Diego Garcia Military Base and British Indian Ocean Territory Bill

Alex Ballinger Excerpts

Tuesday 20th January 2026 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

Order. Back-Bench Members are on a five-minute speaking limit. That will drop further as the debate continues.

[Alex Ballinger (Halesowen) (Lab)]

In answer to the intervention by the hon. Member for Spelthorne (Lincoln Jopp), there is more than one veteran on the Labour Benches. I wonder what the veterans from the Conservative party who went through 11 rounds of negotiations under the previous Government were saying; they clearly supported this decision at that point, and there were clear reasons for doing so.

This is not an exercise in process; it is about whether this House chooses to protect on firm, enforceable terms an overseas base that is fundamental to British security and our closest alliances. Diego Garcia is a critical asset for the UK and our allies. It supports counter-terrorism, monitors hostile state activity, and enables the rapid deployment of UK and US forces across regions that matter deeply to our national interest. Those opposing the Bill need to be clear about what they are opposing. They are opposing a treaty that secures the base for 99 years with full operational freedom, one that is backed by our allies and was negotiated substantially under the previous Government.

[Dr Luke Evans (Hinckley and Bosworth) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman be supporting Lords amendment 1, given that he has just specified that the base needs to be used for military purposes? If that use becomes impossible, because the islands go under water, for example—which is a real risk—would he want to carry on paying for the deal?

[Alex Ballinger]

I will not be supporting Lords amendment 1, because it would require renegotiation. We already have a joint commission to deal with issues that arise, and international treaty law would provide routes to termination if we were in that sort of situation, so the amendment is not necessary at all. I will come back to this question later in my speech.

If we refused to comply, others—international organisations and partners—would not ignore any provisional measures that were put in place, undermining the practical operation of the base. That is the same reason that negotiations were started under the last Government, and the treaty contains safeguards that are not decorative, but operationally vital. The UK will control installations and the electromagnetic spectrum; we will control a buffer zone of 24 nautical miles, within which nothing can be built without UK consent; and there will be a strict ban on any foreign military or security presence on the outer islands. Those are precisely the kinds of protections that make the base secure, usable and resilient against interference.

As we are in the Chamber today to consider the Lords amendments, I will go through each in turn. Lords amendment 1 would require renegotiation so that the UK can stop payments if it cannot use the base. On the surface, as others have mentioned, this may sound prudent, but it is a recipe for uncertainty and delay at the very moment that we need clarity. The treaty already establishes a joint commission to deal with issues as they arise, and international treaty law provides routes to termination if an indispensable object for execution permanently disappears. The amendment adds risk, not security, undermining confidence in the treaty framework that we need to keep the base operational.

Lords amendments 2 and 3 were rejected by Mr Speaker. Lords amendment 4 deals with the procedure for orders under clause 6 of the Bill. It is a Government amendment; responding to the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, it provides appropriate parliamentary procedure. It strengthens scrutiny and is a sensible refinement to how the Bill operates, and this House should support it.

Lords amendment 5, which deals with the publication of the total costs and methodology, is duplicative. The Government published full details of the financial arrangements on the day that the treaty was signed, including the relevant explanatory material. The methodology is clear: it uses the Office for Budget Responsibility’s inflation forecasts to calculate the average annual figures, and those figures have been verified by the Government Actuary’s Department. The House of Commons Library reached the same conclusion, and the Office for Statistics Regulation has welcomed this approach. The amendment is not about transparency; it is about rerunning an argument we have had time and again in this House, including through I do not know how many urgent questions.

Lords amendment 6 deals with Commons votes to cease payments if Mauritius breaches the treaty. This would require additional parliamentary steps on anticipated expenditure.

[Graham Stuart]

The hon. Gentleman is talking about the costs of the deal. Can he just set them out for the House? I do not think anyone has done so in today’s debate so far, and he is speaking with such expertise. It would be great to hear from him exactly what this deal is costing.

[Alex Ballinger]

I will happily outline that to the House. The Minister has already outlined it: it is approximately 0.25% of the defence budget, which is tiny in comparison to the base in Djibouti that the French operate. If we compare it with the operation of an aircraft carrier or something of that size, it is very good value for money.

Lords amendment 6 would cut across long-standing constitutional practice on treaty payments, and would infringe Commons financial privilege and established arrangements for authorising expenditure. More importantly, it would send a damaging signal that the UK is building an exit ramp into primary legislation, weakening our hand and injecting instability into the very agreement designed to secure the base. The treaty already contains robust dispute resolution mechanisms, which is the right way to deal with such issues.

[Graham Stuart]

Will the hon. Gentleman allow me to intervene one more time?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

Order. Would the hon. Gentleman like to continue?

[Alex Ballinger]

Yes, I will continue.

The strategic logic is straightforward. Diego Garcia’s location, infrastructure and operational utility are indispensable.

[Phil Brickell (Bolton West) (Lab)]

On the security of the base, does my hon. Friend recall the visit to Washington DC that I think we both went on last year as members of the Foreign Affairs Committee? We spoke to many American interlocutors, including State Department officials. Over the course of an entire week in the US capital, not a single US interlocutor disagreed with or opposed the deal before us.

