Diego Garcia Military Base and British Indian Ocean Territory Bill

Debate between Earl of Leicester and Lord Lilley

Report stage
Monday 5th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

My Lords, I apologise to the House for being absent for my amendments in the first group. I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Hannan for moving them on my behalf with, I am sure, greater elegance than I would have been able to bring. Were I a believer in conspiracy theories, I would imagine that President Macron and Prime Minister Starmer had got together to prevent me from returning to this House, but I am sure that they both have more serious issues, given their lack of popularity in their respective countries, than dealing with me.

My Amendment 14 seeks for the Government to negotiate guarantees from the Government of Mauritius that Mauritius will not enforce its duties under the Pelindaba treaty on the base of Diego Garcia and to ensure that, if it were to do so, the sovereignty of the base would revert to the UK. The Pelindaba treaty seems pretty clear that it excludes the use of any part of any African country. Mauritius counts itself as an African country. When it takes sovereignty of the Chagos Archipelago, which we count as part of Africa, it will preclude any of those countries from having any nuclear weapons or armaments on that territory. It would therefore be very difficult, on a simple reading of the Pelindaba treaty, for us to use that for our nuclear submarines or for any aircraft carrying nuclear weapons.

The Mauritius treaty, as it is written, says:

“Each party confirms that none of its existing international obligations or arrangements now in force or effect between it and any third party is in conflict with the provisions of this Agreement”.


If that means that the parties to the agreement intend to ignore any other agreements that they have that may conflict with this, that is all right with me, but the trouble is that it then goes on to say,

“nothing in this Agreement shall affect the status of existing international obligations or arrangements except as expressly provided for in this Agreement”.

That would appear to suggest that nothing in this agreement will override the Pelindaba treaty unless it is expressly stated in this agreement. It is not expressly stated.

I have every confidence in the two Ministers’ patriotism and that they would put the defence of this country manifestly above other minor considerations. I am sure that if it was left to them, we could rely on all this, and I could sit down and not pursue the argument further. But we know that this Government say that their highest priority is international law. If they are now saying that they are prepared to ignore legal agreements and enter into agreements with countries expressly on the basis that they ignore international agreements into which they have entered, we are in a difficult position. I notice the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hermer, is in his place. Perhaps he has come especially to give us assurances that he will not, in this instance, express the supremacy of international law, and that ultimately the sovereignty and independence of this country, its military defence and its alliance with the United States take priority over those matters. Now, if we can have that assurance, that is fine by me.

I appreciate that here we are dealing with very sensitive matters, and I do not expect the Minister to go into fine detail, but I would like the Government to give me greater assurance than I get from reading the treaty that the Pelindaba treaty is not going, at some future stage, to be cited by Mauritius as a reason why we cannot use nuclear-powered vessels or nuclear-equipped weapons, armaments and aircraft from the base. Unless we have that assurance, we must be rather worried.

[The Earl of Leicester (Con)]

My Lords, I, too, was detained in France so I was not able to speak to my first amendment, Amendment 20, but I shall speak to my Amendment 21 and I support all the others in this group. Amendment 21 basically seeks to ensure that the Secretary of State consults the UK’s AUKUS partners on the transfer of the sovereignty of the Diego Garcia base and that we get the written approval of the Governments of Australia and the USA and the opinions of the senior naval staff of all three partners.

AUKUS is central to the strategic defence review. Secretary of State John Healey states in the foreword to the SDR that

“the AUKUS programme … will allow us to grow our nuclear-powered attack submarine fleet to up to 12. This will reinforce our Continuous at Sea Deterrent … and position the UK to deliver the AUKUS partnership with the US and Australia”.

There have been a number of notable naval critics; indeed, one of them, the noble Lord, Admiral Lord West of Spithead, on the Government’s Benches, a former First Sea Lord and Security Minister, warned:

“The Government may genuinely believe that the base’s long-term future is ‘more secure under the agreement than without it’. But … How can the base–which serves as an indispensable naval, air, and intelligence asset–be more secure under the sovereignty of another nation, rather than under our own?”


In November last year, retired Rear-Admiral Chris Parry criticised the Government’s deal to transfer sovereignty of the Chagos to Mauritius. He described the decision as “the biggest strategic mistake” he has seen in his lifetime. In February last year, Commander Peters, a retired Royal Navy officer who led British forces at the joint UK-US base on Diego Garcia said that the base was currently “easily defended”, but:

“If the outer islands are under Mauritian control, China could quite happily start redeveloping them and installing all sorts of spying equipment that I think would affect the security of Diego Garcia”.

