war order is looking shaky; even the United States, on which it rested, is now asserting its interests without recourse to treaties. Therefore, we need to set a lead.
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.
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way; I have listened carefully to what he has said, as I always do. Does he agree that there is a distinction, however, between debating legislation that gives effect to a treaty that has been agreed and ratified by Parliament, which this treaty has, and implementing legislation which seeks to alter a treaty that has been agreed?
Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)
The noble Lord seeks to justify his intervention but fails to do so. Because of the way the treaty is drafted and the way Article 18 operates, the treaty can come into force only when this legislation is implemented. That is unusual, but it has the effect of not allowing the noble Lord to make the point he tries to make. He argues that my noble friend Lord Callanan cannot make this amendment because it is in some way in breach of the agreement that has already been signed by the Government, but that agreement is not in force. This is a point we have explored in great detail. I am sure the Minister would agree with me on that point.
Moving to the other amendments in the group, I entirely support the amendments in the name of my noble friend Lord Lilley. I am very grateful to the reference that he and my noble friend Lord Bellingham made to the points that I made at Second Reading in respect of the non-recognition of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea. I would just add one point in furtherance of that. The International Court of Justice also has no power and no jurisdiction to query the dispute over the Chagos.
The noble Lord, Lord Hannay, who I am sad to see is not in his place, heavily relies on the evidence of Sir Christopher Greenwood, but he chooses to ignore evidence which does not favour his case. A very powerful exposition of the contrary case was put by Professor Richard Ekins, KC, professor of constitutional law at Oxford. He made it clear that the International Court of Justice’s jurisdiction specifically excludes any dispute with the Government of any other country which is or has been a member of the Commonwealth. Mauritius’s acceptance of the ICJ’s jurisdiction also excludes disputes with the Government of any other country which is a member of the British Commonwealth of nations.
If there had been any basis upon which Mauritius could have sought a binding ICJ judgment against the UK, it would have already done so. The fact is that no such basis exists or has ever existed, which is why Mauritius was forced to use the advisory opinion route to obtain its non-binding advisory opinion. Its bargaining position would have been far stronger if it had had a binding ruling against the UK, but the fact is that it has chosen to negotiate without seeking such a ruling, because it obviously knows that there is no way in which it can obtain such a binding ruling.
For those reasons, I strongly support the lock that is present in my noble friend Lord Lilley’s amendment. It would mean that only if there is a binding ruling should this treaty come into force, and therefore the Chagos Islands should remain in British possession and this act of strategic self-harm should be avoided.
Baroness Hoey (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I very much support the amendment in the name of the noble Lord Lilley. Once again, it raises the issue: why do our Government seem to jump as soon as some international court says something that is not even binding but advisory? The public need to know that we are actually selling out the people of the Chagos Islands because lawyers have decided that an advisory court has said that we should transfer the Chagos Islands to Mauritius. I think the public are beginning to realise more and more that we are being ruled far too much by international law that does not take into account morality to start with, and the rights of people to self-determination. These amendments really do get to the heart of what we are discussing.
I will add my remarks to those of the noble Lord, Lord Grocott. I was very pleased to hear him talk about the way in which the Chagossian people could go back. It is interesting that, over all those years—from the 1960s right through to 2025—the British Governments, who could have allowed the Chagossians to go back, refused. We are now passing them over. We are selling them, buying them and spending a lot of money. Once the islands belong to Mauritius, they will be allowed to be repopulated, except for the island with the base. I absolutely agree that there seems to be no reason why the Chagossians could not live peacefully on part of that island. As the noble Lord said, we have not had any real answer to why that could not happen. British Governments did nothing over those years to allow the Chagossians to go back, but suddenly it is all right, because Mauritius is going to be running it. Of course, in debates on other amendments, we will go into whether we believe that Mauritius will allow the Chagossians to go back, and the way in which it is going to control them.
Clearly, the issue here is self-determination. I know we are coming to that, so I will not say any more now, other than that I would like a response from the Minister that actually answers some of the questions raised in this debate.
Lord Weir of Ballyholme (DUP)
My Lords, I will be brief. I was going to intervene on the speech from the noble Lord, Lord Hannan, but we reached a point at which there was a triangulation of interventions such that, for a brief period, perhaps the only person who was unable to contribute to that speech was the noble Lord, Lord Hannan, himself.
If we are to base this decision on where we stand on international law, the Government must explain much more clearly why they believed there was going to be an imminent binding ruling against us. At present, we have simply been served with an advisory position that, by definition, clearly does not hold any legal weight. The noble Lord, Lord Lilley, has highlighted how weak the legal position is and that it would, in effect, be impossible to force us into a binding position. I do not want to reiterate all his points, but I very much support his amendment.
As I think was mentioned earlier by the noble Lord, Lord Hannan, we have heard the opinion given to the Committee on this subject, which, in effect, is an opinion from a third party. It may be a very well-informed third party, but we have not heard directly from the Government themselves. The Government need to explain their opinion. The suspicion of many of us is that that silence—the absence of a watertight explanation from the Government—signals a lack of confidence that this is going to be binding on the UK.
As the noble Lord, Lord Hannan, indicated, in the absence of a binding legal position, we should undoubtedly be looking towards the self-determination of the Chagossian people. Self-determination is more than simply independence, because it is clearly not self-determination if you give people only one choice. Self-determination is about the level of choice, and it is very clear that the Chagossian people want to maintain the link with the UK. At times, the Government, and some Members on Second Reading, disputed that, saying that there are other Chagossian voices who want to go down a different path. There is obviously a very good way to test that out: to pursue the self-determination of the Chagossian people.
The noble Lord, Lord Hannan, noted that part of the complication stems from the fact that, in terms of the hierarchy of principles, we have seen the subjugation of self-determination to signing up to a fashionable support for anticolonialism. The noble Lord may well be right that this is the motivation of some people, but I would contend that some of the nations keenest to jump on the bandwagon of anticolonialism do not have a particularly good record themselves.
China is perhaps the most colonial nation on the face of the earth. It is not the old 19th-century version of sending a gunboat and an invading army; it is a lot more insidious. No nation is more colonial in trying to spread its effective control over a range of third countries. I do not believe that China or many of the other countries lecturing us on this are in a good position to hand out lessons to the United Kingdom. As the noble Lord, Lord Hannan, indicated, we have a much better record on decolonisation. While there have been some problems, the UK does not have in its past an Algeria, an Indochina, a Belgian Congo or even a Mozambique, as other European countries do. Our record is much better.
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
My Lords, I have amendments to this Bill—I think they are in the last group—but I will not address them. I will keep to the amendments in this group, which has strayed into some wider areas. Since the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, is not seeking the guidance of the Companion, which discourages changing groupings that have already been agreed, we will no doubt discuss all the amendments in detail as we go. I tabled my principal amendment but no others because I chose to respect the work of the International Relations and Defence Committee, which may well have considerations in advance of Report for us to consider.
I will make some short remarks on the amendments from the noble Lords, Lord Lilley and Lord Callanan. I do not think the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, presented any different, additional arguments in introducing his amendments from those he presented at Second Reading. Therefore, we have heard them before. Other noble Lords agreed with his argument.
Lord Lilley (Con)
If the noble Lord regards the amendments clearly, he will see that the difference is that I am saying, “Suck it and see”. If you believe there is a possibility of a court coming up with these judgments—they say it will be within weeks—then let us see.
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
I understand that argument, which the noble Lord alluded to at Second Reading, but it is a curious one when a treaty has been agreed. If he had presented this argument under the previous Administration post 2022, during the negotiations, that may have held a degree of credibility, but I did not hear him at any stage ask the previous Government to abort those negotiations. This is important because he and others who agree with him are suggesting that the previous Government perhaps did not enter in good faith into negotiations based on ceding sovereignty to resolve legal considerations. That was the Statement that the Foreign Secretary made in November 2022. As I said at Second Reading, I assume—the noble Lord may be able to correct me—that the Government would not have made that policy choice in November 2022 without advice from the Attorney-General at the time.
Lord Lilley (Con)
Since the noble Lord is famous for his pernicketiness, I remind him that the Statement in November 2022 referred to the “exercise of sovereignty”, not the ceding of sovereignty.
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
I see. Presumably he is arguing that it would be joint sovereignty. How would you enter into negotiations with another sovereign state on the exercise of sovereignty if we were going to retain it? I do not understand. This is interesting. Is he now saying that the previous Government entered into those negotiations without the intent to cede sovereignty?
Lord Lilley (Con)
I promise the noble Lord and the Committee that this will be my last intervention. I had no insider knowledge and was not in any way involved, but the possibility, from reading the Statement, was that the negotiations would consider the possibility either of joint sovereignty, as has existed in certain parts of the world, or, as the noble Lord, Lord Bellingham, said—on a much better informed basis—of retaining sovereignty of Diego Garcia but ceding it elsewhere. There are all sorts of possibilities, and none of us knew at the time. That is why I certainly did not want those negotiations to take place, but I was not involved at all.
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
Part of the noble Lord’s lack of involvement was in not raising his objections in Parliament at the time. If those negotiations were entered into to resolve the legal considerations then the Statement in 2022 undermines his quite novel argument now.
It is the case that the previous Government entered into those negotiations. I believe that they entered into them in good faith and they knew what the conclusions would be. The argument of the noble Lord, Lord Bellingham, is of course correct with regard to the 2017 declaration by the United Kingdom Government that they would be able to choose not to adhere to any rulings by the ICJ on the basis of a Commonwealth country, if that dispute started after 1987. It is a moot point whether this dispute started before then; there remain many arguments that it had. However, even if he is right, I am certain that the former Attorney-General—one of potentially three in 2022—would have advised the previous Administration that, regardless of that 2017 UK declaration, the ICJ would, as under its statute, refer to the General Assembly, because that is its purpose, and that there would be a resolution at the General Assembly. That was the entire point of the ICJ considering it, because it was referred to the ICJ by the General Assembly. I understand the noble Lord’s argument, but we would not be in a different place now even if his argument was very robust.