[Alex Ballinger]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. This treaty has been through the interagency process in America and has support across the system. Colleagues may have mentioned the President changing his position, but the US system is much wider than that, and I do not think we should we should base our long-term strategic and security interests on Truth Social posts.

This House should reject Lords amendments 1, 5 and 6, support the Government’s sensible procedural amendment 4, and pass this Bill in a way that protects national security, rather than gambling with it.

[Simon Hoare]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker—never has a point of order been greeted with such joy from the Chair—you have rightly pointed out, as has Mr Speaker, the Lords amendments that engage Commons financial privilege. We guard that privilege jealously and exercise it with caution. How is the House supposed to exercise that financial privilege in an informed way when, despite several probes to the Minister to come up with a figure for what this deal will cost the public purse, those right hon. and hon Members attending the debate this afternoon have not been given that figure? We have had a lot of theory about how a figure had been arrived at, but no figure. How do we exercise—

--- Later in debate ---

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

This is a sad day for the United Kingdom. The Government have not been prepared to stand up for the interests of the United Kingdom. Indeed, they seem to be willing to surrender when any challenge is made to its interests.

Let us look at some of the arguments that the Minister has made against the amendments. First, the Minister said that nothing has changed since the Bill was originally brought to the House, but of course we have seen that the American attitude has changed. The United Nations says that we are not giving the protections to the people we should be giving them to—in fact, we are more interested in the rights of the Danes who live in Greenland than the Chagossian population. The UN has actually said that we should stay this. So there have been changes, and the changes have been substantial.

The second argument we heard is that the base was under threat and we therefore had to make changes. I noticed what the hon. Member for South East Cornwall (Anna Gelderd) said about the marine protected area and the environmental requirements on the Mauritian Government, but there is no legal requirement in this treaty for the Mauritian Government to protect the marine protected area. Indeed, they have made it quite clear that fishing will be allowed in the marine protected area. What is the danger there? It is of course that Chinese ships can come into the area, and we know that in the South China sea, the Chinese have used commercial ships as their eyes and ears, so the base is under threat as a result of this change.

[Alex Ballinger]

Does the right hon. Gentleman recognise the 24-nautical mile exclusion zone that the Government negotiated in the treaty? It will prevent many of the things that he referred to.

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[Aphra Brandreth (Chester South and Eddisbury) (Con)]

The Bill goes to the very heart of our national security, the safety of the British people, our global reach and our operational effectiveness in two of the most volatile and unpredictable regions of the world: the Indo-Pacific and the middle east. It also raises serious questions about the cost of this deal to the British taxpayer, which amounts to £34.7 billion.

Even in the short time since the Bill was first brought to the House, the world has become even more unstable, yet the Government remain content to press ahead with the Bill. I struggle to see how it makes us safer, considering the requirement “to expeditiously inform” Mauritius of operational activity, and considering that Mauritius is a signatory to the Pelindaba treaty. The implications of the Bill for the basing of nuclear weapons, which are vital to our security and to our deterrence, and which have been deployed to Diego Garcia in the past, should concern every Member of the House. We need further clarity and assurance from the Government on that point.

That brings me to the £28 billion shortfall in the defence budget that the Chief of the Defence Staff recently presented to the Prime Minister. It does not take a mathematician to see the point that I am making; indeed, the maths is so basic that I suggest that even the Chancellor could work it out.

[Alex Ballinger]

rose—

[Tom Hayes]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Jim Allister (North Antrim) (TUV)]

If it were possible, one could almost feel sorry for the Minister. This is the Minister who, during previous stages of the Bill, batted away every criticism by telling us, “Oh, but the Americans support this deal.” He gleefully told us that they were our strongest and most important ally, and if they were enthusiastic and supportive of the Bill, what was the problem? Today, the emperor has no clothes.

The President of the United States has talked about the great stupidity of this deal. He describes a country giving away its own sovereignty as

“an act of GREAT STUPIDITY”.

Today the Minister has been forced into some indelicate gymnastics, as he tries to deal with the fact that the peg on which he hung all his defences has snapped out of place.

The Minister’s gymnastics have been equally on display when it comes to dealing with his party’s manifesto. Contrary to what he says, it is very clear that when the manifesto declares that Labour will always

“defend… sovereignty and right to self-determination”,

it is referring not only to Gibraltar and the Falklands, but to all British overseas territories and Crown dependencies. It says

“including the Falklands and Gibraltar”,

but not “exclusively the Falklands and Gibraltar”.

[Alex Ballinger]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Jim Allister]

I do not think that there is time for the hon. Member to remedy his speech at this stage.

The Minister is hoisted on the petard of his own manifesto, of which he is in blatant breach. He can hardly look the people of the Chagos islands in the eye, as he denies them what his manifesto promised them. They are the people who are hurting here. They are at the heart of this. They have not been treated well over decades by this nation, and now we are betraying them by denying them the right to any determination of their future. That is shameful. It is something that this House should be running away from, rather than embracing. I say to the Government: it is not too late to do the right thing. It is time they did, and I trust that they will.