Diego Garcia Military Base

Bernard Jenkin Excerpts

Thursday 22nd May 2025 Commons Chamber

[John Healey]

I do indeed. This is a base that has saved British lives for over 50 years. It has saved the lives of people at home in this country, because it has been the launchpad from which we have defeated terrorist attacks. It has also been the launchpad for protecting and saving the lives of British forces when they have been deployed to war zones around the world. This deal, which we signed today, means we can continue to exercise the full control necessary to continue to do that for the century to come.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

May I, in all candour, suggest to the Government that having now introduced this new element—the UN convention on the law of the sea and, I presume, the associated International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea—as the decisive factor that might have created a binding ruling, it really is incumbent on the Government to set out in a statement exactly how it would have affected the electromagnetic spectrum or our ability to use it in Diego—[Interruption.] The Foreign Secretary might just calm down for a minute. I just want a proper explanation.

I make this forecast. To cut personal independence payments and winter fuel allowances to pay billions of pounds for something that was already British sovereign territory—how is the Secretary of State going to explain that on the doorstep to all his party’s voters? I promise you, we will make sure that they never hear the end of it.

[John Healey]

The hon. Gentleman might just like to remember this and make the comparison: the total cost over the 99 years of the deal we have struck to protect this space and British control over it is less than the value of the personal protective equipment that was unusable and that was burned because the last Government bought it in the first year of the covid pandemic.