On the argument of the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, and our little to and fro on the treaty, we have been told on many occasions by the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, and his colleagues in the previous Administration that treaty-making is a prerogative power. We do not have that short a memory in this House; we recall the Rwanda Bill and the Rwanda treaty. I recall the noble Lord, Lord Murray of Blidworth, telling us that it was not our role to interfere in the prerogative power of Governments making, implementing or changing treaties. I quote:
“My Lords, we are not aware of any precedent for Parliament mandating the Government in international negotiations conducted under the royal prerogative. The Government were not prepared to accept such a significant … shift”.—[Official Report, 24/7/18; col. 1598.]
That is ultimately what the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, puts forward. That quote from Hansard is from the noble Lord, Lord Callanan. He was insistent that it was not Parliament’s role to interfere or mandate a Government in the negotiation of treaties under the royal prerogative. He was either wrong then and right now, or he was right then and wrong now. I am sure he will be able to say which when he sums up the debate.
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
My Lords, this has been an interesting debate—slightly wide ranging, but that often happens with the first group in Committee. I am sure we will return to some of the issues raised in proper depth when we get to the relevant amendments, and I look forward to that. We have heard some interesting claims from the Opposition, but it is the Government’s contention that none of the amendments in the first group is necessary, and I will explain why that is.
Amendment 1, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, is unnecessary because it is clear what the purpose of the Bill is. It has been debated many times over. The Bill implements in domestic law, as the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, explained very clearly, those elements of the treaty between the United Kingdom and Mauritius concerning the Chagos Archipelago that require such implementation. There are also elements of this amendment that are just false. We will have a further debate shortly, I am sure, but it is incorrect to state that the Bill seeks to limit Chagossian citizenship rights. The Bill makes changes necessary so that no new claims for British Overseas Territory citizenship can be made, but it also preserves the existing British Overseas Territory citizenship for those who hold it. The Bill preserves Chagossians’ rights to obtain British citizenship and the British citizenship of those who already hold it. We have been clear about this, and anything that suggests otherwise is helping, I think, to circulate misinformation, which does no good for anyone, least of all the Chagossians.
Amendment 8 would jeopardise our national security if accepted and fundamentally goes against what this treaty and Bill do, which is to safeguard our national security. This amendment would prevent the UK ratifying the treaty until an international court delivers a binding ruling. In that scenario there is a very real risk of the deal collapsing, and the Government’s view is that this would put the UK in a very weak negotiating position—far weaker than that in which we started negotiating. Actually, we did not start negotiating; as many noble Lords have observed, there were 11 rounds of negotiation under the previous Government. We have set out our legal rationale on multiple occasions, but for the avoidance of doubt I will restate it here: the Government acted to protect the Diego Garcia base because it faced an existential threat. The previous Government knew this, and that is why they started negotiations over three years ago and continued them for 11 rounds. Under the previous Government, Mauritius secured a string of legal and political victories against the UK.
On Amendment 9, the Government have already published their legal reasoning for signing the deal and have set this out clearly to Parliament on several occasions. Committees have heard expert testimony on these points, as the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, reminded us.
On Amendment 21, a notice will be published in the London Gazette on the day the treaty enters into force, as is the usual practice, and we will consider the utility of whether a Statement in Parliament at that point would be beneficial. It may well be.
On the clause stand part notice, Clause 1 sets out when the different clauses of the Bill come into force. Clauses 2 and 4 commence at the same time that the treaty enters into force. Article 18 of the treaty states that the treaty enters into force on the first day of the first month following the confirmation by both the UK Government and the Government of Mauritius that they have ratified the treaty.
Before the UK can ratify the treaty, we will need to do the following: pass both primary and secondary legislation, update the UK-US exchange of notes, and put in place agreements on the environment, maritime security and migration. Therefore, this clause provides that legal certainty and ensures that there is no ambiguity as to when the British Indian Ocean Territory is no longer an overseas territory or as to which laws will be saved. As I mentioned earlier, the Secretary of State will publish a notice in the London Gazette when the treaty enters into force.
I will give a little more detail about something that has come up several times. Noble Lords suggested that there is no legal risk here and, further, that there could never be any legal question around this. That really makes me wonder what on earth the previous Government were doing with officials’ time, ministerial time and the time of officials from other Governments, when they set about negotiating for 11 rounds. They paused the negotiations when the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, was appointed Foreign Secretary and then restarted them. If there was no legal jeopardy whatever, what on earth were the previous Government thinking when they set about that process? On the question of what court—
Lord Lilley (Con)
I am very grateful to the Minister for giving way. I asked a very clear, core question: from which international court does she fear a damaging, binding judgment? She will not tell us. She says that she does not know but that the previous Government must have known.
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
Forgive me, but I did not say that I did not know; I was just about to answer that specific question. I was making a point about the inconsistency and—frankly—ludicrousness of the Opposition doing something that, when they were in government, took up a great deal of time and resource, but which they now contend they never, ever needed to do.
Lord Bellingham (Con)
Will the Minister give way? We keep hearing that the previous Government negotiated over 11 rounds and went on negotiating, but surely that reveals something about the previous Government’s steadfast determination to secure a good deal. If the Government had not been able to get a deal, would they have eventually signed up to an agreement? I do think they would have done.
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
At the risk of jumping further down the rabbit hole with the noble Lord, my point was simply that to contend now that there was never any possibility of any legal jeopardy, as many noble Lords have sought to do today, does not correspond with the fact that the previous Government did enter into negotiations. If there was never a legal risk, why did they do that? That is the point that I am seeking to make, a pretty straightforward point.
The noble Lord, Lord Lilley, asked me about binding judgments and courts; they are fair questions. I believe that I have responded to them previously, but I am happy to go into more detail today, as that is what Committee debates are all about. There are numerous avenues through which Mauritius could pursue a legally binding judgment, including under the dispute provisions of the treaties to which both states are parties or further arbitral—
A noble Lord
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
I am getting on to that. Noble Lords are very impatient this afternoon. We are in Committee—we have time, and I am in no hurry. I am prepared to stay here as long as we need to get these things done.
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
I am speaking for myself; other noble Lords may take different views on that point.
Mauritius could also pursue a legally binding judgment through further arbitral proceedings against the UK under Annex VII of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, or UNCLOS. A judgment from such a tribunal would be legally binding on the UK—and I will come on to the points about the extent of those judgments and sovereignty, too. Such cases could be brought rapidly and include provisional measures, themselves legally binding, which could be introduced within weeks. The long-standing legal view of the United Kingdom is that the UK would not have a realistic prospect of successfully defending its legal position on sovereignty in such litigation.
The other important element to note here is that, even if the UK chose to disregard any legal rulings—that is not something that this Government would want to do, but we could—we rely on third countries to service the base. Therefore, the operability of the base depends on other states taking a view on such rulings. We of course control what we do, but we cannot control what other states do. If we need those states to agree with us and to ignore a legal ruling too, we may not be successful. It may be that we then compromise the operability of the base. That is a very real threat; we were concerned about that, as were our allies and partners, including the United States.
The risk of a binding ruling relating to sovereignty from this type of tribunal is simply too great, given the importance of the base for national security. Some have pointed to the 2015 arbitration between the UK and Mauritius, in which the tribunal was clear that it did not have jurisdiction over the question of sovereignty. That is right. However, that was before the advisory opinion in 2019 and before the 2021 judgment of a special chamber of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea in a case about delimitating the boundary between Mauritius and the Maldives. In that case, it was ruled that Mauritius’s sovereignty was inferred from the ICJ’s advisory determinations. These have changed the legal landscape.
Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)
Will the Minister confirm that, in those proceedings to which she just referred, the United Kingdom was not a party and made no submissions?
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
I never said that we did; that was between Mauritius and the Maldives. My point is to make the case to noble Lords that the advisory opinions—advisory though they are—stand to inform subsequent opinions of international tribunals. That is what happened in that case, and that is why I bring that as a supporting argument for the Government’s case—to help noble Lords understand how we have got to where we are.
While an arbitral tribunal under UNCLOS almost certainly would not address the question of sovereignty directly, it may reach decisions on related matters based on conclusions about sovereignty. Noble Lords may disagree, but the Government’s position is that we are concerned about this—and I suggest that the previous Government were also concerned about this; otherwise, what were they doing? We are concerned not just about the effects of a binding judgment on the UK but about the legal effect on third countries and international organisations, which could give rise to real impacts on the operation of the base and the delivery of all its national security functions.
Although I do not expect there to be agreement on this, I believe that we cannot say that the Government have not fully considered all the potential legal jeopardy in which we would place ourselves. Further, we believe that the suck-it-and-see approach that the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, advocates would leave us in a much weaker position when it comes to negotiating with Mauritius.
Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)
May I press the Minister on that point? I am very grateful to her for giving way. She said that there was an existential threat to the base. So that I have understood that clearly, is she saying that there was something in addition to the possibility of an adverse UNCLOS judgment? As she conceded a moment ago, UNCLOS has no sovereignty; I just looked up what it says on its website, and it says, “We don’t do sovereignty issues”. That issue was tested with the case between the Philippines and China, when the latter was building reefs over some contested land, and UNCLOS said that it had nothing to do with it. Therefore, is there something else? Is an adverse judgment from a body that cannot decide sovereignty, in her view, an existential threat to the existence of the base? Would it make the existence of that base impossible?
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
What do we mean by existential? We could still have a Diego Garcia—there could be something there. However, it would be existential because, if the operability is compromised, the base as it exists today—it is a unique place and it does things that we do not do anywhere else—would be compromised. To that extent, I suggest that that is an existential threat to the operability of the base.
