Diego Garcia Military Base and British Indian Ocean Territory Bill

Lord Bellingham Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 4th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bellingham (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Beamish. He deployed a lot of knowledge and insight, and I have great respect for him. He mentioned the former leader of the Opposition, Jeremy Corbyn, who has been consistent in his interest in this subject; I would also add Andrew Rosindell, who, from the day I joined Parliament, has been consistent in his challenging of Governments of all colours and standing up for the Chagossians.

My noble friend Lord Callanan mentioned his amendment, and the Minister was pretty impolite about that amendment. If the Government were serious about challenging our amendment, why did they not put it to a vote? Incidentally, where are the Labour Peers this evening? If they did not like our amendment, they could have voted it down and allowed the Bill to be committed to a Committee of the whole House. Surely, that would have been the sensible thing to have done.

In 2010, I was appointed Minister for the Overseas Territories. Some 31 years on from when the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, was the director of the overseas territories directorate, I was taking a great interest in this subject; whether that makes him very old or me very young, I do not know, but we both care passionately about this subject. I remember at the time looking at the whole issue of the Chagossian people, and we agreed at the time, in 2010, to set up a feasibility study, which then eventually reported in 2014. It is a great shame that the then Government, which, I think, was in transition from David Cameron to Theresa May, did not pick up the recommendations of that feasibility study, take action and look at different schemes to allow the Chagossians to return.

The Chagossians have been treated quite appallingly. There is no doubt about that. Under a Labour Government, decisions were made that were egregious, on a par probably with the Highland clearances and the appalling evictions during the famine in Ireland. These people were forcibly removed from their territory, from their land, and we should be ashamed—my Government as well, over successive decades, but all Governments.

There has been talk about consultation with the Chagossians, involvement with them and engaging with them, but I agree 100% with the noble Baroness, Lady Foster, and the noble Lord, Lord Morrow: we should have a referendum of the Chagossian people. If it is possible to have a referendum for the position of chancellor of the University of Oxford and poll all the alumni around the world, surely it would be perfectly feasible and possible to have a referendum of Chagossians, who are living in this country, in Mauritius and in the Seychelles, with some in different parts of Europe. I believe very strongly that we should do that. One of the observations I have come away with, having had many conversations with Chagossians, is that they are a very proud group of people. What is extraordinary, beyond belief, is that they are still incredibly loyal to the Crown. We do not deserve that. We owe them a duty.

On the deal itself, we have heard many different legal opinions. We heard my noble friend Lord Lilley, who I thought made an excellent speech in which he dealt with this subject, so I will not go over that ground again. I do know Sir Christopher Greenwood extremely well—we were immediate contemporaries, reading law at Cambridge and then at the Inns of Court—and I respect his opinions enormously. During my time as the Minister for the UN, I used to go and visit him at the Permanent Court of Arbitration, where he was our resident judge. He has not once said that these decisions—there is more than one decision—and potential decisions could be totally binding. Other legal experts have said that they are always going to be advisory.

We are where we are. I personally think that the Truss Government, who did not last very long, were quite wrong to launch these negotiations, but the negotiations were launched. Eleven rounds of negotiations took place. A number of Labour Peers who are not here today have said that after 11 rounds we were bound to reach a decision, and it was only a matter of time when the new Government came in that they would decide this. Well, I have spoken to James Cleverly and the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, and they had red lines beyond which they were not prepared to go under any circumstances.

I will not go into them all, but there were two key red lines. The first was a properly managed MPA, preferably with joint sovereignty, and the other, more important red line was negotiating with Mauritius for a sovereign base area, and I think Mauritius would have agreed this. A sovereign base area is very different from a lease; it is a sovereign base in perpetuity. The noble Lord, Lord Beamish, made the point about us being obliged to notify Cyprus that the two Cyprus sovereign bases are our sovereign territory. In this case we have no obligation to do that; this will be not our sovereign territory but Mauritius’s, and we will be in a very different position as a lessee.

If one looks back at the Cyprus negotiations under a Tory Government in 1960, Cyprus was a country fighting for its independence after a very bloody, unpleasant conflict between the British occupying forces and EOKA. After painful negotiations, we got to the stage at which Cyprus was going to reach its independence, but we stood firm and insisted on those two sovereign base areas. The Cypriot Government were not happy, but I suggest to your Lordships that they had a much stronger bargaining position than the Mauritian Government had over the Chagos Islands and Diego Garcia. In fact, if we had negotiated a 99-year lease on those sovereign base areas in 1960, we would now be looking at 34 years to go.

If one looks at Hong Kong, would it not have been better if the Government in 1897 had secured a sovereign grant of the New Territories? Obviously, we had outright sovereignty on Hong Kong and Kowloon, but it was decided after the war that it was not feasible to maintain sovereignty over Hong Kong and Kowloon without the New Territories. If the Government then had insisted on an outright grant of sovereignty, which may well have been quite possible—I have read all the debates at the time—we would have been in a very different position. If one looks at what happened with Hong Kong, there was enormous pressure on leases and discussion, debate and uncertainty running up to 1997, and that started about 30 years out. I suggest to the Minister that, probably in about 70 years, those discussions will start taking place about the future of Diego Garcia. We may well get a very warm reception from the Mauritian Government in terms of extending the lease by those 40 years, but we may not. A lot of things can change.

