Diego Garcia Military Base and British Indian Ocean Territory Bill

Lord Callanan Excerpts

Monday 26th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for repeating that Answer. In repeating it, she has accused my amendment of being “wrecking”. That is simply not true, and I have it in writing from our excellent clerks that the amendment is dilatory and not fatal. It is not wrecking. I hope the noble Baroness will take the opportunity to apologise when she answers those questions.

Instead of answering many of the serious concerns raised from all opposition parties about Chagossian rights and many other serious flaws in this agreement, all we heard in the other place from the Minister was bluster and an accusation that those of us asking those questions are somehow playing parliamentary games. This is a serious issue, so let me ask a couple of serious questions to the noble Baroness.

First, in her letter, sent to me, somewhat bizarrely, at 11.30 pm on Friday—she is lucky to have such dedicated private office staff—she referred to international arrangements needing to be in place before they can ratify the Mauritius treaty. For the benefit of the House, can she confirm that what she means by that is that the US Government must formally agree to amend the 1966 treaty and that, by failing to do this before they concluded the treaty, the Prime Minister has, in effect, given Trump a veto on this deal?

Secondly, if the Government do persuade President Trump to update that treaty—which looks unlikely—can she confirm that the amended 1966 treaty would then need to go through the full CRaG process in this Parliament before they can ratify their new deal?

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

I am glad that the noble Lord opposite has finally reread my contributions in this place from, I think, November, when I talked about an exchange of notes that would be needed with the United States in relation to the 1966 treaty. I am glad he has internalised what I said then as a fact. There would need to be an exchange of letters, and that is in hand. He asked whether that would then necessitate a CRaG process, and we will look at that when we get the detail of the letters. If it does then we will do that, but it may well not.

On whether or not the noble Lord’s amendment is a wrecking amendment, it is wrecking in its effect. As I understand it, the only wording in it that would be binding on the Government is the date, which he put as 23 March. This would breach the agreement we have with Mauritius. It may be a self-imposed deadline, but that is the deadline we have set ourselves as part of this agreement.