With that, I hope that noble Lords who have presented their amendments are satisfied. If not, we can of course return to these issues on Report.
Lord Bellingham (Con)
Can the Minister answer my point about the UN Security Council and the UK’s ability and right to veto?
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
We are not saying that this goes to the Security Council. We are saying that there could be further rulings. With respect, that is a bit of a red herring. There could be rulings that affect how we are able to operate on the base. There could be votes at the General Assembly, which the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, explained quite well. He is right; we could veto something at the Security Council, but we do not anticipate that, and that is not the legal threat that we are concerned about. It is a different legal threat.
If there are no further interventions, I respectfully request that the noble Lord withdraw his amendment.
Lord Callanan (Con)
I thank the Minister for her replies. This has been an interesting debate. As she says, this is how the first debate in Committee normally goes. It is fairly wide ranging, and I am sure we will return to many of these issues.
Just before I address some of the other issues, I return briefly to the noble Lord, Lord Purvis. We have already made the point that it is not Parliament’s role to ratify treaties under CRaG. Parliament has the right to delay them only, but the Government still have the right to agree them. I am not questioning the Government’s right to agree treaties under the royal prerogative. I might not like it—in fact, I really dislike it—but of course they have the right to do that. The reality is that they have now presented us with a Bill to implement the treaty that they have agreed. We fundamentally disagree with that treaty, so we have the perfect right to put forward amendments to the Bill that they have presented us with—the Table Office has ruled our amendments in order—and to debate them and vote on them if we wish.
I particularly thank my noble friend Lord Lilley for his excellent amendments in this group. I look forward to working with him throughout Committee and Report. We should certainly return to the question of international law on Report. My noble friend Lord Hannan made some excellent arguments as well.
I listened carefully to the Minister’s reply to my amendments, and I will look carefully at her remarks before we return to the Bill next year on Report. However, there is one point that she has not addressed. I return to and reiterate the point around the 1967 agreement with the United States. There was not a CRaG process in 1967, but that treaty, which has presumably been ratified, was agreed under whatever process we had then. Does the Minister not think it is still valid? Would she like to reply to that?
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
I am very happy to respond to that, and I am very sorry for not including that in my closing remarks. Obviously, the UK and the US are party to that treaty, and parties to treaties can agree to do things with those treaties. I remind the noble Lord and everybody else that the US very much supports what we are doing with our treaty with Mauritius.
Lord Callanan (Con)
Is she saying that the United States has agreed to abrogate that treaty?
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
I am saying that the United States publicly and in terms supports the treaty that we have agreed as a Parliament to ratify with Mauritius.
Lord Callanan (Con)
I heard that, but that was not in fact the question that I asked. If the original agreement is still in force—it is still an international treaty and is presumably still lodged—I assume that the Minister is telling me that the US has not yet agreed to abrogate that treaty. Therefore, if we concede the sovereignty of the BIOT, we are in breach of that treaty. She wants to talk to her noble and learned friend the Attorney- General, who is so keen to refer to international law all the time.
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
My point is that we will be doing so with the consent of the other party to the treaty.
Lord Callanan (Con)
I will look at Hansard, but I do not think that she has answered the question here.
The other point I want to make, going back to the point from the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, is that I think he said at one stage that he has proposed amendments—plural. I can see only one amendment, unless another one has gone in recently that I have not yet seen.
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
I am happy to clarify. There will be a second, consequential amendment. As I mentioned in my remarks, there is a principal amendment and there will be a consequential amendment. I am sure the noble Lord is looking forward to reading and supporting them.
Lord Callanan (Con)
I do not see much problem with the one that is there. I will look at any other consequential amendments in detail. I am grateful to the noble Lord for his clarification, but I am slightly confused by the Liberal Democrats’ position. Their Members in the House of Commons thought the Bill was so bad that they voted against it at Third Reading, yet all the Liberal Democrat Benches in this House have proposed only one, fairly mild amendment. From the noble Lord’s remarks so far, and indeed how they voted on the original CRaG amendment, they certainly seem fairly supportive of this treaty, which seems a strange position to be in. I am sure we will return to many of these issues in future rounds of debate. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Lord Lilley
“(2) Sections 2 and 4 of this Act do not come into force until the duties outlined in section 1(2A) (right to return), 1(2A) (lease renewal), 1(2A) (termination), (Referendum), (Employment rights of Chagossians), (Asylum claimants) and (Consultation) are discharged.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment, connected to others in the name of Lord Lilley, seeks to make commencement of sections 2 and 4 dependent on certain conditions.
Lord Lilley (Con)
I will speak in favour of Amendments 2, 13, 25 and 28. Amendment 2 is an all-purpose amendment saying that the treaty should not come into force until other conditions in amendments are incorporated. Amendments 13 and 28 call for consultation, and Amendment 25 for a referendum.
As I have mentioned previously, the advisory ruling of the International Court of Justice was based on a non-binding UN resolution about the process of decolonisation. That ruling explicitly says that a colonial state can sever part of a territory if it is the freely expressed and genuine will of the people of the territory concerned that they be separated.
The Chagossians cite the example of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands. The parallel between the Gilbert and Ellice Islands and the situation of Chagos versus Mauritius is striking. When the Government consulted the people of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands before ceasing to be the colonial power, they found that there was considerable opposition in the Ellice Islands to being lumped in with the Gilbert Islands. The parallels between that and the Chagos Islands and Mauritius are very striking. The Chagos Islands are 1,339 miles away from Mauritius, and the Ellice Islands are just 800 miles away from the Gilbert Islands. The Chagos Islands have a different ethnic mix. They are basically populated by people from the African continent, whereas that is not the case in Mauritius. Likewise, with the Gilbert and Ellice Islands, one was Polynesian and one was Micronesian. The disparity of numbers is, if anything, even greater in the case of the Chagos Islands versus Mauritius than it was in the Ellice and Gilbert Islands.
After consulting, the British Government rightly decided that they should test the views of the people concerned. They had a referendum, and the vote was very striking. The people of the Ellice Islands voted to separate from the Gilbert Islands by 3,799 votes to 293. This is a comparatively small number of people—fewer, in fact, than the diaspora of Chagossian peoples in the UK, the Seychelles and Mauritius itself. It surely is possible for us to consult with them and seek their views, ideally through a referendum. The Government may say, “Why have a referendum? It’s so difficult. We can’t do it”. But the Chagossians themselves have today given the results of an opinion poll they have carried out, which 3,500 people responded to out of roughly 10,000 potential respondents. That is a very high proportion. Of those 3,500, an overwhelming proportion were against being lumped in with Mauritius.
The Government may well say that it is still only a minority of the total population. That is fair enough. Again, suck it and see—have a referendum of the total. Who would be the potential electors? The Chagossian nationals would be, as defined in this Bill. We have done that bit for the Government, so that is already there. It is clearly possible over a period to consult them if the Chagossians can organise a poll like this fairly rapidly and with such a high response rate.
The Government often argue that the Chagossians are “not really a people and in any case they’re no longer there”. However, there are precedents in history for people being removed from a place and allowed back. The Acadians were shipped out of Canada because they were thought to be unreliable French-speaking Catholics but subsequently were allowed back and are still a distinctive community in that part of Canada. Similar things have happened with the Chechens and the Crimeans more recently, after the Second World War. In history, we all know the displacement that was suffered by the ancient Israelites. It is possible to say that people who have been removed from a territory still have a right to that territory and should be consulted about its sovereignty.
These amendments seek to ensure that we do have a referendum. Failing that, if the Government can convince us that it is impossible in some way to organise a referendum, let us have a thorough and prolonged period of consultation. I would like to hear more from the Government on what they are doing now, having been provoked into it by the amendment to the committal Motion to ask the relevant Select Committee of this House to carry out a consultation. How are they envisaging that being carried out, and how will they define the Chagos consultation groups and so on? I think your Lordships’ House would almost certainly welcome greater information about that process and how the Government see it happening. If they do not satisfy us on this, I think we need to press ahead with Amendments 13 and 28 on the consultation, but ideally let us go ahead and have a referendum under Amendment 25.
Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)
My Lords, I introduce Amendment 29 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Morrow, who is prevented by a family illness from being here. His amendment draws attention to the contradiction between the principles in this Bill and some of the UN resolutions dealing with when it is valid to partition a territory. The legal case on which the Government rest, as we established in the last round of amendments, is fundamentally UN Resolution 1514, which was the basis of the Mauritian claim that it was wrong to have divided the territory at independence.
This is an extraordinary precedent to set. The idea that if a territory, for reasons of administrative convenience, was at one time governed from somewhere else, that creates a lasting claim, would upend borders on every continent and in every archipelago. It would mean that Aden and Somaliland are again governed from India, and that the Cayman Islands are again governed from Jamaica. If we extend beyond British territories, it would mean that the Philippines were governed from Mexico, and that Bolivia was again governed from my native Peru, which was the seat of the viceroyalty. It would be an extraordinary principle.
Indeed, when read in context, the UN is not arguing that. If it did, it would have opposed the split of Czechoslovakia, the independence of Montenegro from Serbia, and so on. Of course it does not argue that. The three resolutions referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Morrow, essentially establish criteria where it is proper to divide a territory for reasons of geography, history, ethnic distinction or nationality—a sense of being a people and wanting to live in your own polity. As we just heard from my noble friend Lord Lilley, all those criteria are plainly met in this case. When the Chagos Islands were ceded by the French in 1814, they were ceded as a separate territory from Mauritius. They are populated by a different population, one that came from the west rather than from the east. The only reason that they were governed from Mauritius was not because they were part of Mauritius but because there is nowhere among those sparse and beautiful atolls suitable for a seat of government. It is similar to some of our continuing overseas territories in the Atlantic today, visited occasionally by a governor because there is no permanent seat there.
