Diego Garcia Military Base and British Indian Ocean Territory Bill

Baroness Meyer Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 5th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Leong (Lab)]

I gently remind all noble Lords that arguments deployed in Committee should not be repeated at length on Report.

[Baroness Meyer (Con)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 32, to which I have added my name. Giving the Chagossian people a say before their homeland is transferred to Mauritius is not an unreasonable demand; it is basic justice. At its heart lies the principle of self-determination embedded in international law and central to the United Kingdom’s own foreign policy tradition. Article 1 of the United Nations charter affirms

“the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples”.

It is the very principle on which the United Kingdom has relied in relation to the Falkland Islands and Gibraltar, where referenda were rightly held and the will of the people to remain British was respected.

Self-determination is not a modern invention. It has underpinned the constitutional settlement of all Britain’s overseas territory. There is no principled reason why it should not apply here. The Chagossians are a people; they have their own language, culture and traditions, and a distinct identity that has endured despite expulsion. Above all, they have a profound and enduring connection to their islands. Despite their expulsion between 1968 and 1973, they have remained a cohesive people, the majority of whom oppose the transfer of their island to Mauritius, as the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, so clearly indicated earlier. It is therefore extraordinary that a Government who claim to champion human rights and the rule of law are asking this House to approve legislation that enables the most profound constitutional decision imaginable for the Chagossian people—the disposal of their homeland—without giving them any opportunity to vote on their future.

As mentioned earlier, even the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has expressed serious concerns about the lack of consultation, calling for the ratification to be suspended and for the free, prior and informed consent of the Chagossian people to be secured. This Government speak readily of historic injustice and reparation. I therefore ask the Minister: why are those principles not applied to the Chagossian people—a people who were expelled from their homeland? This is an injustice. It is an old grievance, and a living one. It shapes how this Bill will be judged, not only by the Chagossians but by the wider world.

International law does not require the silencing of people; on the contrary, it protects their right to determine their own future. To hand over their islands and to extinguish their British-Chagossian identity, without first asking their opinion, would be a terrible injustice, and it would not go unnoticed. It would be remembered by other people, not least those in the British Overseas Territories who look to this Parliament to uphold the principle that their future is theirs to decide. This amendment offers the House a chance to uphold that principle, to break the cycle of exclusion and to begin to right a historical wrong. For the sake of the Chagossians and for the integrity of this House, I urge noble Lords to support the amendment.

Briefly, I also support Amendment 13, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, which states that the Act will come into force

“only once all outstanding legal actions, including appeals, by the Chagossian people have been determined”.

The failure of the Bill in that regard is bizarre. A judicial review challenging the exclusion of the Chagossians from meaningful consultation has been heard, and we are awaiting the judgment, as many noble Lords have mentioned. The arguments have concluded and the ruling is imminent—possibly as soon as 12 January, one week’s time—yet the Government are pressing ahead regardless. This is not a technicality; it is a vital democratic safeguard. Proceeding with legislation and a treaty ratification before the court has ruled raises serious constitutional concerns.

Can the Minister say why this debate has been tabled before the court ruling has been delivered? Why not wait one week? Why has the usual three-day rule between Report and Third Reading been ignored? Other noble Lords raised this point. Do the Government wish to conclude the treaty and lock in the transfer before the court has had its say, possibly in favour of the Chagossians’ right to self-determination? If this is not the Government’s intention, they must explain their actions to this House.

[Lord Bellingham (Con)]

My Lords, I will please the Government by being extremely brief, because I spoke at length at Second Reading and in Committee and have contributed to every Question we have had on this subject.

I agree entirely with the noble Baronesses, Lady Hoey and Lady Meyer. Why do we have this indecent rush? Why can the Government not wait until the UK High Court case judgment? Why are we having Third Reading so quickly after Report? I just do not understand why the Government are pushing this so quickly, particularly when they know that many noble Lords and noble Baronesses are still away for the first part of this week.

Two very important developments have taken place, which have been referred to already, particularly by the noble Lord, Lord Hannan. The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has 18 independent experts. Their role is to monitor the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. It is an important UN committee in Geneva—as a tribunal, it is equivalent to a court within the wider UN family—and its opinion is advisory.

I suggest to the two Ministers that they have made great play of the fact that, even though the other two UN court decisions were advisory, the Government felt compelled, for many reasons, to go along with them. We heard a lot about the rules-based system—although I do not know where that stands now after what has happened in Venezuela. We heard a lot about the global South and about our reputation in the UN. The Government have said that, for those reasons and many others, they have to go with those UN advisory judgments. Why are those judgments different from this one? If the Government are taking those advisory decisions so seriously, why do they not pause and listen to what the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has just said in what was, frankly, an excoriating judgment? Anyone who reads it can go away concluding only that this UN committee is very concerned about the treatment of the Chagossian people.

