UK-Mauritius Agreement on the Chagos Archipelago

Lord Bellingham Excerpts

Monday 30th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bellingham (Con)]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, who, although I do not always agree with her, was obviously very well briefed and is always wise and conscientious. I congratulate the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Prentis, on a superb maiden speech. Having worked with her in the other place, I welcome her presence here. Likewise, it is very sad to see that her father is now standing down after an incredibly illustrious career.

Almost exactly to the day 15 years ago, I was appointed as the FCO Minister for Africa and the overseas territories, in succession to the very much missed Baroness Kinnock. The very first briefing I had on my first day was by the overseas territories directorate on the Chagos Islands. Although we discussed mainly a feasibility study to look at the possibility of Chagossians being resettled on the outer islands, we also looked at the marine protected area, which the previous Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, had signed in February 2010.

I was also briefed on some of the legalities of the situation. One point that has not been mentioned is that when the original grant of sovereignty was made to Mauritius—at the time of the treaty which gave Mauritius independence—it was paid a significant sum of money, £1.5 million, to forgo any specific further claim on the Chagos Islands. That £1.5 million now would be worth £40 million to £50 million or so on the inflation index.

I asked the officials what would happen if the UK was taken to the ICJ, the PCA or UNCLOS. I do not think I am in any way breaking the Official Secrets Act by repeating what was said. I was told that unless we agreed in advance to be bound by any decision, the decision would not be binding. If we do agree to be bound—and we could have agreed to this—then I would refer the Minister to Chapter XIV of the UN charter, which authorises the UN Security Council to enforce those court judgments. It is always subject to a veto, however, by the P5, so we could have vetoed it.

I also refer the Minister to the 1986 case of Nicaragua v the United States. It was a discretionary and non-binding decision against the US. As a result of that, however, the US withdrew from the court except on an ad hoc basis—that, I gather, is still the case.

There is another point that has not been mentioned. We ratified our membership of the UN in October 1945 and decolonisation started to get under way in the late 1950s to early 1960s. In 1960 we launched a protocol to the UN whereby we stated that we would not agree in future to be a party to any proceedings involving post-colonial disputes—what good advice that was from the officials at the time; how prescient of them to look at what future disputes might entail, including compensation from aggrieved individuals or boundary disputes.

The advice I got at the time was that we had an incredibly strong moral and legal case and, in any event, if we agreed to be bound by a decision, we could always end up going down the veto route. Above all else, we did not have to agree to a case being binding on the UK.

A lot of this was about discretion and putting our national interests first, and I feel very strongly that at the time we were in a position whereby national interests would always be put first by future Governments. I entirely accept that events have moved on, and a lot of people have talked about the 11 rounds of negotiations that were entered into by the previous Foreign Secretary and the one before him, James Cleverly. However, the very fact that we could not reach an agreement indicates that they had a bottom line.

The noble Lord, Lord Cameron, has made it very clear that his absolute bottom line was twofold: one was a role for the Chagossians as employees on the base and maybe looking again at a resettlement scheme, because we have heard from a number of noble Lords and Baronesses that they have been disgracefully treated over many years; the second was the question of why we did we not go for a sovereign base area. The noble Lord, Lord Cameron, made it clear that without a sovereign base area in perpetuity, the UK Government would not have signed up to this. In the case of Cyprus, we signed up to a sovereign base area. If we had signed up for a 99-year lease in the case of Cyprus, in about 20 years’ time that would be reaching the end of its term; think of all the complications and difficulties that would arise from that.

Finally, on the money, I certainly think that if I was a Labour MP in a marginal constituency, deeply concerned about austerity, cuts to welfare and the health service, I would be looking at the amount of money going into this; £3 million, using the inflation index, is around £25 million over the period. I would be deeply concerned about value for money. On the basis that we do not have a sovereign base area as a result of this treaty and the huge amount of money being spent on something we did not have to spend it on, I will be joining my noble friend in voting for his Motion.