This is the key group of amendments—and the crux of the entire debate is the question of consulting the people who have the most at stake. They are the only people who have ever constituted a permanent population of that archipelago and their descendants, the people defined in this Bill as the citizens of the BIOT. My noble friend Lord Lilley gave a very good example: the consultation between the Ellice Islands and the Gilbert Islands at the moment of independence. They felt that they had not enough in common to accept government from each other’s hands, so the Ellice Islands became the monarchy of Tuvalu and the Gilbert Islands became the Republic of Kiribati. The distances here, ethnically and geographically, are much wider. There is not much doubt that if we had carried out a consultation in 1965, we would have had the same outcome as in the case cited by my noble friend.
Why does that suddenly stop being true now? Why does the passage of time invalidate that claim? This is a proposal to hand the Chagossian people to a nation that has never governed them, never seen them as part of their demos, that was very happy to renounce all claims in perpetuity and trouser a cash sum in exchange for doing so, and which has continued to treat the archipelago in essentially pecuniary terms. Why not test the proposition today?
I repeat a point made by my noble friend Lord Bellingham at Second Reading. It is perfectly logistically feasible to conduct a referendum across scattered territories. Last year I voted for our absent colleague—my noble friend Lord Hague of Richmond—to be Chancellor of the University of Oxford. There was a poll that was conducted electronically across five continents, the alumni being dispersed in their tens of thousands. There was a simple enough process. You establish the right of somebody to vote, you establish their identity, you show that they genuinely are an alumnus, then you have the vote. We have established who would be eligible here, and the right of descent that conveys BIOT citizenship.
I refuse to believe that it is logistically beyond us to consult the Chagossian people. I cannot speak for everyone on this side, but I am pretty sure that if the Chagossian people voted overwhelmingly for Mauritian citizenship, opposition to this proposal would dissipate and people would accept it as a valid exercise of self-determination. There is something more than perverse about acting in the name of decolonisation when taking a people against their will and transferring them to the sovereignty of a foreign state, a country whose Prime Minister at the time of the partition said that it is a territory which they never visit and of which they know little.
When I was a Member of the European Parliament, Crawley was part of my constituency. I got to know some of the disparate groups that represent our Chagossian fellow subjects, and it is fair to say that they did not always agree on every issue—like many small communities, they had a broad diversity of opinions on a lot of subjects—but honestly, hand on heart, I do not think I ever recall meeting any Chagossian in this country who wanted to be a citizen of Mauritius. There are reasons for that. The experience of Chagossians in Mauritius was not a happy one: they were confined in slums, and they were subjected to, in their eyes, racism and discrimination. The idea that we are now placing this entire population, against their will, because of a non-binding opinion from a tribunal without jurisdiction is a truly extraordinary and shameful moment.
Lord Horam (Con)
I will follow my noble friend Lord Hannan on this subject of consultation. It really is quite shocking that there is no mention in the agreement of any consultation with the Chagossians—no mention at all. Indeed, as I said at Second Reading, there is only one mention of Chagossians and it is not a right that is put into the Bill or into the agreement: it is the possibility that the Mauritian Government are free to implement a programme of resettlement. It is not something that they have to do; it is simply a permissive measure. It is really quite amazing, given the history of the treatment of the Chagossian people that we are aware of, that they do not feature at all in the agreement or in the Bill.
As we know, due to the parliamentary skill of my noble friend Lord Callanan, we now have a possibility that there will be consultation under the auspices of a Select Committee of the House of Lords. That is very good news, but it is only fair that the Government, at this early stage, set out some idea of how that consultation may proceed. It may not be a referendum but, as my noble friend Lord Lilley says, it is at least some sort of consultation. It should not be too difficult. Although there is a widespread diaspora within the Seychelles, the UK and Mauritius itself, it is a small number of people. If they have a referendum, they should be able to conduct that very easily. Proper, organised consultation done fairly speedily—we do not necessarily wish to delay all this—should be within the Government’s remit. I hope that they can say something on that subject during the course of discussion on this amendment.
Lord McCrea of Magherafelt and Cookstown (DUP)
My Lords, Amendments 37, 49 and 56 in this group stand in my name. These are no ordinary circumstances. As my noble friends have alluded to, a group of Chagossians, totalling more than 650, contacted me in writing and asked whether I would consider tabling some amendments and exploring them on the Floor of the Chamber.
The thought behind the amendments is crystal clear: whether the Chagossian people, who were dispersed from their homeland, should have a meaningful voice, clear legal recognition of their identity and a central place in determining the future of the Chagos Islands. Depressingly, it seems the Government have already given their answer, and it is—shamefully, in my opinion—no. For the avoidance of doubt, let me be frank in saying to the Government that I am unreservedly committed to speaking on behalf of the hundreds of Chagossians in the United Kingdom, some of whom have joined us today in the balconies above.
The Diego Garcia Military Base and British Indian Ocean Territory Bill is a monumental tragedy of an agreement that declares Mauritius sovereign over the entire Chagos Archipelago, including Diego Garcia—a part of the world to which Mauritius has as much of a historical claim as I do to the throne of France. It is farcical. Parliament has been asked to legislate in support of that treaty and the Government do so consciously aware of core groups that are conspicuously absent from the foundations of the treaty—the Chagossians themselves. Allow me to be clear when I say that the people most directly affected by this Bill are not, and have not been, in the room.
The amendments I present seek only to ensure that any settlement affecting the Chagos Islands reflects the rights, identity and aspirations of the Chagossian people. They do not ask for the unattainable. They want recognition, evidence and a proper assessment of what genuine peace and stability requires. Without these, the Bill risks repeating historic injustices and undermining the very legitimacy it claims to secure.
I do not gain anything from bringing such amendments before the Committee, but I am motivated by people and how they can be best served when I read through their correspondence and look those people in the eye—I have had the privilege of meeting some of them. I hope colleagues know that that is why I do this for those who cannot speak in this Chamber themselves. They need a voice.
Amendment 37, in the first instance, addresses democratic representation. It would require the Government to ensure that a Chagossian representative is appointed or elected to act as a liaison between the Chagossian community and Parliament. This is not a radical proposal or proposition. It is, in fact, the bare minimum that we could expect from a democratic state dealing with a displaced people whose fate it once determined without consultation. The onus is on us as Peers to defend all those British citizens, no matter how far away their home might be.
I am conscious that the history of the islands has been repeated throughout the different stages of the Bill, but for good reason. The impact of the forcible action taken between 1967 and 1973, overseeing the removal of the entire population of the Chagos Islands—some 1,500 to 2,000 people—has had long-lasting consequences for the families of that generation. That removal, its circumstances and its consequences are not contested facts. They are recorded in the archives of this country, acknowledged in Foreign Office documentation, examined by parliamentary committees and recognised by numerous international bodies. The result was a community scattered and broken, separated by thousands of miles in some cases. That is why it is essential that we consider the feelings of the Chagossian community now, in 2025, because the colossal failure to do so all those decades ago is the reason we are here today.
Today, the largest Chagossian community in the world resides here, in the United Kingdom. Crawley Borough Council estimates that it is home to approximately 3,500 Chagossians—around two-thirds of the total UK Chagossian population. The community is sizeable and passionate. Yet, in spite of its size, there is no formal mechanism for its representation in Parliament. There is no statutory liaison, committee or structure within Whitehall through which this community can speak with an authoritative voice.
This is untenable. It means that people who were displaced by past British policy have no guaranteed voice in shaping the policy that affects their future. How can we consciously abide this? They, the Chagossian community, remain permanently marginalised: spoken for but never spoken with, and governed but never genuinely consulted.
These are British citizens, as British as the people of Belfast, Cardiff, Edinburgh and London. They are ignored and sidelined in every conceivable form of representation and consultation. Amendment 37 would remedy this democratic deficit. It would ensure that this community had a recognised representative—not imposed, not chosen by government, but selected by the community itself—to liaise directly with Parliament and ensure that their views, concerns and aspirations are considered. If we are to claim moral legitimacy in legislating over the Chagos Islands, we must begin by ensuring that they themselves are heard.
Amendment 49, concerning civic identity and self-determination, would require the Government to publish a report evaluating the credibility of any claim that the Chagossians share a civic identity with Mauritius without a self-determination vote. Additionally, it would direct that the report should consider the historical involvement of Mauritius in the removal of the Chagossian people. This amendment is necessary because the Bill and the treaty on which it rests make a crucial and untested assumption that Mauritius is the rightful and natural representative of the Chagossian people. That assumption underpins the treaty’s logic, the Bill’s purpose and the Government’s narrative.
However, that is simply not the case. It is a historical narrative that has been conjured up by those intent on pushing this forward at all costs. Those of us who understand history will know that, at the time of the 1965 Mauritian-UK negotiations, the Chagossian population was still excluded from any involvement in discussions. Even after the displacement, Chagossians did not prosper under Mauritian administration. Many experienced poverty, discrimination and lack of support, as documented by innumerable NGO reports, parliamentary inquiries and human rights organisations. We have heard testimonies from Chagossians: I was speaking to some of them even today. They describe life in Mauritius as one of hardship and neglect, not solidarity or cohesion. The lives of these people have been shaped not only by geography but by the trauma of displacement and the struggle to preserve a distinct cultural heritage in exile.
I think of the many natives still alive, some of whom wrote to me, including Jenny, Roseline, David, Christof, Marie, Louis and many more, some of whom have joined us in Parliament today. The United Nations has repeatedly stressed that the Chagossian people must be recognised as central to any settlement. In 2024 and 2025, UN human rights experts stated plainly that Chagossians had been excluded from negotiations between the United Kingdom and Mauritius, and that the new agreement failed to guarantee their rights, including the right to participate meaningfully in decisions about sovereignty.
It is ironic that many of the most zealous cheerleaders of this deal are infatuated by notions of internationalism and international law, yet, when it comes to protecting the interests of British sovereign citizens, as emphasised by the UN, the call seems to fall on deaf ears. Amendment 49 simply obligates the Government to gather evidence before taking irreversible decisions.
