Diego Garcia Military Base and British Indian Ocean Territory Bill

Lord Kempsell Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 5th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kempsell (Con)]

My Lords, how can I add to the tour d’horizon we have had from the Benches on this side of your Lordships’ House, and indeed all sides, as we consider this group of amendments all about the moral and legal rights of the Chagossian people, who have been ignored, marginalised and set completely out of this Government’s process in the handling of the Bill?

I will add only very briefly, as I know we want to move to the end of the group, to dwell on the double standard now at the heart of this debate after the report by the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. If we had a grain of sand for the number of times that this Government have given weight, space and gravity to non-binding opinions, rulings, mandates, exhortations and other statements by international bodies of any form, we would be able to recreate the shoreline of the Chagos Archipelago—except when it comes to the report from the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. Noble Lords have adumbrated the brutal nature of the statement released by that body totally condemning the Bill, and my noble friend Lord Hannan has Amendment 24 in his name which I support on this point. This was the United Nations intervening in the legislative process and suggesting that ratification should be paused altogether.

The United Kingdom has been a state party to the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination since 7 March 1969. There are more than 180 states party to that convention. I ask the Minister, who I know is doing her utmost to manage an unmanageable and controversial Bill, just what is the UK Government’s response to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination? How can the Bill possibly be in line with the commitments that the UK Government made under that convention to work to eliminate all forms of racial discrimination when the committee itself has been so clear in its view on the Government’s policy?

I also add my support to the speech of my noble friend Lord Bellingham, who dwelt on the status of this body in the UN family and system at a time when these questions feel so timely and we feel them so sharply. Are the Government really willing to ride roughshod over that opinion and completely ignore it?

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, I particularly want to speak today because I am on the IRDC. I am proud that we completed a near-impossible task given to us by Parliament, which was to try to summarise the feelings of the Chagossian community on the UK-Mauritius agreement. I do not know precisely, but we had about 10 days to organise that, supervise it and draw up a report. The credit for that, more than anything, should go to our chairman, the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, and to the secretaries—it was outstanding that they did that job in a few days before Christmas. It was an impossible job which belatedly answered the question of, “Why don’t we ask the Chagossians what they think about all this?”, but a good job was done.

At the heart of everything is the question of the views of the Chagossians or, perhaps more specifically than that, what has happened to them. Throughout all these debates—I have been involved in most of them one way or another—there is this black cloud over all the amendments and speeches, of the awareness of the profound injustice that was done in a short six-year period under Labour and Conservative Governments to remove some 1,400 to 1,700 people from their homeland in the most objectionable circumstances.

I constantly ask myself why it is not more of a cause celebre than it is. I can only answer that by saying that it was a small number of people. But it is not a small number of people if you are one of the people affected; the effect is 100%. I suppose it goes without saying that if more people had been involved, there would have been far more of an outcry about what happened. I will not repeat some of the things that have been said in the past about the way in which it was done.

I think we all recognise that, and subsequent Governments have recognised that, but it begs the question: what, if anything, can we do? It is not some crime committed in the ancient past; it is a crime committed within the lifetime of many people in this House. What can we, in practical terms, do to put it right?

We have heard a lot today—I am not unsympathetic to this—about holding a referendum. We have had something that has many of the characteristics of a referendum by means of our report, though I am sure that there are plenty of statisticians and experts on these things who would say it could be done far more effectively and far better. However, I am 99% confident about what the result of a referendum would be. It would probably be inconclusive in terms of a huge majority—there are divisions among the Chagossian community, which we know about—but our key themes, which Lord De Mauley has already referred to, are the inevitable consequences of holding a referendum. A referendum would undoubtedly find: the profound suffering

“felt by Chagossian communities at their displacement and a yearning for redress. Concern that the Mauritian government may not be able to fulfil the aspirations of Chagossians. A clear wish for greater Chagossian agency in future decisions made about the islands”.

