UK-Mauritius Agreement on the Chagos Archipelago

Baroness Hoey Excerpts

Monday 30th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hoey (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I add my congratulations to the noble and learned Baroness on her maiden speech and welcome a formidable woman to your Lordships’ House. There have been some interesting speeches and I particularly enjoyed and agreed with the noble Lords, Lord Blencathra and Lord Murray. It has been said by a number of people that relinquishing sovereignty over the Chagos Islands is not a legal but a political decision: the Government have decided to do this. I do not accept that the advisory ruling of the International Court of Justice should have led to what is basically a surrender of British territory.

Much has been made of the fact that the Conservative Government started these negotiations, but of course it is not a Conservative Government who signed the treaty; it is a Labour Government. I am sure that, if a Conservative Government had signed a treaty a couple of years ago when they started to negotiate, exactly the same kind of amendment would have been put down by the then Opposition.

The Government now say that, if we had defied the IFS, in the long term our hugely important occupation of Diego Garcia as a military base—I do not think anyone in this House does not think that it is hugely important—would have been threatened. Again, I do not accept that, because what are we really saying? Are we saying that we are going to allow somebody to tell us that we have to get out of the Chagos Islands? When are we going to stand up for our own country? When are we going to say, “Sorry, international law might be very important, but if it’s not in our national interest, we are not going to follow it”? I am getting rather fed up with all these international bodies that we are told we have to follow, when actually it is sometimes very much not in our interest. Then, of course, we are paying out millions of pounds to give away our own territory. It is rather mind-boggling and, once all the legal niceties, the legal words and the lawyers have finished, I think the public out there will realise that we are selling out part of our own territory—and for what benefit?

I want to talk specifically about the Chagossians. The noble Lord, Lord Grocott, mentioned very clearly our cruel treatment of them—not back in colonial times but in the mid-1960s, when most of us here were alive. What we did was absolutely cruel. One local Chagossian said to me very recently:

“Now they are doing it again to us”.


The treaty may say that it is recognising the wrongs of the past. Mauritius has made much of the plight of the Chagossians and, in justifying surrendering the islands to Mauritius, the UK Government have congratulated themselves on addressing the injustice done to the Chagossians. It is therefore quite astonishing that the treaty does not make any provision for Chagossians, other than a few who are based in Mauritius—they were the only few who were very vaguely involved in any kind of negotiations. The rest of the Chagossians were not involved in any negotiations.

Article 6 provides for the possibility—it is only a possibility—of Mauritius implementing a programme of resettlement on the outlying islands. Incidentally, if we all cared so much about the Chagossians, why did none of our Governments say that they could go back to the other islands apart from Diego Garcia? We never did, even though it was raised many times in the House of Commons by a former leader of the Labour Party.

Under Article 6, Mauritius is under no legal obligation to implement this programme of resettlement. As things stand, not a single Chagossian has the right to return to any of the islands unless Mauritius—which should be ashamed of its record in what it did to Chagossians in Mauritius—allows them to return. Yet we are paying £40 million into a trust fund, in trust for the Chagossians—which sounds very good. It is a tiny fraction of the overall sum to be paid to Mauritius, and Mauritius will work that. It will decide how it is spent; we are not responsible for it. It has a very bad track record of using money given to it. Originally, there was £650,000 back in 1972, and it took a long time for it to pass it on to the Chagossians—up to 1978. So there must be real doubt about the likelihood that this trust fund will be used. I ask the Minister in winding up to come back and tell us how we will ensure that that money will go to Chagossians and not just be spent on Mauritius.

Finally, can the Minister say why we cannot have a referendum of the Chagossian people? Is it because we know the answer that would be given? They have no love for Mauritius and they do not want to go back to Mauritius. Of those who are in Mauritius, most are unhappy about this—there might be a few who have probably been paid off by the Mauritian Government not to say so. This is a shameful act of our Government and I am very sad that it is a Labour Government who are not doing anything to make up for what was done in the mid-1960s.