Diego Garcia Military Base and British Indian Ocean Territory Bill

Lord Beamish Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 4th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Beamish (Lab)]

My Lords, as a former Defence Minister and current chair of the ISC, I recognise the vital importance of the base on Diego Garcia. It is significant because of its strategic location. It has been vital in combating some of the most serious threats against us and our allies, including from terrorism and hostile states. It has a unique capability of collecting data, which has been used to counter terrorism both abroad and at home. It has made our security, not only ours but that of our allies, greater. It is also a strategically vital logistics hub and protects some strategic shipping lanes. On national security, we usually have consensus across the House, both here and in the other place. Therefore, I am saddened and disappointed that the Official Opposition are using this as a political football on such a vital interest, not just to us but to our allies.

There have been four main issues put forward against the Bill. One is the legal issue around sovereignty; the second is cost; the third is the threat from China; and the fourth is the way in which the Chagossian people have been treated. In opening, my noble friend Lady Chapman outlined the issues around the legal uncertainty surrounding the Diego Garcia base. The excellent report of the International Agreements Committee— I congratulate Members who were involved in it—covers those in good detail but, like all legal questions, there are different opinions. Clearly, the committee took evidence from different opinions in its work and Professor Richard Ekins KC was of the opinion that the ICJ opinion was not legally binding.

As has already been said by the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, Sir Christopher Greenwood said that he could envisage at least two possible routes to make that agreement binding. Clearly, there is a division; there is uncertainty, and that is what the Bill is about, as was said by the Minister in opening the debate, and that is why the last Government entered into negotiations on this.

On the issue around sovereignty, what I find difficult is this. James Cleverly, the Foreign Secretary at the time, said on 3 November, as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, that negotiations would begin

“on the exercise of sovereignty over the British Indian Ocean Territory”

and that it was the Government’s

“intention to secure an agreement on the basis of international law”.—[Official Report, Commons, 3/11/22; col. 27WS.]

The then Government were clear about discussing sovereignty, as the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, said. The rhetoric from the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, is that this is the sovereignty surrender Bill; I challenge the Conservative party to say what has changed in that time, when it was quite clear that the last Government were going to discuss the sovereignty of the Chagos Islands.

The noble Lords, Lord Lilley and Lord Blencathra, said that it was all those nasty people at the Foreign Office who have basically bamboozled Ministers of both Governments, but I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, that the Conservatives would have come to a similar conclusion: if they had been returned to office, this Bill would have been put forward.

Secondly, on the issue around costs, the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, did the usual trick of adding up all this money to get to £35 billion to give the impression that this money will be paid out tomorrow, when it will be over 100 years. This investment underpins the already huge investment that not only we have put into the Diego Garcia base but, more importantly, the Americans, and will continue to do for years to come. The committee report mentioned Djibouti, as did the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, and possible issues around size, but this is not an unusual arrangement. However, the joint agreement gives certainty to ourselves and our American allies to invest in the future of that vital capability.

Thirdly, on China, there is a lot of hyperbole spoken on this issue—and not just on this Bill. A lot of ill- informed comment is often portrayed as fact. I urge noble Lords to look at our ISC report of 2023 on China. Yes, China is a threat. Is it a threat to Diego Garcia now? Yes, it is. Will it be in the future? Yes, it will be. But the Bill does nothing to make that more likely. On the issue of China, who is Mauritius’s main interlocutor? It is India. Our Five Eyes partners have all agreed this and think it is a good way forward. It has been suggested that Mauritius will have a veto over military operations; no, it will not, if we look at the Bill—it will have the same rights as the Republic of Cyprus in terms of the sovereign base areas. If military action takes place, people will be informed afterwards. That is not giving it a veto. The idea that China will somehow get close to our very valuable assets there is not the case, because for the first time the outer islands, which are vulnerable, will be secured; that is something we should welcome. It also underpins the strategy of working with our Pacific partners to ensure that we face down China in that part of the world.