We should therefore not expect anything stunning if the amendment is passed and there is a referendum. It would take time and be challenged by whoever were to lose it should the result be narrow. There are clear and distinct divisions among the Chagossians and there would be the usual arguments about who would be eligible to vote and about referendums, but writ large in this case.

We cannot redress the injustices of the past. We should focus our attention not on speculating about prolonging the process or on further referrals to further committees. We should concentrate on the heart of the practical things that could be done, of which there is one above all else. More than anything, the Chagossians want the right, whether they exercise it or not, to return to their homeland, even if it is only for visits. We are told by the military—I have no reason to dispute this—that that is simply not feasible so far as Diego Garcia is concerned. A Minister from the Commons, Stephen Doughty, who came before our committee when we produced an earlier report, had this to say. Even noble Lords who have not been in Parliament that long or been listening to Ministers’ responses for long will see the flaw in it. I asked, “Why can’t Chagossian people work at the depot? Why can’t they live side by side with the military if that is what some of them wish?” I was told that operationally it is “unsuitable and inappropriate”.

Unsuitable and inappropriate are pretty slippery terms which do not satisfy me unless they can be elaborated upon. That is what I speak to my noble friends on the Front Bench about. Diego Garcia is the only island in practical terms that people will desire to inhabit or re-inhabit. What is it especially about this military base that makes it impossible for civilian workers to live and work on that island but on a different part of it? Wherever you go in the United Kingdom, you will find examples of the military working alongside workers who go into the depot every morning, through security, and go back home in the evening. So far, I have had no satisfactory answer to that question, but an ounce of help is worth a pound of pity. If a practical proposal could be put forward to the Chagossians to say that contract workers work there all the time, and that we will give first refusal for any contract work that is required to native-born Chagossians, that is not an unreasonable request—we mentioned it in our report—but it would be action rather than words.

I close wishing we were not in this position and wishing that this particularly shameful period of British history had not happened, but there is no point in simply emitting words of anguish. What is needed now is one or two practical attempts to make the lives of Chagossians, who were so unjustly treated, more acceptable, and I put that to my Front Bench.

Diego Garcia Military Base and British Indian Ocean Territory Bill

Lord Kempsell Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 25th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Morrow (DUP)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 31 standing in my name. I want to place on record my appreciation for the noble Lord, Lord Hannan, stepping in last week during the difficult situation I had back home. It again demonstrates clearly that, when you throw an awkward ball to a good player, he will pick it up, make you look good and carry on as if nothing has happened, but I appreciate his assistance in that instance.

I was about to say three lines on this amendment, but then I thought I was perhaps being too presumptuous, because I hoped that the Government, just by reading the amendment, would simply have said that there was no reason why they could not support it. I hope that that is exactly what they will say at the end of the debate, but I think I had better say more than just one or two lines in relation to it before sitting down.

Even if one accepted that it was just £101 million every year for 99 years and considered the proposition in its own terms, without regard for the preceding history, the contrast between this and a one-off payment of £40 million to the Chagossians conveys the message that, while the Mauritians are important and worthy of respect, the Chagossians are, by contrast, worthy only of a few crumbs from the table, relatively speaking, which is deeply hurtful and insulting.

Secondly, to really understand the injustice presented by the arrangement, it obviously needs to be seen in the context of history. The Chagossians do not, for the most part, regard themselves as Mauritian.

I have heard what the noble Lords, Lord Weir and Lord Jay, have said. As the noble Lord, Lord Weir, rightly said, across the United Kingdom there is a multiplicity of views on many issues, so it is difficult to get a concise, exact and single supporting view on this, but I will say these things anyway. In this context, the decision to also pay Mauritius a fantastically large sum of money for the use of just one of the Chagos Islands, while the Chagossians are afforded just £40 million, compounds the present injustice.

To appreciate the menacing nature of the way this monetary injustice greatly compounds the underlying injustice, one must point out that the monies for resettlement set out in the KPMG report are significantly less than the monies it is now proposed the Republic of Mauritius be paid for the UK to lease just one of the Chagos Islands.

