British Indian Ocean Territory

Lord Callanan Excerpts

Tuesday 8th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

My noble friend is right that the history of the Chagos Islands is a very unhappy one, and the Chagossians have been appallingly treated over many decades. The history is that these islands were uninhabited until they were discovered by the Portuguese, then colonised by the French, then taken over by the British after the Napoleonic Wars. The British then expelled the population in order to set up a UK-US military base.

The future and security of that base is what has driven this treaty. It is not for me or anybody else in this Chamber to speak on behalf of the Chagossians, but I think it a good thing that the intention of this treaty is that Chagossians will be able to return to the outer islands, and we will be resuming visits to Diego Garcia. This will not satisfy every Chagossian—as I say, they have been badly treated for many years— but it is an improvement on the situation we have had until now.

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

As the Minister has just confirmed, in 1967 the then Labour Government forcibly evicted 1,700 Chagossian people from Diego Garcia. Can the Minister tell us precisely how many of them or their descendants, now here in the UK, were consulted before the Government took the decision to hand over the islands to Mauritius?