Fourthly, on the Chagossian people, I think everyone agrees that the way they have been treated over decades has been completely shameful. This agreement makes a movement forward—as my noble friend said, the funding coming forward allows some limited resettlement —but I urge those Chagossians listening not to be fooled by the Conservative Front Bench. I spent 23 years in the House of Commons, and the only person who consistently raised this issue was the Member for Islington North, Jeremy Corbyn. I never heard a single Member on the Conservative Benches, so it is clearly political opportunism to say now that, somehow, they care about the Chagossian people; they do not at all. I would be very wary about that being put forward.

This is an important Bill. The agreement has the support of our Five Eyes partners and of regional players. Please, if we are talking about national security, this is too vitally important to be kicked around, as it is being, as a political football. We need this Bill. It gives a secure future for our continued occupation of Diego Garcia and, more importantly, the facilities that it brings to keep us all safe.

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[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

My Lords, to pick up on a theme identified by the noble Lord, Lord Browne of Ladyton, and as identified by my honourable friend Tom Tugendhat on 9 September, when he noted in his speech at Second Reading of this Bill in the other place, yes, negotiations were commenced under the last Government. As Ministers, both he and I wrote to the Prime Minister—both Prime Ministers—to complain about the decision to institute those negotiations. We were right: the treaty was not one that should have been considered then, and it is not one that should be considered now; the whole principle was wrong then, and it is wrong now.

Why do I say that? The main rationale for handing over the islands is that an international tribunal—the International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea—may abuse its jurisdiction in treating the ICJ’s advisory opinion as if it had established, as a matter of binding international law, that Mauritius was sovereign over the British Indian Ocean Territory. As I said when the House debated the treaty on 30 June, the risk of an adverse judgment and the real risk to the operation of the UK-US airfield at Diego Garcia are very significantly overplayed by those who favour this treaty. The ICJ had no such power and did not, in fact, reach the conclusion that Chagos should be transferred to Mauritius. Its advisory opinion left open other courses of action on the UK’s part other than surrender of the islands to Mauritius.

Mauritius cannot, as a matter of international law, secure a binding judgment before an international tribunal establishing that it is sovereign over the Chagos Islands, because the United Kingdom is not required to consent to a dispute of this nature being adjudicated by the International Court of Justice. Accordingly, if I might expand on the point made by my noble friend Lord Lilley, the Government explained their position by saying that they anticipated that another tribunal—as I said, specifically the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, which, I may add, has no jurisdiction over questions of sovereignty over territory—will presuppose that the ICJ’s 2019 advisory opinion has settled that Mauritius is sovereign, and will thus proceed to exercise its jurisdiction in relation to disputes about the law of the sea on the premise that Mauritius, rather than the United Kingdom, is sovereign. Yet how can this be, since there is not a word about sovereignty over the Chagos Islands in that advisory opinion of the ICJ?

We must be in no doubt that the Government, on their own account, are handing over a priceless strategic asset and trampling over the Chagossian people as they do so, because they want to avoid being on the wrong end of a potential future abuse of adjudication. However, this is a premature and wholly unnecessary surrender that blazes a trail for other abuses of the ICJ’s advisory jurisdiction to be leveraged into future United Kingdom defeats and compromise of our vital interests. We need to resist now, not only for our national security and that of our global allies but also to refute this abuse of law.

Furthermore, the deal is a terrible one, for the reasons ably outlined by my noble friend Lord Blencathra. Some of the examples are that the terms of the treaty provide very little in the way of leverage or protection for the UK. We cannot, for example, withhold payments for a breach of the terms that nominally protect our interests, and there is no machinery to enforce Mauritius’s commitments. Instead, Mauritius will be well placed to take our money and to reach accommodations with other states in relation to the archipelago that are injurious to our interests.

[Lord Beamish (Lab)]

I am following the noble Lord very closely, and I do not disagree with some of the points is making. Could he, however, clarify why it was that James Cleverly on 3 November said that the Government were to

“begin negotiations on the exercise of sovereignty over the British Indian Ocean Territory”?—[Official Report, Commons, 3/11/22; col. 27WS.]

Clearly, the Government then were talking about the sovereignty of the actual islands.

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

As I said earlier in my remarks, that was a decision with which I strongly disagreed then, and I strongly disagree now. He was plainly wrong in so saying.