Finally, the funding for the Chagossians is also important. Article 11 of the treaty undermines the UK Government’s argument for it by addressing the Chagossians apart from the Mauritians. They are, in effect, saying that it is right to return the islands to the Republic of Mauritius because the pre-8 November 1965 boundaries of the colony express the self-determination of the people of the territory, which implies that everyone, at least from a civic perspective, can be happily Mauritian. However, in that context, there would be no need to address the Chagossians separately and allocate payment to them. In addressing the Chagossians separately, the treaty, in effect, hoists itself with its own petard.

[Lord Kempsell (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to the amendments in my name in this group, and I support the amendments in the name of my noble friend Lord Hannan, who masterfully adumbrated his litany of development ideas, as well as those in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Foster, the noble Lords, Lord Weir and Lord Callanan, and others.

The theme before the Committee in this group has surely been, as the noble Lord, Lord Weir, put it, an attempt to understand the views, wishes, legitimate desires and concerns of Chagossians. How is it possible to do so without a proper process for consultation with the Chagossian community? Much has already been said in the Committee about the inadequacy of the consultation process followed by the Government that has brought us to this point in the design of the Bill and their policy. My Amendment 81C would make the Chagossian contact group, the Government’s official consultation forum, more robust. Indeed, it would ensure that the Chagossian contact group remained in existence throughout the lifetime of the treaty.

In all the impenetrable fora, groups and organisations within Whitehall, the Chagossian contact group has been shrouded, I think it is fair to say, in a little secrecy. I have repeatedly asked Written Questions of Ministers about the operation of this consultation mechanism. We know that it met earlier this year and was attended by a Minister and that it is chaired by a deputy director in the FCDO and has a small secretariat. My amendment would ensure that it remained active and that Chagossians continued to be enfranchised to a greater extent than they have been thus far by the Government.

My Amendment 81G pertains to the theme of resettlement, which has already been mentioned extensively in the debate. The Government prayed in aid the notion of resettlement as one of their key motives for pursuing this policy, and they have taken the word of the Mauritian Government, I think it is fair to say, on trust when it comes to resettlement. To a certain extent, that is to be expected at international negotiations and in bilateral fora, but there is no reason why the Government should not take steps to ensure that the important issue of resettlement is continually checked on by Ministers in future. That is why, in Amendment 81G, I suggest that within 12 months of Royal Assent the Secretary of State should publish a report made in connection with Article 6 of the treaty as to progress on resettlement.

For the sake of timing, I shall speak also to my Amendment 20C, which is grouped here, on the marine protected area. With this amendment, I seek to ensure that the Government take external expertise and consultation of the kind that the noble Lord, Lord Hannan, mentioned, from universities and scientific experts, who have deep concerns about the potential administration of the marine protected area by the Mauritian authorities and the standards to which those authorities will hold the administration of the MPA and its future designations—whether they will truly be in accordance with the standards that have thus far been set by the UK Government, in terms of both environmental protection and the quality of expertise, scientific and otherwise, used in governing those important regions for marine and broader conservation. My Amendment 20C seeks to ensure that an independent panel is commissioned before those elements of the treaty come into force to provide a serious and well-thought-out independent view, away from the scientific advice that the UK Government will take from their own resources, and to publish that advice so that the international community can see that the Mauritian Government will be held to those international standards.

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to particularly support Amendment 20 in the name of my noble friend Lord Callanan, and, more generally, Amendment 26 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, who is not in his place, and Amendments 38B and 78. This is an important group because it seeks to remedy the way in which the Bill will not only make the Chagossians stateless, but prejudice their ability to financially provide for themselves and their families for today and tomorrow.

Last month, I travelled to Hamburg on business. At dinner, I was sat next door but one to a gentleman who was involved in business in quite a substantial way in Mauritius. It did not take long for my German colleagues to explain to him that I sat in your Lordships’ House, upon which he leant over and implored me—no, begged me—to do that deal with Diego Garcia, so that, in his words, “our streets can be paved with gold”. Those were his exact words.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Kempsell (Con)]

My Lords, I am more than happy to associate myself with the amendments tabled in the name of my noble friend Baroness Goldie. We started the group by saying that your Lordships’ House would consider it expeditiously, so I will be brief.