Amendment 56 directly pertains to peace, stability and the long-term future of the US-UK defence facility on Diego Garcia by ensuring that the Government commit to the publication of a report on whether the goal of peace and legal certainty is better served by the Mauritius treaty or by
“granting self-determination and resettlement to the Chagossian people as a self-governing British Overseas Territory”.
It is not an overstatement to say that this is the central strategic question of this Bill. It seems that this Government are more concerned with the appeasement of foreign states than with the maintenance of our alliances and the protection of our sovereign British citizens.
Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Leong) (Lab)
Order. Will the noble Lord come to a conclusion?
Lord McCrea of Magherafelt and Cookstown (DUP)
I am coming to a conclusion. I understand what it is like to feel ignored and sidelined; to have someone in Government tell you that your identity is second class; that you cannot really be a full British citizen. I know what it is like to have fought for your rights to represent your people when a foreign state wades in against you. I understand the struggle to be heard more than most. Parliament therefore has a responsibility to correct that course. These amendments do not ask for much.
Baroness Meyer (Con)
My Lords, I shall speak in support of Amendments 14 and 25. This treaty and the Bill that will enact it is bad for our country, for our security and for British taxpayers. As we have already discussed, it will leave Britain poorer, weaker and strategically exposed.
This treaty is also bad for the Chagossian people. Half a century ago, they suffered the terrible injustice of forced removal. This treaty compounds that injustice by offering no guaranteed right of return, no legally binding resettlement plan and no meaningful protection of their rights. This is truly shameful. For a Government who claim to uphold human rights, it is an extraordinary moral failure.
Dr Al Pinkerton, the Liberal Democrat spokesman, said at Third Reading in the House of Commons that
“we cannot allow the Bill to pass without ensuring that Chagossians themselves are sovereign over their citizenship, the governance of their islands and the prospect of return”.—[Official Report, Commons, 20/10/25; col. 756.]
He is right, and I am surprised that no Liberal Democrat in this House has put down any amendment in support of a referendum. To deny the Chagossians their right of self-determination and to shape the future of their homeland is unworthy of a country that champions justice, fairness and democracy. This amendment would give them a chance, but it would also give us, a nation that prides itself on a centuries-old democratic—
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
I am grateful to the noble Baroness. I make the assumption that, in her defence, she did not read my amendment before making her statement, because the right to self-determination is there under proposed new subsection (3)(b)(ii). Can she clarify what her referendum would be? Would it include the sovereignty, the possession and the inhabitation of the military base on Diego Garcia?
Baroness Meyer (Con)
I presume that a referendum would actually ask the Chagossian people what they want for their future and self-determination.
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
To clarify: it is the position of the Opposition that the referendum would also be for there to able to be inhabitants on the military base?
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
I am intervening on the noble Baroness. It is her speech.
Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)
The Chagossian people have made it very clear what they want. They had their own opinion poll on the subject, and that has been independently verified: 99.22% of people voted for it. The noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed, asked what the proposition would be. It is for a resettlement on the outer atolls, under British jurisdiction and as British overseas citizens, in accordance with the plan set out in 2015, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Foster, referred earlier.
Baroness Meyer (Con)
Yes, and they seem to approve what we are saying. Basically, these amendments are about asking the Chagossian people about the right to self-determination through a referendum. I have never met a Chagossian in my life, but I have received many letters from them over the past few days and feel that this is my moral duty, and I think that, in good conscience, the Government should allow them self-determination.
Baroness Hoey (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I support all the amendments in this group, but I particularly like Amendment 64, because it goes to the heart of the issue and is very simple and straightforward: we want a referendum. I think the noble Lord, Lord Hannan, answered the noble Lord on the Front Bench who asked about what a referendum would mean; I concur exactly with that, and I hope that that has satisfied him.
When we are trying to get an argument for providing the people of the Chagos Islands with self-determination, sometimes it is useful to consider the arguments being put against it. There are two key arguments that the Government seem to deploy for backing the Mauritius treaty and the Bill, rather than a self-determination referendum, the provision of which would be not necessarily easy but technically possible and would include all the Chagossians not just in the UK but around the world.
The Government’s first argument would seem to be that we are excused from the need to provide the Chagossians with self-determination because we removed them from the Chagos Islands and so they can no longer be offered self-determination. So long as the Government say that it was very wrong that the Chagossians were removed, the Government seem to think that the fact that they no longer live on their islands relieves us of the moral obligation to provide them with self-determination on their future. For me, this constitutes a pretty appalling logic that lays bare not only the complete moral failure of the current Government but the deployment of a rather dreadful logic in a way that I believe really lets down the people of our country, the United Kingdom, in a very humiliating fashion.
The Chagossians themselves call this out in a very powerful statement on self-determination, which I am sure the Minister will have read, that they issued yesterday. I am going to quote from it, because I think it is really important. They say:
“In recent years there has been much repenting of colonialism within certain parts of the West, including the United Kingdom. The problem with colonialism is one of alienation. In its conventional form it is problematic because it alienates a people from the dignity of self-government of their home territory, but not from that territory. They can continue to live on the territory that is their home and nurture the hope that at some point they might be afforded the dignity of self-government. The colonialism to which we have been subjected, however, presented a far more extreme and unusual alienation because it alienated us not just from the dignity of a measure of self-government but far more problematically, from our territory, our home, by taking it from us.
If the international community is serious in its commitment to decolonise then it cannot afford to accommodate either alienation. To do so, however, in the context of re-denying”—
I emphasise this—
“the people concerned self-determination while simultaneously paying a country that played a key role in denying that people self-determination in relation to their territory on the previous occasion, more money than is required to resettle the people with the rightful claim to the territory, in order to lease one of their islands, demonstrates extreme moral disorientation.
In this context the policy of the current Government to state that what happened between 1968 and 1973 was deeply wrong but then not lift a finger to put that right, even as they demonstrate that the resources are more than available to do so, not only makes the condemnation of what happened between 1968 and 1973 completely hollow, but also necessarily has the effect of affirming the validity of what happened”.
I think every noble Lord should read that statement carefully; there is more in it.
If we put this another way, attempts by His Majesty’s Government to claim that the United Kingdom is relieved of any obligation to provide the people of the Chagos Islands self-determination in relation to their islands because they are not living there is just another way of saying that we are relieved of the responsibility for having prosecuted the most extreme form of colonialisation because we prosecuted the most extreme form of colonialisation. I think it is plain for all to see that, if we are justifying ourselves in not providing self-determination to the Chagossians—which we would do by at least asking people in a referendum—because we removed them from their islands, we are suggesting that removing them from their islands validates this, as if the crime of their forced removal constitutes a source of validity. Rather than providing a source of validity for not providing self-determination to the people of the Chagos Islands, I believe that this logic lays bare the complete moral failure of the current Government and the way in which it shames us as a nation.
The other argument that the Government provide against affording the Chagossians a self-determination referendum is implicit in their references to Chagossians who support the Mauritius treaty, as if the Chagossians supporting it means that providing the Chagossians self- determination is unnecessary because we already know what they want. I do not doubt that there are some Chagossians, particularly some in Mauritius, who support the Mauritius treaty. There has never been, in my opinion, a self-determination referendum in which 100% of people voted in one way. However, what is incontrovertible is that we have to engage with the fact that not only do we have some 650 Chagossians who have been involved here in the United Kingdom but the survey of over 3,000 Chagossians living in the UK, Mauritius and the Seychelles demonstrates over 99% opposition to being given away—just think about that—to the Republic of Mauritius and support for self-determination as a resettled British overseas territory such as Anguilla or Montserrat. That is 99%. They do not want to be given away to Mauritius; they want to stay British.
Baroness Foster of Aghadrumsee (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I want to speak briefly on this group. I support a number of the amendments in it, in particular those that call for a referendum for the citizens of the British Indian Ocean Territory—that comes as no surprise, I am sure, given my Second Reading speech—Amendment 37 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord McCrea of Magherafelt, asking for Chagossian representation to liaise with Parliament and Amendment 49, also in his name, adding a new clause for the assessment of Chagossian civic identity and self-determination.
The treatment of the Chagossians in 1965 is being exacerbated by their treatment today by this Government —I think that is a fact. We have talked at length about the lack of consultation and the great haste with which this treaty came about. That has led to claim and counterclaim about how Chagossians feel about the transfer of sovereignty. Surely the simplest way to find out the answer is to hold a referendum among those who hold BIOT citizenship. As I said at Second Reading, geography is not political destiny, especially when the closest country to Diego Garcia is not even Mauritius but the Seychelles. Given the past treatment, taking the views of the Chagossian community is now the very least that this Government should do.
Until now, Chagossians living here in the UK have been pushed aside, as I said at Second Reading, even by their Members of Parliament. That is astonishing. We are supposed to live in an open democracy where Members of Parliament are voted in to the other place and are responsive to people who live in their constituencies. It is dreadful that despite repeated requests to meet in person, they have been rejected. As I said at Second Reading, if you are a Member of Parliament and you are going to vote through a government policy, the very least you should do with your constituents is have the wherewithal to meet them and explain why you have supported the position of the Government. I do not think that is rocket science.
Lord Horam (Con)
I should just correct the noble Baroness. When Mr Henry Smith was the Conservative MP for Crawley, he listened very carefully to the people in his constituency. He was also an active member of the APPG on Chagos, of which I am a member.
Baroness Foster of Aghadrumsee (Non-Afl)
Yes. I am not speaking about Henry; the noble Lord is absolutely right. I shared a platform with him at a Chagossian event a number of months ago. However, this is direct testimony from my Chagossian friends, who have been very clear about a number of MPs whom they contacted, and they were not listened to and were refused a meeting.