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[Lord Beamish (Lab)]

Does my noble friend agree that this agreement also allows the Americans to forward plan for their investment, which, as she quite rightly says, is substantial?

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

Absolutely. I thought the point made by the former Secretary of State for Defence, my noble friend Lord Browne of Ladyton, added to this very well when he talked about how future investment is jeopardised by the legal uncertainty that we are seeking to resolve.

Some have questioned the use of defence money in particular for this treaty. To be absolutely clear, the cost will be split between the FCDO and the MoD, as is appropriate given the shared interests of both departments in maintaining the future of the base. As set out by the Defence Secretary in his Oral Statement on the treaty in the other place, the costs represent a fraction of a percentage of the total defence budget—less than 0.2%. It is a bit far-fetched to suggest that the annual payments are in any way comparable to the biggest uplift in defence spending that we have seen since the end of the Cold War.

The noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig of Radley, raised sea level change. I do not know why I am dealing with this in the money section, but this is where I have written it down so we might as well get it on the record. As he said, it is true that sea level change has been less than 1% over the past 50 years, but it would be helpful for us to explore in Committee how a future sea level change, which he quite rightly alerts us to, would be treated by the dispute resolution process. I do not have a clear answer to that tonight but that is what Committee is for: getting to the bottom of exactly those sorts of questions.

I will give the last word to the noble Lord, Lord Kerr. He made the very strong argument—it is not one that I had thought of, but I will definitely use it again—that this House voted in July to ratify the treaty. The Bill facilitates the enactment of this House’s wishes, because we voted in favour of the treaty. The Bill is necessary so that we can complete the ratification with Mauritius and therefore secure the critical military base on Diego Garcia. I thank noble Lords for their contributions and look forward to debating this in Committee.

Diego Garcia Military Base and British Indian Ocean Territory Bill

Lord Beamish Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 25th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, I totally support the amendments in the names of my noble friends Lord Callanan and Lady Goldie. The noble Lord, Lord Coaker, and the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, both know that I, as someone who was involved with direct negotiations, albeit in 2019, remained unconvinced of one specific element above all else—I remain unconvinced of it today—and that was the security protections that have just been so eloquently narrated by my noble friend Lady Goldie.

In associating myself with those amendments, I will also press ahead on the archipelago and the lay of the land beyond Diego Garcia. I draw attention to paragraph 3(a) of Annex 1, which says that

“vessels and aircraft of the United Kingdom and the United States of America shall have unrestricted rights of overflight, navigation and undersea access”.

That is clear. It continues:

“States operating with the United Kingdom or the United States of America shall also have such unrestricted rights, save in respect of overflight or undersea access, which require notification”.


We need a degree more clarification to unwrap that provision, particularly on passage to and from Diego Garcia and the lay of the other parts of the archipelago. Like my noble friend, I press the Minister to give the specific assurance, which I certainly feel should be within the agreements signed with Mauritius, that notification does not mean before the event but after.

[Lord Beamish (Lab)]

My Lords, I will speak on Amendment 67. This part of the agreement is being portrayed as though it has some type of special status. It is similar to the agreement we have with the sovereign base areas in Cyprus. The UK and our allies use Cyprus as a staging post for a number of operations outside the Republic of Cyprus. The way it operates there is that the Government of Cyprus are not informed prior to the use of that base but, like in this agreement, are informed afterwards. I accept the point about the use of “expeditiously”—what it means is worth debate—but the way I read this is that it is no different from other bases.

The noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, said she was nitpicking. To be fair to her, I do not think she is: she is trying to get clarity on this important point. We want to ensure that our forces and allies have free movement and use of the base under this treaty. I do not think that our United States allies would agree with the Bill and treaty if they in any way limited their use of the base, not only for actions against other parts of the world but in the siting of various pieces of equipment on those important islands. We look for some reassurance on that point, but it is important to have clarity. That would certainly allay some of the fears raised, quite legitimately by some people and by others as scaremongering against the Bill.

