Diego Garcia Military Base and British Indian Ocean Territory Bill

Debate between Lord Hannan of Kingsclere and Lord Murray of Blidworth

3rd reading
Monday 12th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)]

My Lords, what are we here for if not to think again? We are wriggling painfully on a hook. In the early days, a lot of people, hearing that the Chagos Islands were to be handed over, understood it to be some kind of restitution to the indigenous Chagossians, whom we all agree were very badly treated in the late 1960s and early 1970s. But, with every week that has passed since that initial announcement was made, the arguments have crumbled.

It has become clear that the Chagossians do not want to be handed to a foreign power that has never governed them and whose interest in the archipelago is financial. The Chagossians are here, as always, watching in the Gallery—their silence a neat symbol of how they have been overlooked in this entire debate. It has become clear that Mauritius does not have the capacity to maintain, as my noble friend Lord Deben says, the world’s greatest marine conservation area. It has become clear that the price tag is vastly higher than we were initially led to believe. It has become clear that foreign powers and unfriendly foreign powers are in favour of this deal. It has become clear that we are steamrolling over democracy.

If, as the upper House and the revising Chamber, we are not prepared to take a stand on something of this magnitude and as permanent in its impact in changing the size of the United Kingdom and changing the maps—this is going to be remembered long after people have forgotten what the inflation rate was in 2026 or whether we banned X—then what on earth are we here for?

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

My Lords, I wish to address just one point made by the noble Lord, Lord Beamish. He said that the previous Government would inevitably have done a deal. Plainly, this is not so. As my right honourable friend Tom Tugendhat made clear in the debates on this Bill in the other place, both he and I, when he was Minister for Security, made clear our opposition to adopting this course of negotiations. Furthermore, when my noble friend Lord Cameron was Foreign Secretary, he was offered a similar deal to the present one and we know that he stopped the process. The current treaty is and remains an act of wanton strategic self-harm.