My full sympathy is with the experience of the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, in these matters. All I can say is that he must be speaking to different people in Washington DC than I am when it comes to the provisions of this treaty. Occasionally in your Lordships’ House, we hear extreme criticisms of the Government of the United States, and that is entirely justifiable from noble Lords who take that position, but it is impossible on the one hand to criticise the position of the Government of the United States or the way they conduct themselves and simultaneously to suggest that the United Kingdom should resile from seeking to renegotiate provisions in the treaty that are, on further reflection and discussion in your Lordships’ House, found to be wanting. There is no reason why the Government of the United Kingdom should resile from seeking to renegotiate elements of this treaty which are deficient, as is being exposed in the debate. The noble Lord, Lord Morrow, gave an interesting constitutional deposition on the ins and outs of that process.

I will confine my comments to my controversial Amendments 81F and 20F, which seek that renegotiation. My full sympathy is with Ministers opposite who are trying to steer a difficult Bill on a difficult issue into a safer port. My amendments come from the fact that it is incumbent on your Lordships’ House to look beyond the current security situation. The treaty and its Annex 1 are necessarily drafted in the context of the current security picture, but that security picture is dynamic, and it does not take much imagination to envisage a time very soon when Ministers find themselves in a completely changed security scenario; for example, in the Indo-Pacific and the wider Pacific region. What if a military superpower were to invade a neighbouring country and the requirements of the UK’s Armed Forces in their use of the base area and the wider contested issue of sovereignty over the Chagos Islands changed dramatically from the position today? That is why I support the amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, on issues such as the notification of the Government of Mauritius, the third- party armed forces being present, and the placement of devices and installations.

My Amendment 20F seeks to take that a step further by looking into the future and saying there may well come a point at which Ministers feel, at the outbreak of hostilities more widely in the world, a pressure to derogate from the restrictive provisions of Annex 1. That is why I package it with Amendment 81F, which would take the unusual step of placing a requirement on the Government to notify Parliament should there be communications from the Government of Mauritius about the application of that annex in future. It is an issue of such public concern. More broadly, outside of your Lordships’ House, the public feel the treaty has been so poorly handled and drafted that these extraordinary provisions are required.

[Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)]

My Lords, I will not detain the Committee for long, but I want to speak briefly to Amendments 20D, 20E and 20F from my noble friend Lord Kempsell and to Amendment 87 from my noble friend Lady Goldie. We have witnessed in recent decades an extraordinary alchemy in the South China Sea. Whole islands are called from the vasty deep, summoned like Brigadoon into existence, not by prayer but by the imperatives of Chinese geopolitics. Reefs are dredged into runways; lagoons are refashioned into naval installations; artificial islands are planted thickly with radar, missile systems and airstrips, and it is all done in the name of installing civilian infrastructure. None of those installations or airstrips is openly avowed as a military unit, so, when we hear that in this treaty there is an effective British veto for any kind of defence installation, I ask noble Lords to consider that no one is going to call it a defence installation. It is going to be done subtly, little by little, and it is going to be a much tougher proposition suddenly to object when we feel that a line has been crossed than at present when we have the unquestioned sovereignty over the entirety of the archipelago.

I did not want to misquote the US Secretary of State, so just after my exchange with the noble Lord, Lord Kerr of Kinlochard, I looked up what he said on taking office. In November of last year, he said that the deal

“poses a serious threat to our national security”.

Obviously, he has changed his tune; people are entitled to change their minds. I just invite noble Lords to ask why he might have changed his mind. Is it that he saw a blinding figure on the road to Damascus and heard a voice saying, “Go into Damascus”—I think Marco Rubio has changed his religion at least twice, so I mean no disrespect to our most important ally. Or is it not more likely that he has been worked on by this Government’s officials?