The bottom line is that we have lost control. If this treaty goes through, we will have completely lost control of the future of that base. Yes, it will be secure in the short term, subject to all sorts of caveats that have been mentioned. That is why I am very disappointed and sad that that red line was crossed. I do not think that the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, would have allowed that red line to be crossed. Furthermore, had he tried to cross it, he would never have got it through the House of Commons anyway.

On the marine protection area, one of the first things I dealt with when I became Overseas Territories Minister was to look at the biodiversity within the territories—92% of our total biodiversity is in the OTs, of which 20% is in the Chagos Archipelago. It may well be that the commitments of Navin Ramgoolam—whom I know well—will be honoured by future Governments. His Excellency is an honourable, decent man, but he could be replaced by someone completely different. As the noble Lords, Lord Thurlow and Lord Blencathra, have pointed out, the agreements that have been made around the MPA could easily be rescinded or changed, and that MPA, which is one of the jewels in the crown of the overseas territories, could be put at very severe risk indeed.

I will not go into details about the costs, except to say that I think the Minister was wrong in her figures. If one includes the 40 years at £101 million, that comes to £14 billion, not the £3 billion that she mentioned. This decision by the Government not to commit has given us a pause to reflect on what we do now. I urge the House to remember that we have a duty to consult the Chagossian people and improve the Bill, and we absolutely must do that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

Yes, and as the noble Lord will recall from the debate that we had on the treaty, that was accelerated under the Heath Administration in 1970 and concluded under the Conservative Government. The denial of repatriation was then subsequently under another Conservative Government. My point is that all of us in this country have a dark record when it comes to Chagossian rights. Our task now should be how we at least restore some of those.

The noble Lord, Lord Callanan, started his remarks by saying that the House of Commons was denied the opportunity of debating the treaty during the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act period of scrutiny. He knows, because he will remember the debate we had on the treaty, that, as Erskine May makes perfectly clear, one of the mechanisms for the House of Commons to deny ratification of a treaty would be through an Opposition day debate. During the scrutiny period of this treaty in the House of Commons, the Conservative Party chose a different subject for its Opposition day debate. It had the chance, if it chose to take it, of debating and moving an amendment in the House of Commons during the scrutiny period.

We are here today debating this Bill for one reason and one reason alone: the previous Administration made a political decision to cede sovereignty and to enter into negotiations to conclude this. I hear noble Lords saying no, and I will come on to that, when they may wish to change their minds. Not one Conservative colleague today said why the previous Government opened negotiations to cede sovereignty in 2022. The then Government did not open negotiations to improve relations or co-operation with Mauritius. They made the principal decision to cede sovereignty, but they still have not said why. I hope the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, will outline clearly today why that was the case.

All legal considerations on this issue, which have been debated quite a lot during this debate, predate 2022. The complaints received in this debate predate James Cleverly and that Government’s decision. We have had complaints in this debate from the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, of the current Attorney-General and the advice given to this Administration. As my intervention on the noble Baroness suggested, the same would have been the case under the previous Government. I assume that when the previous Government made the policy decision in November 2022 to open negotiations which would conclude with the ceding of sovereignty, they were also advised by Attorneys-General. I have a hunch that it might have been the Attorney-General at the time of November 2022, but it could have been any of the three Attorneys-General that the Government had in 2022. No doubt, history will tell us which one of those it was.

A new argument has been presented today by the noble Lords, Lord Lilley and Lord Blencathra, that the Conservative Government were powerless and feeble and that their Prime Ministers and Foreign Secretaries were forced against their will by officialdom to make that statement in 2022. This is the argument of being in office but not in power. It was our suspicion at the time that the Conservatives were in office but not in power, and I am glad noble Lords have confirmed that.

I understand the argument that might say that this is a bad deal or that it has been handled badly. I think that many parts of it remain problematic, and I would have liked the Government to have handled it differently. But that is different from the Conservative Opposition in the Commons, who said in their amendment that they were “implacably” opposed to “ceding sovereignty”. They were not implacably opposed to ceding sovereignty in November 2022, so what changed?

[Lord Bellingham (Con)]

The noble Lord is actually putting a very strong case. What I said in my speech was that there was a red line about a sovereign base area—the concession of sovereignty across all the rest of the territory, but keeping the sovereignty of the base.

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord; I listened carefully to his speech, which he made in his characteristically sincere way. I will try to address that point in a moment.

I asked: what changed? In the absence of the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, explaining when she winds up on behalf of her party what policy changes were being made, I might assume that the only relevant change is the fact that the Conservatives were in government and are now in opposition. Without there being a clear policy change, we can only make that assumption.

This is quite important because the Statement in 2022 said,

“on the exercise of sovereignty”.—[Official Report, Commons, 3/11/22; col. 27WS.]

I have wondered why the same party that was implacably opposed then can be in favour of it now, especially because that Statement by the Government said that they were doing this to “resolve all outstanding issues” of international law. They knew that they had to resolve those outstanding issues of international law, but now they are denying the very virtue of the fact that they had any issues at all to address. That is quite hard to understand, and they have not made it any clearer today.

The point made by the noble Lord, Lord Bellingham, was also made by the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra. The 2022 Statement, which was the policy choice of the previous Government, was a mistake—as the noble Lord, Lord Bellingham, indicated; I respect his honesty —or was, according to some of his colleagues, the result of deep state. Nevertheless, if that had raised serious defence concerns, the Minister of State in the Ministry of Defence at the time would presumably have raised concerns about it. That Minister was the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, so she has ample opportunity to address the noble Lords’ points in her speech today.