Treating our fellow Britons—that is how I see my Chagossian friends—with dignity and addressing their needs are very important. It certainly does not mean that we are challenging national security issues. The two can and should exist together. Just because we have a marvellous asset in Diego Garcia—I am not suggesting otherwise—for our national security needs and those of our friends and colleagues in the United States of America does not mean that we cannot also have a conversation with Chagossian people about their rights, aspirations and needs. The two can and should exist together.
I have already mentioned that the KPMG report of 2015 on the feasibility of the resettlement of BIOT indicated that
“there are no fundamental legal obstacles that would prevent a resettlement of BIOT to go ahead”.
Of course, that is what the Government of the day should have done. They decided not to, citing cost concerns, but how cost effective and value for money does that not look today when we consider the costs of this treaty and the money that we are going to be sending to the Mauritian Government?
Despite what previous Mauritian Administrations have said, the Chagos people are a distinct people on the basis of ethnicity, culture and religion and should be afforded respect by being asked how they view the transfer of sovereignty of their homeland. If this Government turn their face, as it appears they will, against a referendum, they should pay heed to the referendum carried out by the BIOT citizens, which many friends and colleagues in the House have referred to, because that shows a staggering 99.2% of Chagossians who were polled supporting UK sovereignty over the Chagos Islands.
Chagossians have had to resort to press releases and court challenges to be heard, and it is now long past the time for the Government to step back and put in place a referendum to listen to their voices.
Baroness Hoey (Non-Afl)
The noble Baroness said 99.2%—I got it wrong; I said only 99%. Does she think that one of the reasons, or perhaps the reason, that the Government will not even contemplate a referendum of the Chagossian people is that they know that they would get the wrong answer and therefore they would be even more morally bound to tear up this Bill and the treaty?
Baroness Foster of Aghadrumsee (Non-Afl)
I pay tribute to my friends in the Chagossian community for raising their voices, which have been very loud. As I said, they have had to find other means by which to raise their voices, whether that be through court challenges or press releases.
I think the Government are well aware of how a number of Chagossians here feel about this. As my noble friend has already alluded to, we have heard that there are Mauritians who are in favour of this deal. I have no doubt that there are those from a Chagos background living in Mauritius now who are in favour of the deal—that is accepted—but I believe that the greater number of those Chagossians want to remain British citizens.
I also support Amendment 37 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord McCrea of Magherafelt and Cookstown, which, as an alternative to a referendum, asks for a Chagossian representative to liaise with Parliament. I know that other later amendments coming up, including from the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, look at ways to be creative about hearing the voice of Chagossians. I commend the noble Lord, Lord McCrea, on mentioning individual names. We are talking about communities but, actually, these are individuals who feel very passionately about their homeland; it is important that we remember that.
Finally, Amendment 49 seeks an assessment of Chagossian civic identity and self-determination, again seeking to underline the distinct nature of the Chagossian people. I support that amendment as well. This has been a good debate but, for me, it is really important to listen to the voices of the Chagossian people.
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness. She speaks with great sincerity and consistency in making her arguments, and I share many of her thoughts. I said on the earlier group that I am also awaiting the conclusions of the work of the International Relations and Defence Committee. I hope that it will be able to guide us with some of our thinking on this on Report, after its consultations with the community.
Reference has been made to my honourable friends in the House of Commons, who have also for many years been consistent that we should not repeat the history of making decisions on behalf of the community without involving them. It is our long-held view that that is the basis on which we should go forward.
One of the reasons why I intervened on the noble Baroness, and had the interaction with her noble friend, was that there have been some parts of the debate, especially in the House of Commons, where seeking consideration of the right to self-determination has perhaps been used as a bit of a proxy for other considerations, to try either to prevent a treaty or to prevent the restoration of rights. As the noble Lord said on behalf of his noble friend, we seem to be talking about some form of limited sovereignty, some form of limited and partial right to self-determination.
Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)
The proposal has come from the Chagossian population. That is what we mean by self-determination. It is not for us to lay down whether they should have full sovereignty or partial sovereignty; it is for us to listen to what they want.
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
I agree with that. It is a clearer proposition than we have heard—a better proposition, in my view. Actually, “better” is the wrong word; it is a more convincing proposition because of its origination. The reality of how we define self-determination and the rights of the community—and where I think the debate has bled into previously—is that it has been used without that clarification, as a different political impetus with regard to the overall desirability or otherwise of having a treaty with Mauritius.
That is where I come to it. The most vociferous of speeches that we have heard deny the reality of what happened just last year. We can talk about the denial of rights. If we are talking about referendum statistics, I agree with about 90% of what the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, said about rights in her speech. But we do not have to go back to the 1960s to look at the denial of rights. It was in January 2024 that the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, as Foreign Secretary, restated government policy that there would be no right of resettlement, and that was while negotiations on the basis of a treaty were carrying on. If it is an argument to suggest that we wish to restore rights of resettlement and rights to self-determination, I accede to that argument. I think it should be in the acknowledgement that the previous Government and this Government refused to do so in the absence of a treaty with Mauritius.
The context that we are in now is that the first opportunity that we may have for limited right of resettlement and acknowledgement of some form of self-determination is by virtue of a treaty. The Minister knows that these Benches do not consider them to go far enough, and we want to use these stages to see how we can go further. But it is worth recognising that the only opportunity that we have for some form of resettlement is by virtue of there being a treaty.
Lord Callanan (Con)
My Lords, I am very interested to hear all the contributions from noble Lords on this important debate on the consultation of the Chagossians, or rather the lack of consultation. There have been some powerful speeches, particularly that from the noble Lord, Lord McCrea. Establishing a permanent representative of the Chagossians, as he proposes in his Amendment 37, would indeed be a very powerful thing. I think everybody has agreed that we need to give them a voice. They have not been properly consulted by the Foreign Office, and I am happy to concede to the noble Lord that they were not properly consulted by previous Governments either. No legislative scrutiny will change that.
The noble Lord postulated that it was a bit like him being offered the Dauphin of France, but, given the distance from Northern Ireland to Paris and that from Mauritius to the Chagos, it would be more appropriate for him to be offered the monarchy of Azerbaijan rather than Paris. But the Foreign Office needs to consult the community properly, and that process might be helped if they had a champion of their own.
Amendment 49 speaks to an interesting question about a shared civic identity between the Chagossians and the Mauritians. I think everybody has agreed that there really is not one. This reminded me of the contribution of my noble friend Lord Biggar at Second Reading. In pure terms of identity and self-determination, it makes absolutely no sense that Mauritius and the Chagos Islands should be lumped together in this way. It all stems from some bizarre decision by British imperial administrators many years ago and has absolutely nothing to do with the interests of the Chagossians.
We all know that the Chagossians have not been properly consulted, and that when I tabled an amendment to the committal Motion that would have required a consultation before the Bill could proceed, the Government, and the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, from the Dispatch Box, raised concerns about the practicality of any such consultation. In fact, the noble Baroness said in a meeting we held with others afterwards that 30 days was not long enough. Fair enough; it is a reasonable point. But when I asked how long was long enough, answer came there none. The Foreign Office has no interest whatever in consulting because, I suspect, despite what the Minister says about there being different opinions among the community, she knows what answer she would get. As it would find it far too difficult a question, the Foreign Office has sidestepped it completely and said that there is no self-determination right for the Chagossians in this case.
This, in my view, is not an acceptable state of affairs and we firmly believe the Government must consult the Chagossian community. It is great that the International Relations Committee is now doing so, but given the time available because the Government would not agree to extend the time for this Bill any further, there is no substitute for a proper consultation. The committee will do its best in the limited time it has.
I will return to the issue of a referendum later, but in the absence of a proper consultation with the Chagossian community in the lead-up to the UK Government’s decision to reach agreement with Mauritius, we see this as a very reasonable step to ensure that they are not left out in the cold as the future of the islands they once called home is determined as they are handed over lock, stock and barrel to a nation they know very little about.
The Government’s treatment of the Chagossians is nothing less than shameful, and I believe we have an opportunity to remedy that in some small way with these amendments. There are many other things that I could say about these amendments, but I think I will leave it at that.
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
My Lords, it is worth restating—and many of the contributions this afternoon have stated this too—that this Government deeply regret the way the Chagossians were removed from the Chagos archipelago. If I can commend just one speech that we have heard in consideration of this group, it would be that from the noble Lord, Lord McCrea. I found that an impactful, passionate speech that was sincerely given and heartfelt. I do not think I am going to make him happy this afternoon, but what he said was sincerely felt and I respect the way he put his argument and many of the things he said.
We remain committed to building a relationship with the Chagossian community that is built on respect and an acknowledgement of the wrongs of the past. I know—and I agree with much of what has been said—that this House clearly feels very strongly about Chagossians and ensuring that their views are properly heard. We have agreed that the International Relations and Defence Committee will undertake an important piece of work looking at Chagossian views on the treaty. We are looking forward to its report and I am sure we will all read it with great interest.
Turning to the arguments we have just debated, Amendments 13 and 28—I think the noble Lord said he was degrouping Amendments 14, 25, 64 and 84—all relate in some way to holding a referendum or some sort of consultation with Chagossians on the transfer of the Chagos archipelago to Mauritius. I know we have said before—there will be some repetition of argument on these issues—that in the negotiations on the treaty between the United Kingdom and the Government of Mauritius, our priority was to secure the full operation of the base on Diego Garcia. I accept that there will be those who disagree with that priority.
The Chagos archipelago has no permanent population and has never been self-governing. Therefore, on the question of self-determination for its population, the English courts have, noting the conclusion of the ICJ in the 2019 advisory opinion, proceeded on the basis that the relevant right to self-determination in the context of BIOT was that of Mauritius rather than of Chagossians. That feels incredibly cold and hard to read from this Dispatch Box, but that is the situation legally as determined by English courts. I do not think it helps anybody, not least the Chagossians, to somehow pretend that that is not the case. That is the situation we are in. We can regret that, we can argue about it, we can say that should not be the case; but that is the legal reality.