I would certainly echo the points made by a number of noble Lords—it is excellent to see my noble friend Lord Lilley here, after his travails in getting here from France—but one thing that struck me when I first dealt with this case as the Minister for the Overseas Territories, when I started meeting different groups of Chagossian people, was the extraordinary way in which they were forgiving of the UK Government in spite of the way in which they had been treated. Surely, therefore, Amendment 32 is not asking for a great deal. They deserve a referendum.

My second point concerns something else that has changed significantly in terms of the overall climate in which we are looking at this matter: the Chagossian Government who have been set up in exile. I have had a look at them. Every single one of the Chagossian groups that has commented on this initiative has said that this is a very good idea indeed. Some of the many aspects of dealing with the Chagossian people have been the in-fighting between different factions, the number of factions in different countries and the extent to which they often do not agree on anything. However, they agree on one thing: that this Chagossian Government in exile are a good thing and should be listened to. They are taking it incredibly seriously. In that spirit, we have had two major changes in the overall situation: first, the UN committee in Geneva; and, secondly, the setting up of this Government in exile.

For those reasons, I very much hope that the Minister will agree to postpone the whole progress of this Bill. I also urge the House to vote for Amendment 32—because that would send an incredibly strong signal not just to the Chagossian people, that we feel deeply about them, but to the Government—so that we can have a proper referendum, hear and consult the Chagossians and make up for some of the wrongs of the past.

80th Anniversary of Victory in Europe and Victory over Japan

Baroness Meyer Excerpts

Friday 9th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Meyer (Con)]

My Lords, it is very humbling to speak after 20 such excellent speeches, of course including the maiden speech by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Peterborough. I shall centre my remarks on VJ day, a victory that is further from the minds and memory of many in Britain. Comparatively little has been said about the war against Japan, yet it was arguably even more brutal, contributing to more than 30 million deaths.

It is not just the numbers: it is the method of warfare. The torture and cruelty inflicted by the Imperial Japanese Army were among the most sadistic in modern history. The experiences of those who endured those atrocities were so horrific that many, like my father, never spoke of them. My father survived only because of the atomic bomb, as awful as it is. He never spoke of his experiences, except once briefly on a chairlift in the mountains. The conversation lasted no more than 10 minutes. In that short time, I glimpsed the horror, sadistic beatings, disease, medical experiments, malnutrition and inhuman conditions. He kept his mind alive only by teaching French to a fellow prisoner, who in turn taught him Russian. He was one of the lucky ones and was released after seven months. He weighed 46 kilos. He was convinced that, had the war lasted any longer, he would not have survived. Yet these stories remain largely untold.

The memories differ vastly between nations. Germany has confronted its past through Auschwitz memorials and public remembrance. Japan’s memories tend to centre primarily on Hiroshima. Its memorials honour the dead, but not the crimes. Perhaps this reflects the deeper cultural divide between western guilt culture, rooted in Christianity, and Japan’s reverence for its emperor. In Germany, Hitler was viewed as a monstrous aberration; in Japan, the emperor was worshipped. Japan did not issue an explicit apology until 1992. The silence around Japan’s war crimes was sealed over, with experiences left unspoken and often unresolved.

That silence came at a cost. For my father and many like him it meant a life marked by trauma never healed. He died at the age of 97 in 2009. I knew very little about what he had endured. Once a lively, outgoing and sportive man, as photographs testify, the father I knew was quiet, solitary and often unwell. The toll of what he had endured was written into his body and his soul. Apart from that conversation, he never spoke of his experiences, but the images I retain from that brief exchange told me all I could ever need to know.

Like most Allied prisoners of war held in Japanese camps, he received no mental health support. Post-traumatic stress was neither recognised nor discussed. Seeking help, especially for a man raised by the Jesuits, was seen as weakness, so he, like many others, carried his burden in silence. He never complained, he simply carried on. My father received several distinguished decorations for his war service and bravery. I discovered his medals tucked in a drawer only after his death. He never sought recognition.

His quiet resilience and that of his fellow prisoners reminds us of a different kind of endurance, forged in unimaginable hardship. Their generation bore suffering with remarkable dignity. Were my father here today, he would tell us that we need to spend more on defence. How often when I was a child did he tell me that all the signs were there in 1936, but no one wanted to believe that war was about to happen again. So will the Minister say what steps this Government are going to take to ensure that future generations understand the lesser-known sacrifice made by those who fought and suffered in the Far East, so that no child forgets what our parents and grandparents went through?