Diego Garcia: Comments by the President of the United States

Lord Razzall Excerpts

Thursday 22nd January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

I do not know what I have done that is not statesmanlike, but our intention is to have those conversations with the United States and come to an agreed position, and that has consistently been our view. I encourage the noble Lord to consider the words of the Prime Minister yesterday, when he made our position clear, in talking about Greenland, that the reason why President Trump made his comments about Diego Garcia was to try to leverage them to encourage us to take a different position on Greenland. That has not worked, and our position is consistent.

[Lord Razzall (LD)]

My Lords, on the “Today” programme this morning, the Foreign Secretary was asked by Amol Rajan whether it was true that this was going to cost £34 billion, spread over a number of years. She failed to answer. She said that was not true but then failed to give us the right figure. Is it £34 billion or is it another figure?

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

It is £3.4 billion. The reason why there has been a dispute over this is that some people do not understand inflation. These numbers have been calculated in the normal way, as they are for all these kinds of projects.