[Lord Bellingham (Con)]

My Lords, following on from the noble Lord, Lord Beamish, surely the fundamental difference with the two bases on Cyprus that he mentioned is that we kept them in perpetuity—they are sovereign bases. Yes, we have an arrangement with the Cypriot Government to inform them of activity after deployment takes place, but what concerns me about this particular lease arrangement is very simple.

At the moment, we have in place a Government in Mauritius headed by His Excellency Navin Ramgoolam, who is a democrat and a friend of his country. I had the privilege of meeting him a number of times when he was premier before. Indeed, he took over from a Government who were also democratic and had all the right intents. We had many arguments about this issue but, fundamentally, we were two democratic Governments discussing a matter.

The concern I have is this: what would happen if there were some sort of coup or a military Government in Mauritius? In these worst-case scenarios, we have to be prepared for the future. Let us hope for the best but prepare for the very worst. Could the Minister comment on what would happen to these arrangements in the treaty in that event? If, indeed, a military coup took place and an alliance was made with a hostile power, the operations of this base could be jeopardised.

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[Lord Weir of Ballyholme (DUP)]

My Lords, I rise to deal with Amendments 58, 61 and 62, which are, largely speaking, probing amendments.

My noble friend Lord Morrow raised the question of whether the Government have breached their manifesto; far be it from me to suggest that. There are even some scurrilous rumours that they will raise taxes, but that will clearly not be the case, and such rumours will obviously be disproved in the next few hours.

I and others have been very critical of the deal, the legislation and the approach that has been taken by the Government. We have been critical of the treatment of the Chagossian people on issues such as the right to self-determination and the ceding of sovereignty. It seems to me that the response that the Government will offer as a rationale is essentially that, whatever the position on those issues—and I appreciate the Government will dispute the position that I and others have put forward—the outweighing factor is the securing of our strategic defence within the area and, if that is got right, that will trump everything else.

That is why the amendments in this group are so important, as they try to put that to the test. My amendments and, indeed, a number of the others, try to seek assurances. I am using the word “assurances” as I am reminded of a phrase that a friend of mine would use when talking of “clarification”. He would say that the purpose of clarification is often not to make things clear but to put yourself in the clear. Instead, I will ask the Government for assurances on the issue of defence. Is what is being put forward—what is said on the tin—being met by what is delivered in respect of assurances?

As regards the amendments, I want to deal with three issues that are interrelated. First, I want to probe the position as regards the potential. We know what has been secured directly on Diego Garcia itself, but I want to probe on the potential for the Mauritius Government to enter into arrangements with third countries, to have a movement by those countries towards other islands by way of a leasing or some other arrangement, which may then descend into some form of military activity, with monitoring bases and things of that nature.

Earlier today, in answer to an Oral Question, the Minister rightly indicated that it would be wrong to speculate on potential future events. However, this is not an issue that simply appears in a vacuum. We know that the Mauritius Government have had relatively close relationships with Russia, for example, and have been in discussions with India, and that there are ongoing discussions with China. Indeed, it is reported in relation to one of the islands—Peros Banhos, if I am pronouncing that correctly—that there are discussions around a leasing arrangement. It is clear that Mauritius will look towards the Chagos Islands as an opportunity to work with a range of other Governments to lever in what they have been given.

Specifically, the concern is with regard to China. Where arrangements have been made between other jurisdictions and China, they have led, in a military sense, to a level of mission creep. We have seen that these things are beginning to happen. There are a number of examples, from Sri Lanka to Djibouti to the Solomon Islands. We need a belt and braces approach to how we are going to prevent any level of development around that side of things.

I know that the Minister will respond in part by saying that there is provision within the treaty that, should there be any sort of military arrangement, Mauritius would then have to notify the UK Government and that, effectively, the UK Government could say no to such an arrangement. However, there are a couple of concerns in relation to that. Amendment 58 therefore looks to see what practical measures can be taken. We need to flesh out in very clear-cut terms what we can do. The concern, of course, is that any notification by Mauritius might be post the event. We might see a situation in which something is, for example, leased to the Chinese, who then develop their own mission creep. Mauritius could then turn round and say that, “Actually, this has been leased out to them, and we do not know what they are doing, and they have gone beyond that”. We need to tease out from the Government what they intend to do in practice in a situation where, for example, a listening station was placed on one of the islands or there was a range of other realistic possibilities.