Ukraine

Lord Kempsell Excerpts

Friday 25th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kempsell (Con)]

My Lords, I join in the sentiments of praise for the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Spellar. I certainly look forward to his future contributions.

Throughout the debate we have heard so much about the echoes of history and of former conflicts. Of course, historians will draw on the proceedings of your Lordships’ House and the other place as primary evidence when they write about wars and this country’s place in them. That got me thinking about the great parliamentary debates of wartime, and perhaps the most famous in the other place, the Norway debate of May 1940 or the Saturday Sitting of the other place during the invasion of the Falkland Islands in April 1982. These moments distil the conduct of war into the conduct of parliamentary debate. That set me wondering just what conclusions the historians of the future will draw when they look back and examine the Hansard records that we are creating today, as they analyse the United Kingdom’s posture at this particular moment of the war on Ukraine.

I am anxious—along with my noble friends Lord Banner and Lord Robathan and the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, in the sentiments they have expressed—that when it comes to Storm Shadow those historians may find some evidence to suggest that the UK was, at this precise time, not in the position of global leadership that it should be when it comes to the defence of Ukraine. That is not a comfortable view and not one that is necessarily easy to face up to—and none of it, I should say, is to question the intentions, commitment or good nature of the Government and all those engaged so tirelessly from the UK side in Ukraine’s defence. I join noble Lords from across the House in praising and thanking Ministers who are working so hard and tirelessly on this vital issue. But it is an anxiety that I have arrived at through some first-hand experience.

I have been fortunate to travel to Ukraine multiple times since the illegal invasion, to have visited Kyiv, Lviv and other areas, and even to have met on a number of occasions President Zelensky and his Ministers, alongside our former Prime Minister, Boris Johnson. During my most recent visit last month, I found the Ukrainians as resolute and determined as ever to defend their people, their country, their democracy and their absolutely justified right to national sovereignty. But as I arrived in Kyiv, the headlines in London were all about western Governments’ delay in allowing the Ukrainian armed forces to deploy Storm Shadow in the way they had requested. Indeed, as President Zelensky said in August this year when he visited London, talking specifically about the pace of support:

“Unfortunately, the situation has slowed down recently”.


Those comments should make us uneasy, because the United Kingdom has rightly been the country that has so consistently been in the very front of the vanguard of support for Ukraine, committing £12.8 billion— £7.8 billion in military support and £5 billion in non-military support, according to the latest figures—as well as training more than 47,000 Ukrainian personnel under Operation Interflex and providing shelter to more than 215,000 Ukrainians in the UK, including more than 150,000 via Homes for Ukraine. Those are the figures as of earlier this month. With such a distinguished and proud record of support, why is it that the Ukrainians themselves feel something of a slowdown?

Last month I was able to visit a recovery centre in Kyiv for wounded veterans, where I think I heard the answer to that question. I met many veterans who were severely wounded, having lost limbs and been disfigured. As those veterans spoke in a quiet ward, in a hospital surrounded by trees in a suburb of Kyiv, what came across time and again in their testimony was that they thought that for Ukraine to win, the military reality demands an ability to project force over longer distances, to engage Russian targets at greater ranges, to provide deep strike capabilities and, crucially, not just to send the weapons but to allow them to be used now. That is the current military calculation from those at the sharp end; let future historians note that testimony.

Hearing the stories of those soldiers and seeing their pain, but also their determination, moved me. It made me realise so vividly that as a young person enjoying a peaceful life in the UK, my freedom is resting on a wave of heroism and sacrifice from every generation in Ukraine, but particularly the young. It is a sister democracy and a brother nation, just a short flight away. That is why we must all, as parliamentarians, use our faculties here to make the case for NATO membership for Ukraine, true freedom to use Storm Shadow and other decisive weapons, and a rapid execution of military, diplomatic, financial and political strength, with the United Kingdom at the absolute forefront to help deliver a Ukrainian victory.