In a series of judgments since the 1970s, both the English courts and the European Court of Human Rights have also considered the related but distinct question of an alleged right of abode or other rights that are said to flow from that. On each occasion, the English courts and the European Court of Human Rights have ultimately dismissed the claims. The transfer of sovereignty therefore does not deprive Chagossians of any existing right. This is a long-standing legal position that previous UK Governments have also adopted.
Baroness Foster of Aghadrumsee (Non-Afl)
The Minister is repeating what she said at Second Reading, and I acknowledge that that is the case. I said to her then that while the courts have taken a particular view in relation to this matter, it does not rule out Parliament taking a different view, given that we believe in parliamentary democracy and parliamentary sovereignty. Given the way in which this community has been treated for 60 years now, it is fair to say, do we not have a moral obligation to accord them the right to have a say? Regardless of the fact that there have been court judgments on this, can we as not parliamentarians indicate that we believe that the best way forward is to listen to their voices?
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
I think we can. I do not think we can call it self-determination in the legally applicable sense, but I agree, and I think Parliament agrees too, that the Chagossians deserve the respect of a different kind of relationship with the UK Government, and we need to make sure that we engage with them in a respectful and meaningful way. I will get on to whether that means a referendum, but the noble Baroness makes a very strong point about the importance of listening to the voices of Chagossians themselves, however we might choose to do that. I have mentioned this being a long-standing legal position, but as I am trying to explain, we recognise the importance of these islands to the Chagossians, and we are working hard to reflect this in our wider policies, not all of which are reflected in the Bill because they do not require legislation.
Given that the treaty has been signed, however, and the Bill is reasonably well advanced, having been through the other place, I say with great sincerity that any formal consultation at this stage would not be honest or sufficiently meaningful. I think that was what the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, was gently trying to point out to us, because that window was open at one point. It was open when the now Opposition were in government, and they never decided to consult the Chagossians. We agree with that Government, as they were—now the Opposition—that there is no actual legal duty in this situation to do that, but it is vital to respect the many different views within the Chagossian community, including that of several groups that welcome the deal.
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
I do not want to get ahead of myself, because Amendment 80 is a long way away. My appeal to the Minister—I would say exactly the same to the Mauritian Government if they were here—is that, while discussions on the treaty have concluded, it is obvious that there are ongoing discussions with the Mauritian Government. It is not closed yet for there to be consideration of structures of representation that are currently not in the treaty nor the Bill. My appeal at this early stage of Committee would be for the Minister to retain an open mind on potential structures for further discussions when it comes to representation including, perhaps, a firmer position on how the Chagossian community will be able to be represented going forward.
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
That is a constructive proposition. The Government are very willing to engage in that kind of conversation and I note the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, which we will come to later in our considerations—perhaps not this evening, given our current rate of progress.
I point noble Lords to the statement by Olivier Bancoult, the leader of the largest Chagossian group, the CRG. I think it demonstrates that, while there are different views among Chagossians, there is strong support for the agreement from a significant number in the community.
I thought that Amendment 37, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord McCrea, was really interesting. I am pretty sure this is not exactly what he intended, but in some respects it seems to be trying to replicate that which our elected Members of Parliament are there to do: to represent the views of their constituents, including, in a number of cases, Chagossians. I draw attention to the All-Party Parliamentary Group, which does an excellent job of liaising between Chagossians and Parliament.
In addition, the Government have established a Chagossian contact group, which has wide representation from Chagossian communities in the UK, but also in Mauritius, Seychelles and elsewhere, to give Chagossians the formal role—this is what I think noble Lords seek —that can shape decision-making on the UK Government’s support for their community. As the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, again reminded us, he will seek to make sure that that group can be as effective as I know noble Lords want it to be. The group met for the first time on 2 September and will convene quarterly thereafter. As my noble friend Lord Coaker and I said in our letter to all Peers, we are exploring opportunities for enhancing that group, including increasing its transparency and frequency. But we are clear that any decisions about the contact group have to be made in agreement with its existing members, and the Government will engage with the group on these questions.
I forget whether we are considering Amendments 29 and 32 or whether they have been degrouped. I think we are doing those. They were tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Morrow, and relate to the UNGA resolutions. I do not think that would be an especially constructive exercise. The treaty expressly states that it constitutes the full and final settlement of all claims by Mauritius in relation to the Chagos Archipelago; it is hard to see how the proposed report would add to that.
In relation to Amendment 49, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord McCrea, there has never been a claim that all Chagossians share civic identity with Mauritius. As I have said, and as has been said numerous times in this Chamber and in the other place, it is a diverse community with a wide range of views. I said at the beginning of this contribution that the Government have prioritised the needs of security and securing the base on Diego Garcia. I know there are those who disagree with that and I have heard them. That being said, it does not mean that the Government should not do the very best job that we can of engaging with the Chagossian community, and making sure that its diverse range of views are reflected as best we can, as we move forward on the functioning of the contact group, the trust fund and other issues. I commit from the Dispatch Box that this Government will do everything they can to make sure that that happens, and I hope that the noble Lord will therefore seek to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Lilley (Con)
With the leave of the Committee, I withdraw my amendment.
Lord Hannan of Kingsclere
“(2) Sections 2 to 4 may not come into force until the Secretary of State sought to re-negotiate the Treaty so that it confers a right on Chagossian people to give birth within the Chagos Archipelago.”
Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)
In the absence of the noble Lord, Lord Morrow, I should like to move the amendment standing in his name. Amendments 3 and 4 are about the rights of Chagossians to bear children in the archipelago and the rights of people born in the archipelago to continued British Overseas Territories citizenship. So as not to detain your Lordships any longer than necessary, I will also speak to my own Amendment 50 in this group, which is about registering married Chagossians as British Indian Ocean Territory citizens.
The Minister has just repeated that she deeply regrets the treatment of Chagossians over the decades, and I believe her. She is obviously sincere and has said that on many previous occasions. In our debate last month, she described it as appalling and morally shameful; she said that they had been badly treated over many decades. So I pose the question: what is adequate restitution for this appalling treatment, which all sides seem to agree is deeply shameful? What would constitute a way of making good a wrong in a way that is understood morally and legally? What we mean by restitution, of course, is restoring something. If you have taken something from someone, restitution means giving it back or compensating them to an equivalent value.
I am afraid that all arguments end up in the same place: the restitution sought by Chagossians for those 60 years was the right to return to the homeland from which they had been plucked and then dumped hundreds, or in some cases thousands, of miles away in strange new lands. I want the Committee to think for a moment about what a return would be like: to imagine the resettlement of the atolls around Diego Garcia, if not of the base itself, with the coconut groves coaxed back into order, their fronds trimmed; children born in the islands being taught by their elders how to husk and split the coconuts; villages on the shore, with their bright roofs rising above the takamaka and banyan trees. Imagine the old churches being reconstituted and the coral stone being used. All of that is what is being sought by our fellow subjects of Chagossian origin, as British Indian Ocean Territory citizens, and it is not available under any alternative plan.
Mauritius recognises a right to settle in the island for Mauritians, under whom it includes Chagossians. But what is being proposed by Mauritius is the dissolution of BIOT citizenship into Mauritian citizenship, equivalent in the Seychelles, and now the equivalent for us. This is something that is unprecedented. I do not think that we have ever done this before. Yes, of course, when we have transferred jurisdiction as a withdrawing colonial power, we have transferred citizenship: you become a Kenyan or whatever it is. But I cannot think of any precedent where you remove somebody’s citizenship and instead give them citizenship of a country to which they feel no loyalty at all. As long as this wrong endures—as long as people feel that they do not have the nationality on their passport that they feel in their hearts—there will not be any stability.
The Minister spoke in the last round about why we should not reopen what was defined by the courts as a final, full and binding settlement. Well, it will not be final. By the way, that is what Mauritius agreed to in 1965, when it was paid to renounce all of its claims; reparations are never fully final. The deprivation of Chagossians of the citizenship that they want, that they want for their children and that past Governments legislated for—we amended the Nationality Act 1981 in 2022 in order precisely to create this status—is not going to result in a full and final settlement. On the contrary, there will be as much rejection of that new dispensation from the people most directly involved as there was recently from the Mauritians of the existing status quo. In fact, I would not be at all surprised if the part of the Chagossian population that rejects the deal constitutes itself as a Government-in-exile and begins to seek recognition. The idea that we are doing all of this in order to settle something quietly so that it all goes away is going to be tested by events—I hope I am wrong about this, but I suspect not. We are going to look back and think, “Why did we not see this coming?”
There is a way of going back to what was our plan as recently as 2015: looking at the places in the archipelago that can be resettled without prejudice to the base, allowing those people then to work in the civilian jobs, which are currently done mainly by Filipinos and Sri Lankans and so on, on Diego Garcia itself. It could be that this whole rap becomes what the Falklands war was to that archipelago: the beginning of an economic renaissance as Britain begins to take an interest in its overseas possession and begins to create active economic opportunities for the people there, whether servicing the military facilities or in fishing or whatever it is. But none of that is going to happen if we simply declare that our Chagossian fellow citizens are really just misguided Mauritians and that they have no more particular right to their ancestral homelands and to the graves of their ancestors than any other Mauritian citizen. It is in your Lordships’ power to put a stop to this and not to ratify this treaty. As our national poet said:
“Prevent it, resist it, let it not be so,
Lest child, child’s children, cry against you woe!”
Baroness Hoey (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I will speak to my Amendments 45, 46, and 48. Following on from the noble Lord, Lord Hannan, these are measures that would in some way perhaps help to make the Chagossian people feel that we had listened to their genuine concerns. Now, all of us who have been involved with the Chagossians have been seeing a lot of very written and spoken letters and speeches about what they went through, and why these amendments in particular would be something that could move things forward for them. In particular, 95 Chagossians have written who were born on the islands and are here. These are men and women who lived very peaceful, self-sufficient lives on the islands, including Diego Garcia, until the day they were forced on to the ships and told they would never see their homeland again.
