British Indian Ocean Territory

Baroness Sugg Excerpts

Tuesday 8th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

The agreement, which noble Lords will be able to look at in detail in the treaty, will allow for Chagossians to return to the outer islands. There has been a lot of old nonsense spoken about China in relation to Mauritius. Mauritius is one of only two African countries that do not take part in belt and road. It is a member of the Commonwealth and a close ally of India.

[Baroness Sugg (Con)]

My Lords, the previous Government consistently consulted the Chagossian people and consistently concluded that this deal is not in the UK’s national or security interests. I am interested in the financial settlement. The Foreign Secretary said yesterday that Governments do not normally reveal payments but, of course, that is up to the Government to decide; and, for example, the US has revealed that it pays $63 million a year for its Djibouti military base. Does the Minister agree that it would be helpful, in the interests of transparency, to explain just how much taxpayers’ money is going to be spent on this deal? Where will that money come from—from the overseas development budget?

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

My Lords, we never reveal the cost of basing our military assets overseas—we never have, we never will, and I do not think other nations do either. There are very good reasons for that. If we started to do so, I expect we would see the prices of these things start to go up fairly rapidly. No, we will not be disclosing that.