[Lord Beamish (Lab)]

What the noble Lord is saying is very interesting, but the treaty protects the outer islands from development. Mauritius is one of only two African countries that is not part of the belt and road initiative, so its main interlocuter is not China but India.

[Lord Weir of Ballyholme (DUP)]

We can pick which Government are looking to lever in additional influence in the area. I am simply saying that China has a particular record of reaching agreements with other countries to—

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[Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)]

My Lords, I will not detain the Committee for long, but I want to speak briefly to Amendments 20D, 20E and 20F from my noble friend Lord Kempsell and to Amendment 87 from my noble friend Lady Goldie. We have witnessed in recent decades an extraordinary alchemy in the South China Sea. Whole islands are called from the vasty deep, summoned like Brigadoon into existence, not by prayer but by the imperatives of Chinese geopolitics. Reefs are dredged into runways; lagoons are refashioned into naval installations; artificial islands are planted thickly with radar, missile systems and airstrips, and it is all done in the name of installing civilian infrastructure. None of those installations or airstrips is openly avowed as a military unit, so, when we hear that in this treaty there is an effective British veto for any kind of defence installation, I ask noble Lords to consider that no one is going to call it a defence installation. It is going to be done subtly, little by little, and it is going to be a much tougher proposition suddenly to object when we feel that a line has been crossed than at present when we have the unquestioned sovereignty over the entirety of the archipelago.

I did not want to misquote the US Secretary of State, so just after my exchange with the noble Lord, Lord Kerr of Kinlochard, I looked up what he said on taking office. In November of last year, he said that the deal

“poses a serious threat to our national security”.

Obviously, he has changed his tune; people are entitled to change their minds. I just invite noble Lords to ask why he might have changed his mind. Is it that he saw a blinding figure on the road to Damascus and heard a voice saying, “Go into Damascus”—I think Marco Rubio has changed his religion at least twice, so I mean no disrespect to our most important ally. Or is it not more likely that he has been worked on by this Government’s officials?

[Lord Beamish (Lab)]

Could it not also be that when he came into office, he had not received the security briefings from his own intelligence services and possibly then he saw the importance of getting this deal and the permanency which it gives to both us and the United States?

[Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)]

It is a very good point. I think there is a divergence, exactly as in this country, between the permanent apparat and the rest of the country, which would explain why my noble friend Lord Kempsell and the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, are speaking to very different sets of people. As the German ambassador to London in 1914 said to his French counterpart, “You have your information, we have ours”. It seems that there is at least a debate in the United States about this, and you can see why. As my noble friend Lord Bellingham said, there is a real prospect down the line that a future Mauritian Government may take a very different attitude towards the presence in the outer atolls of powers that are unfriendly to us. We have no assurance that we will always be on friendly terms with that republic.

The world is imperfect, I understand that. The world is sublunary. We are dealing with lesser evils, as is usually the case in politics. But when the Minister has justified this treaty and the treatment of the Chagossians, she has always done so by saying, “Our priority was the security of the base”. I just ask noble Lords on all sides to consider how this makes us more secure in an imperfect world than we are at present. We have obvious sovereignty over the entire region at the moment. We have the great advantage of its isolation. There is no prospect of anybody taking a leased island and putting any kind of listening infrastructure or anything else nearby. How does moving from where we are now to what is proposed in this treaty make us more secure, even if we set aside all the wrongs being done to the Brits of Chagossian origin?

I thought the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, was on to something when he asked, “What if the Americans were to change sides?” But I am not sure that quite makes the point he intended. I just invite noble Lords to consider the wholly pecuniary terms in which Mauritius has considered this territory: not as part of its own demos, not as part of its own nation, but as an investment and a way of raising money—of paving its streets with gold, as my noble friend said earlier. Would it not be the ultimate humiliation if Mauritius were to trouser the sum of money that we are now paying it and then to turn around and sell the base to the United States? Where would that leave this Government? I would love to hear the Minister’s reply.