It is important that we—for the public out there who perhaps have not grasped the detail of this—just repeat some of the things that they have said and why these amendments might make a slight difference. They all tell the same story. They describe being ordered to leave their homes with only what they could carry. Some recall arriving at the jetty to see their dogs and livestock taken from them and killed before they were pushed on to the ship. Others remember family members separated, possessions thrown into the sea and the moment the islands disappeared over the horizon: as one said, “The day the world went dark”. One native islander, now in her 70s, said, “We left our islands with nothing but our clothes. They took our dogs from us, howling. We were pushed onto the boat and told we would never return. Our children and grandchildren still do not have the documents that say who we really are”. Another said, “They took my home and now they take my identity. My passport says nothing of where I come from. We want to remain British with the right to return to our islands. We do not want to become Mauritian”.
I should add that Chagossians living in Mauritius report that, more recently, Mauritian authorities have already begun to replace their recorded place of birth—changing it to simply “Mauritius”—and in some cases their birth dates. So their birthplace, their identity and their history are being administratively erased.
Amendment 45 is on passports and official documentation. Chagossians have lived for a long time without anything that really recognises their origins, because their birthplace was depopulated, renamed and reclassified: in administrative terms, their existence as a people was largely erased. This amendment ensures that Chagossians can hold passports and documents affirming their historic identity and their connection to the Chagos Archipelago and the British Indian Ocean Territory. That identity, let us not forget, was never surrendered voluntarily. It was severed by force. As another Chagossian said, “We want the papers that say who we are. We are Chagossians from the Chagos. That must not be erased”. Yet under Clauses 2 to 4, if they are passed unamended, the United Kingdom would relinquish sovereignty over every island except Diego Garcia, and the legal foundation for recognising Chagossian identity through official documentation would disappear. This amendment helps with that.
Amendment 46 is about citizenship rights for children. Exile produced a citizenship gap that now affects three generations. Had the Chagossians remained on their islands, their children would automatically hold British Overseas Territory citizenship today. But exile broke that line, leaving many Chagossian families undocumented or semi-stateless for decades. This amendment would restore what displacement interrupted: automatic BOTC and BIOT citizenship for children born in the United Kingdom to Chagossian parents. As another native Chagossian wrote, “My children were born here but they do not have the citizenship I would have given them if I had been allowed to live in my home. This is injustice continuing to the next generation”.
Amendment 48 is on the retention of BOTC passports. Many Chagossians still hold a BOTC passport showing that they have a connection to the British Indian Ocean Territory. These are probably among their most treasured possessions because, for many, they are the only official recognition that they belong to those islands. If BIOT is dissolved for all islands except Diego Garcia, these passports will not be renewable and Chagossian identity will disappear again on paper. Ms Colin, one of the Chagossians, wrote, “Do not take our passports from us again. We lost our homes. Must we also lose our true identity?” This amendment would prevent that second erasure.
The legal position is even more troubling, although I have gone on a great deal about the moral one, which I think is hugely important. Nothing in the treaty with Mauritius, international law or the British Nationality Act requires these nationality rights to be removed. The Government are removing them by choice, not necessity. In Section 17H of the British Nationality Act 1981, inserted in 2022, a person with a Chagossian ancestor has the right to be registered as a BOTC and therefore as a British citizen. The connection that matters in law is historic, whether the ancestor was born in the British Indian Ocean Territory or the islands designated as BIOT in 1965. Whether BIOT exists today is irrelevant. Its abolition does not legally require the abolition of Chagossian nationality rights. Only repealing Section 17H does that, and this Bill repeals it.
This has never happened before. There is no precedent in British nationality law for stripping a people of British nationality status when their territory is transferred. In every previous case, from Kenya in 1963 to Saint Kitts and Nevis in 1983, people lost British territorial citizenship only because they gained a new citizenship of their own independent territory. Chagossians have no such citizenship to inherit. Had the transfer of the islands occurred after the registration window opened in 2022, the handover would have had no impact on Chagossian nationality rights. Their status and their ability to transmit it to their children would have remained intact.
The Government’s justification that BOTC is tied to a continuing connection with a British territory is incompatible with the very reason Section 17H was created. The purpose of that section was historical restitution, recognising that exile unjustly prevented Chagossians passing citizenship to their children. That injustice has not been remedied simply because the territory is being transferred.
The International Court of Justice made it clear in 2019 that the people of a non-self-governing territory must be consulted and that their freely expressed and genuine will must determine their future. That did not happen in 1965, and it is not happening now. Mauritius speaks of completing decolonialisation, yet ignores the fundamental principle of decolonialisation, which is the right of the people of the territory concerned to self-determination. The people of the Chagos Archipelago, the only people ever to live there, have not been consulted. They have not been given a referendum. They have expressed overwhelmingly that they do not wish their identity, their citizenship rights or their homeland to be handed over without their consent. As one native islander, Mr Joseph Elyse, wrote:
“We want to be recognised as a people before it is too late. Every year more of us natives pass away. We want our rights returned while we are still alive”.
These amendments do not seek advantage; they seek restoration. They would not create extraordinary rights; they would correct extraordinary wrongs. They would ensure that a people removed from their territory in circumstances now acknowledged by everyone as unjust is not erased again through the disappearance of its legal status, documentation and citizenship.
Many of the 95 surviving native islanders were children when they were taken from their homes. Some have died without justice. Those who remain ask for something profoundly simple: “Let the world know who we are, let our children have what was taken from us and let us be Chagossians in law as well as memory”. This House should honour that request. I therefore commend Amendments 45, 46 and 48 to the Committee, and urge noble Lords to support them.
Lord Callanan (Con)
I thank my noble friend Lord Hannan of Kingsclere for moving Amendment 3 on behalf of the noble Lord, Lord Morrow. We all hope his family member gets well soon. I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, for her very powerful speech.
These amendments all touch on the impact that the Bill will have on the citizenship rights of Chagossians. Clause 4 will limit the rights of those descended from Chagos Islanders to gain British citizenship, in several ways. My amendments in this group also seek to challenge the Government’s approach. It should be noted that settlement in the UK is not what many Chagossians want. Many want to return to the archipelago, and this is something that Ministers have discussed previously. That said, British citizenship should be an option for the Chagossians given the responsibility that I think everybody here believes that we owe them thanks to our historic links and, I am afraid, our record of mistreating their community.
My Amendment 7 would prevent the citizenship provisions coming into effect with the treaty, allowing more time for the Government to consider their approach in domestic law alongside the treaty. It might also allow for greater consultation of the Chagossian community, who are ultimately the people who will be affected by Clause 4. In her reply can the Minister confirm whether the Government have had any conversations with Chagossians about the effect of Clause 4? Can she confirm whether substantive discussions on citizenship rights have been held with the Chagossian contact group, which she claims to have met on a couple of occasions? What was the outcome of those discussions? I would also like to know whether Ministers have made any changes to their plans on citizenship rights as a result of some of the concerns raised by the Chagossian community.
My Amendment 39 probes the limitation of citizenship rights by birth year. Will the Minister please explain why 2027 has been chosen as the cut-off date? What opportunity will there be for the Chagossian community to make a case for its extension, should circumstances require it? Another important issue with any cut-off date for applications is communication. Have Ministers given any consideration to the procedure that should be followed to ensure that eligible Chagossians are contacted about their rights?
I have tabled Amendment 40 to probe the requirement that a person must not have previously held British citizenship to be eligible under the changes made by Clause 4. We can understand why it would not be appropriate for a person who has had their citizenship revoked not to be eligible, but why should a person who has given up their citizenship voluntarily be barred by this clause? I hope the Minister will be able to address these questions.
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
I thank noble Lords for their speeches. A host of amendments, as we have heard, have been tabled in relation to citizenship rights. Some of them come from a bit of a misunderstanding of what Clause 4 does. I hope that I can explain the detail of what the Bill will mean. If it is not enough, I am very happy to write a letter and put it in the Library, because it is detailed and a little bit complicated. If that would be helpful, that is something I am happy to do. Let me have a go at explaining it all properly this evening and that may suffice.
Clause 4 makes provisions related to British nationality as a consequence of the dissolution of the British Indian Ocean Territory. These provisions are essential to ensure that the existing entitlements the Chagossians have to British citizenship remain unchanged. This clause also amends the British Nationality Act 1981 to reflect that BIOT will no longer be a British Overseas Territory, and as a result no future claims to British Overseas Territory citizenship can be made on the basis of a connection to BIOT.
This will not result in any change to the existing British nationality status that any Chagossian currently holds; this remains protected. Any Chagossian who currently holds British Overseas Territory citizenship retains it. Current routes to British citizenship will also continue to exist with their original expiry dates for application. This clause is vital in order to protect Chagossians’ rights to continue to obtain British citizenship. Seeking to delete the clause would be to play politics with this right.
I turn to the amendments tabled. Amendment 4 is a good example of an amendment that I would gently say is somewhat misconceived in its intent. Chagossians born on the Chagos Archipelago already automatically hold British Overseas Territory citizenship and British citizenship. This amendment would therefore seek to require the Secretary of State to bring forward legislation that would apply to anyone of any nationality born on the Chagos Archipelago once it is no longer a British territory.
The Government are clear that, as BIOT will no longer be an overseas territory, it will no longer be possible to make a new claim for British Overseas Territory citizenship. Instead, the Bill preserves Chagossians’ ability to claim British citizenship. Whether a Chagossian has British Overseas Territory citizenship or not will have no bearing on their ability to claim British citizenship under their bespoke citizenship route.
Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)
I beg leave to withdraw the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Morrow.