Diego Garcia Military Base and British Indian Ocean Territory Bill

Debate between Earl of Leicester and Lord Lilley

Committee stage
Tuesday 25th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 20T and 81K. Amendment 20T just requires that Amendment 81K would happen before the treaty, or parts of it, comes into force.

Amendment 81K proposes setting up a parliamentary commission between the United Kingdom and Mauritius. The proposal is that we seek to agree with Mauritius that this parliamentary commission should reflect equal representation from the Parliaments of the United Kingdom—this Parliament—and the Republic of Mauritius, which one hopes would be acceptable to the Mauritians as fairly rational in these circumstances. More important, what is the function of this commission? It should be to ensure,

“the recognition and protection of Chagossian rights, including but not limited to … ensuring a right of return … ensuring the right to self-determination via a referendum of all Chagossians on the question of sovereignty is held by the UK”,

and

“access to compensation, resettlement, or other forms of support”.

The Minister has repeated again today this extraordinary affirmation that there is no Chagossian people and never has been—that there has never been any permanent population of the Chagos Islands. I can see why the Minister can say that there no longer is, because we shamefully removed them. But to rely on the fact that we removed them and therefore they are not permanent, when all of us now think it was monstrous that this was done with no possibility of return at the time, and that we should be setting this right, now that we are trying to sort the aftermath of decolonisation, as it is seen, is to my mind extraordinary. How can there have been no permanent population in the past if there are churches, graveyards, signs of habitation, work, agriculture and fishing on several of the islands? Above all, how can we pretend that there never has been any Chagossian population and, at the same time, grant British citizenship to those who can demonstrate that they are descended from Chagossians?

The Minister cannot have it both ways. She cannot say that there has never been anyone there and that we are now recognising that those who have been there, or are descended from them, have the right to British citizenship. It is there in the treaty. I know that when she mentioned this she said it with obvious distaste and embarrassment, but that distaste and embarrassment should have been sorted out with her officials before she got round to saying it again in this Chamber. It is very insulting to the Chagossian people to say that they have never existed.

Given that the Chagossian people have existed, and that we recognise that it was wrong to remove them without in any way trying to provide them with some prospect of undoing that wrong, surely we should, through the parliamentary commission that I propose in this amendment, discuss with the Mauritians, if sovereignty is handed over to them, at least giving Chagossians the right of return and the right of self-determination via a referendum, along with access to compensation, resettlement or other forms of support. If we do that then at least we will go a small way to undoing the wrong that was done in the late 1960s—I think it extended into the 1970s—which all of us now recognise.

It is clearly important that we have some kind of parliamentary commission overseeing this, because the treaty does not do these things. It could allow the resettlement to be extended to Mauritians and not be given to Chagossians, and it could result in the fund that we set up not being paid out to Chagossians—certainly not to Chagossians who have been in the United Kingdom, but solely to Chagossians who now live in Mauritius. It is only right and proper that we have some parliamentary oversight from both sides—from Mauritius as well as from the UK—to ensure this is all properly done. I am sure this proposition is so reasonable that such a reasonable Minister as we have on the Front Bench cannot fail to agree with it. I beg to move.

[The Earl of Leicester (Con)]

I want to add to my noble friend’s words. I will not read the whole letter, but this is a copy of the letter to the Minister from the Chagossian people. They write that the Minister’s words

“cut deeply. They erase our history, our dignity, and the truth of who we are. They echo the very language used to justify our people’s deportation between 1968 and 1973. And they are demonstrably false … For more than a century before our exile, the Chagos Islands were home to a multigenerational, settled population. This is not our opinion. It is documented in church registers of births, marriages, and burials across Peros Banhos, Salomon and Diego Garcia; colonial-era records describing communities with homes, chapels, gardens and workplaces; judgments of the UK High Court in the Bancoult cases; the International Court of Justice; United Nations resolutions; academic research stretching across decades. We were not transient workers. We were a Creole-speaking people, rooted in our islands, with our own traditions, our own culture, and our own community life. To say that our homeland had ‘no permanent population’ is simply untrue … You also stated the islands had ‘never been self-governing’. Chagossians have never claimed to have operated a Westminster-style system. But for generations, in the long absence of resident British administrators, our islands were organised and cared for by local leaders from within our own community”.

This has been confirmed in academic work. Misley Mandarin, who lives here in London now with his family, finishes,

“We ask you not for sympathy, but for recognition. Not for pity, but for accuracy. Not for charity, but for truth. We deserve self-determination. We want to stay British and return to our islands as British citizens”.