Diego Garcia Military Base and British Indian Ocean Territory Bill

Lord Weir of Ballyholme Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 4th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Weir of Ballyholme (DUP) [V]]

My Lords, I first declare an interest as a friend of British Overseas Territories.

The Bill is labelled the Diego Garcia Bill, but we all know it goes much further than that and deals with the full implementation of the Chagos Islands deal. The Government have told us that the previous Government started negotiations on sovereignty. The Opposition have told us that they would not have signed that Bill. I suspect that both those assertions are true.

Our task is to dissect whether the Bill is an appropriate one. In my view, this is a poor deal for the United Kingdom as a whole, but above all, a shameful deal for the Chagossian people. The Chagos Islands have been British since 1814. That was before the final defeat of Napoleon, and indeed before the Falkland Islands, for example, were British. It is before the vast bulk of countries across the world were in their current form—certainly before their current boundaries. It is before even the UK’s current boundaries themselves existed. Yet, we are handing over sovereignty to a country which is over 1,000 miles away from the Chagos Islands and has never ruled over or had control of them. It is akin to us handing over the Isle of Wight to Belarus, so limited are the geographical connections between the two. As the Government have indicated, we are doing so in part because of the advisory ruling of the ICJ and the threat legally of what is to come. I will not reiterate the very wise points, from a legal perspective, made earlier by the noble Lord, Lord Lilley; suffice it to say that I am not convinced by the Government’s legal case.

Let me go further—and I appreciate this will appear as heresy to some in the House. When it comes to British sovereignty and the self-determination of those under British sovereignty, while international opinion is always something to which we should have regard, we cannot simply give carte blanche to international opinion. Those who would treat international opinion as sacrosanct in these matters will have to answer at some future stage, when the ICJ, no doubt prompted by some feeling of anti-colonialism, declares that the Falkland Islands should be part of Argentina, or that Gibraltar should be part of Spain. That is the logical conclusion of saying that we cannot at any stage challenge what is ruled by an international court, and it is why I believe that British sovereignty and regard to the self-determination of the people within that must be paramount.

It is not simply a question, as others have said, of giving away sovereignty. We are not simply giving it to Mauritius; we are actually paying them a substantial fee to take it off our hands. Whether we regard that as the £3.4 billion the Government are talking about, the £35 billion the main opposition party is talking about, or somewhere in between, we are paying a vast sum—a cash cow—to Mauritius to ensure that the Chagos Islands become theirs. Not only are we giving a feather in the cap—a big financial gain—to Mauritius, but we are also giving them an asset.

We know already of the deep involvement of China, which sees Mauritius as part of its sphere of influence. There is no doubt that in the days to come, we will see parts of the Chagos Islands being built on by the Chinese, who will encroach more and more in that area. Then, the Government will ultimately be left with no real response, because they have already surrendered the sovereignty of the islands to Mauritius.

The other motivation is, perhaps, a feeling of colonial debt or guilt. But if we take at face value the premise that there is colonial debt, to whom do we owe that debt? Surely it is to those who we colonised in the first place—namely, the Chagossians. They have been treated shamefully. That is no different from what I suspect has happened over the last 60 years—we have a very poor record in the Chagos Islands.

The Chagossians, throughout these negotiations, have not had a veto, have not been directly involved in negotiations, and when it comes to consultation have effectively been consulted after deals have been done. That is not the way to reflect self-determination. In the deal itself, as well as giving over sovereignty to Mauritius we have a trust fund supposedly for Chagossians which will be entirely controlled by the Mauritius Government—not a penny will go directly to the Chagossians themselves. We did not even, within this deal, get a right of return; we have ceded that entirely to Mauritius. I have no doubt that, if there is any form of right of return, it will be for those Chagossians who have shown subservience to the Mauritian Government. Anybody deemed to take a different view from the Mauritius Government will not be able to return to their homeland.

This is a shameful deal. I welcome, at least, that the committal Motion has not gone ahead. I urge the Government, even at this belated hour, to take advantage of that time and genuinely consult and reach a view on the self-determination of the Chagossian people. We have been told by the Minister and others that Chagossians are content to be with Mauritius. Let the Government put that to the test and show proper self-determination to the people of the Chagos Islands. Let us use this pause to abandon this appalling deal and this rotten Bill.