Diego Garcia Military Base and British Indian Ocean Territory Bill
Debate between Baroness Goldie and Baroness Ludford
Baroness Goldie (Con)
My Lords, my noble friend Lord Callanan will respond to the Minister on behalf of these Benches, but I have been requested to make a brief intervention on defence and security. I am rather in the horns of a dilemma; I feel as though I am being asked to judge the weight of the baby when the baby has not yet been born, because I do not know what the Minister’s letter will say until I receive it. However, I thank her and her colleagues for their genuine and close engagement with me, my noble friend Lord Callanan and our colleagues as we endeavour to clarify issues.
The assurance I seek from the Minister at the Dispatch Box is this. It is possible that, when we receive her letter, we may disagree with the Government’s interpretation. We may consider that areas of ambiguity and doubt remain and would reserve the right to bring forward amendments in Committee. I would be very disappointed if the Government’s response were that these amendments were out of scope of the Bill and that all matters are dealt with by the agreement. That would be a very unfortunate response, so I seek a reassurance from the Minister at the Dispatch Box that, if we tabled amendments on defence and security issues, the Government would be prepared to debate them.
Baroness Ludford (LD)
My Lords, briefly, I mentioned last week the Chagos Refugee Group led by Olivier Bancoult, the biggest group of Chagossians. I want to quote two paragraphs from a statement that he has made today:
“I wish to explain how important it is for the British Government to make amends for the cruel treatment of our Chagossian community, by endorsing the Diego Garcia and BIOT Bill at the Committee stage in the House of Lords … With the UK government set to return Chagos to its rightful sovereign, we urge all House of Lords members to support and pass this measure to aid the Chagossian community. To delay or frustrate it will cause further societal damage to our worldwide community”.
I think that injunction is worth taking on board.