Diego Garcia Military Base and British Indian Ocean Territory Bill

Debate between Graham Stringer and Iain Duncan Smith

Consideration of Lords amendments
Tuesday 20th January 2026 Commons Chamber

[Graham Stringer]

That is at the heart of what has gone wrong, and the right hon. Gentleman has been talking about it for a long time. The Chagossians were treated as itinerant workers in the 1960s, so they did not get the basic rights that people got in other British protectorates. They were discriminated against, and we are discriminating against them again by giving Mauritius the power to determine what goes on. The only solution to the central issue is not a survey, which the House of Lords is doing in good faith; it is to have a referendum, which has been ruled out of order today, for good reasons in procedural terms. We should give the Chagossians a say in a referendum on whether they want to return or not. Otherwise, it is all speculation.

I do not think the Minister explained why we should not take notice of the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. That is fundamental, because the Committee goes back to the 1960s decision, and it sees what happened then, and what is being perpetuated now, as racial discrimination, and we and the Mauritians are perpetuating that. My hon. Friend the Minister did not really respond to that point, just as he did not really address what has changed. I have listened to many of his statements in this House, when he has said in good faith that the United States supports us. Regardless of whether it did so in the past—it probably did—it certainly does not support us now. Those are two reasons for pausing and thinking again: becoming compliant with the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination; and talking to the United States, because it has changed its position.

The amendments before us would not affect the core of the Bill, because that was dealt with in a very short period of time on Second Reading, on Report and in Committee, but they are important in as much as they ask for information. We are going to pay for something that we did not used to have to pay for. It will have consequences for our ability to look after our defence interests in the Indian ocean, and we do not know how much it will cost. Amending the Bill to give us an exact figure for those costs is important. Lords amendment 1 is also important if for some reason Mauritius changes its view or the islands disappear under water. I do not have the opportunity this evening to vote for what I would like to vote for, but I will vote for the amendments that the Lords have put before us.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

I rise because in the previous debate we had on this, a question was posed to Ministers, and it has been asked again now: what are the reasons for this Bill? First, Ministers rested on one idea, which was all about how we had somehow received a binding judgment from the International Court of Justice, and this was therefore important because we had to stand by that. I remember it became clearer and clearer during that debate, particularly for some Members, that this simply was not correct. There is no binding judgment; it is an advisory judgment, because we have an opt-out for all matters to do with Commonwealth Governments. That is very clear, and it has been said by many judges and other learned legal people.

Some of my right hon. Friends, one of whom I see on the Front Bench, have raised other reasons in these debates. Beyond the ICJ judgment, we were told there were other issues, and that somehow if we did not do this we would face challenges under the United Nations convention on the law of the sea and by the International Telecommunication Union, which stands steadily. What is most interesting about all this is that, when pressed throughout, bit by bit Ministers’ arguments fell apart. These issues are very detailed, so I will not go into them now, but they will have to be raised in much more detail later.