Diego Garcia Military Base and British Indian Ocean Territory Bill

Debate between Lord Purvis of Tweed and Lord Bellingham

2nd reading
Tuesday 4th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

Yes, and as the noble Lord will recall from the debate that we had on the treaty, that was accelerated under the Heath Administration in 1970 and concluded under the Conservative Government. The denial of repatriation was then subsequently under another Conservative Government. My point is that all of us in this country have a dark record when it comes to Chagossian rights. Our task now should be how we at least restore some of those.

The noble Lord, Lord Callanan, started his remarks by saying that the House of Commons was denied the opportunity of debating the treaty during the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act period of scrutiny. He knows, because he will remember the debate we had on the treaty, that, as Erskine May makes perfectly clear, one of the mechanisms for the House of Commons to deny ratification of a treaty would be through an Opposition day debate. During the scrutiny period of this treaty in the House of Commons, the Conservative Party chose a different subject for its Opposition day debate. It had the chance, if it chose to take it, of debating and moving an amendment in the House of Commons during the scrutiny period.

We are here today debating this Bill for one reason and one reason alone: the previous Administration made a political decision to cede sovereignty and to enter into negotiations to conclude this. I hear noble Lords saying no, and I will come on to that, when they may wish to change their minds. Not one Conservative colleague today said why the previous Government opened negotiations to cede sovereignty in 2022. The then Government did not open negotiations to improve relations or co-operation with Mauritius. They made the principal decision to cede sovereignty, but they still have not said why. I hope the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, will outline clearly today why that was the case.

All legal considerations on this issue, which have been debated quite a lot during this debate, predate 2022. The complaints received in this debate predate James Cleverly and that Government’s decision. We have had complaints in this debate from the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, of the current Attorney-General and the advice given to this Administration. As my intervention on the noble Baroness suggested, the same would have been the case under the previous Government. I assume that when the previous Government made the policy decision in November 2022 to open negotiations which would conclude with the ceding of sovereignty, they were also advised by Attorneys-General. I have a hunch that it might have been the Attorney-General at the time of November 2022, but it could have been any of the three Attorneys-General that the Government had in 2022. No doubt, history will tell us which one of those it was.

A new argument has been presented today by the noble Lords, Lord Lilley and Lord Blencathra, that the Conservative Government were powerless and feeble and that their Prime Ministers and Foreign Secretaries were forced against their will by officialdom to make that statement in 2022. This is the argument of being in office but not in power. It was our suspicion at the time that the Conservatives were in office but not in power, and I am glad noble Lords have confirmed that.

I understand the argument that might say that this is a bad deal or that it has been handled badly. I think that many parts of it remain problematic, and I would have liked the Government to have handled it differently. But that is different from the Conservative Opposition in the Commons, who said in their amendment that they were “implacably” opposed to “ceding sovereignty”. They were not implacably opposed to ceding sovereignty in November 2022, so what changed?

[Lord Bellingham (Con)]

The noble Lord is actually putting a very strong case. What I said in my speech was that there was a red line about a sovereign base area—the concession of sovereignty across all the rest of the territory, but keeping the sovereignty of the base.

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord; I listened carefully to his speech, which he made in his characteristically sincere way. I will try to address that point in a moment.

I asked: what changed? In the absence of the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, explaining when she winds up on behalf of her party what policy changes were being made, I might assume that the only relevant change is the fact that the Conservatives were in government and are now in opposition. Without there being a clear policy change, we can only make that assumption.

This is quite important because the Statement in 2022 said,

“on the exercise of sovereignty”.—[Official Report, Commons, 3/11/22; col. 27WS.]

I have wondered why the same party that was implacably opposed then can be in favour of it now, especially because that Statement by the Government said that they were doing this to “resolve all outstanding issues” of international law. They knew that they had to resolve those outstanding issues of international law, but now they are denying the very virtue of the fact that they had any issues at all to address. That is quite hard to understand, and they have not made it any clearer today.

The point made by the noble Lord, Lord Bellingham, was also made by the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra. The 2022 Statement, which was the policy choice of the previous Government, was a mistake—as the noble Lord, Lord Bellingham, indicated; I respect his honesty —or was, according to some of his colleagues, the result of deep state. Nevertheless, if that had raised serious defence concerns, the Minister of State in the Ministry of Defence at the time would presumably have raised concerns about it. That Minister was the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, so she has ample opportunity to address the noble Lords’ points in her speech today.