Diego Garcia Military Base and British Indian Ocean Territory Bill

Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 5th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Cash (Con)]

My Lords, I support Amendments 28 to 31A in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, who very sadly has been struck down by the ghastly flu. I had not intended initially to speak to these amendments, but was very happy to do so after hearing from him and reading the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, back in November, which horrified me and drew to my attention matters that I know the Chagossians themselves are also absolutely appalled by.

Without the clarity and protection sought by these amendments, this House is being asked to acquiesce not only in technical deficiencies in the Bill but in an act of stark neglect and hypocrisy that would destroy the UK’s credibility as a climate and environmental leader. At COP 29 in Baku, our Prime Minister said that

“the UK has sent a clear message … we are renewing UK climate leadership”.

He said:

“There is no national security, there is no economic security, there is no global security without climate security”—


linking climate leadership to national and global security.

We are being asked, despite that very public declaration of climate leadership, to pass a Bill that would allow ratification of a treaty to transfer control of one of the world’s most significant marine protected areas, if not the most significant. The Government admit that the terms of the future protection of that area are not yet dealt with and are to be dealt with later in a separate written agreement, not yet published, not yet scrutinised, not yet agreed and without any sanctions if none of that happens. It is an absolute abdication of responsibility, not only to the Chagossian people and to ourselves and our own principles of climate leadership but to the global concerns around climate.

Amendment 28 addresses the most basic constitutional failure in this process. Parliament is being asked to approve the transfer first and trust that the environmental safeguards will follow. No serious legislature should agree to that. If the protections matter—and the Ministers have agreed that they do—they should be visible, binding and tested before ratification, not promised to be dealt with afterwards.

Amendments 29 and 30, on allocation of funds to environmental protection and the power to withhold funds for non-compliance, should not be controversial if the Government are sincere that environmental stewardship is a priority. Why would we not be willing to hardwire that priority into the financial architecture of the agreement? Why would we resist earmarking funds explicitly for environmental protection? And why would we resist retaining leverage to withhold payments if the marine environment is degraded? Without any of these mechanisms, the UK is powerless to act in respect of the likely failures by Mauritius to protect the MPA.

Regrettably, it has to be stated that Mauritius is not a party likely to be relied on in such matters. According to the Environmental Performance Index compiled by Yale University, Mauritius ranks extremely poorly indeed at 173 out of 180 for the biodiversity and habitat category that measures countries’ actions towards retaining natural ecosystems. For maritime habitat protection, it is 83 out of 129 countries. Most crucially of all, for marine protection stringency it is 131 out of 131—absolutely last.

Amendment 31 tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, confronts an uncomfortable but unavoidable reality—that of enforcement. The waters in question are vast. Enforcement is expensive and technically demanding. Constant enforcement is needed to prevent illegal fishing. Mauritius does not have the technical capacity to provide that. No serious Government should consider proceeding with any of this without a serious published assessment of enforcement capability and a proposal for its execution.

The Chagos marine protected area is not just another marine protected area; it is one of the largest, most intact, least exploited tropical marine ecosystems on this precious planet. Its value lies precisely in the fact that it has been strongly protected—something that the UK should be very proud of and extremely hesitant to throw away. This MPA functions as a global reference point—a living baseline—so that we can understand what marine ecosystems can look like when they are not relentlessly harmed. If, as many experts fear, the result of this treaty is deep-sea fishing across 99% of it, as opposed to the current situation where it is almost 100% protected, the consequences will be catastrophic and irreversible on any human timescale—sea-floor habitats flattened, food webs simplified and predator populations depleted. In the time available, I will not list all the species that will be destroyed.

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

The noble Baroness is making a magnificent case in her speech. The Blue Belt of marine protected areas is one of the greatest conservation stories in any of our lifetimes—something the UK has been so proud of for so many years. For the reasons the noble Baroness has described, it is a tragedy to see us go backwards when the appetite among the public, particularly after the recent Attenborough programme, is that we should grow, not shrink.

Does the noble Baroness also acknowledge that by removing the near 100% protection and reducing it down to 1%, there will be a flurry of fishing activity in those waters, which will make it impossible, from a security point of view, to protect what is, as we have heard from many speakers, an incredibly important and valuable military base? How do you police things? How do you ensure that those vessels are not spy vessels, kitted up with all kinds of technology to intercept the very important work that is happening? Right now, it is simple; going forward, it will not be.

[Baroness Cash (Con)]

I agree 100% and could not have put it better myself. I hope that the Minister will address the points raised by my noble friend Lord Goldsmith.

As raised by a number of Oxford academics, there is also the additional, profound danger of deep-sea drilling once the very issues that my noble friend raised become a reality. Once effective control is surrendered and protections are weak or unenforceable, industrial pressure follows. Deep-sea drilling is the archetype of a low-probability, high-impact risk that will destroy and decimate this precious area.

Even routine drilling brings chronic pollution, noise and disturbance incompatible with meaningful protection. If the UK Government insist on proceeding without these amendments, or protections of equivalent force, the UK’s claim to climate and environmental leadership will collapse. We will be that country that lectures the world about marine protection, biodiversity and climate responsibility while quietly signing away one of the most important marine sanctuaries on earth.

Treaties are not acts of faith or promises; they are instruments of law. They need to include all the terms and consequences for their breaches. If environmental protections matter, as Ministers say they do—and we support that statement—it must not be possible to be ratify this treaty without these amendments or protections of equal strength.

Unusually, I will give my last words—noble Lords will not hear me say this often—to the Secretary of State for Energy, Ed Miliband, who stated last July:

“We know that climate change and nature loss are fundamentally linked … but we in this country have helped make a difference”.—[Official Report, Commons, 14/7/25; cols. 29-30.]


That is very true regarding this marine protected area, and we do not want the future difference that we make to be a destructive one. I urge the Government to accept these amendments or similar protections.