UK-Mauritius Agreement on the Chagos Archipelago

Lord Boateng Excerpts

Monday 30th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Boateng (Lab)]

My Lords, I support the Motion in the name of my noble and learned friend Lord Goldsmith and thank him for his distinguished chairmanship of the committee of which I happen to be a member. I also thank the secretariat to that committee for all the hard work they put into producing this report under very challenging circumstances with regard to time. They are to be congratulated and the whole House owes them a debt of gratitude.

The noble Lord, Lord Murray of Blidworth, disputes the sovereignty of Mauritius. He is entitled to do that. I happen to disagree with him. But I wonder on what basis he asserts the sovereignty of the United Kingdom other than by force of arms—the same force of arms that is, as we speak, being utilised against the people of Ukraine by Russia. We have to be very careful—

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

Does the noble Lord agree that our claim to sovereignty stems from the treaty that we agreed in 1814?

[Lord Boateng (Lab)]

A treaty signed under duress.

Let us be very clear: these islands are African islands. These islands are inhabited by African people brought there as slaves in the economic interest of Britain and France. So, it ill behoves the noble Lord or any of us to assume a position of moral or ethical superiority when it comes to the Chagos Islands.

It must also be said, and I say so with great reluctance, to the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, for whom I have the utmost respect, that he described the Chagossians as a people about whom we know nothing. They are a people about whom we—

[Lord Mancroft (Con)]

I was not referring to the Chagossians.

[Lord Boateng (Lab)]

I am much obliged to the noble Lord, because we know a great deal about the Chagossians. We know that they have been the victims of abuse and deceit over many years. We know that they have been lied to. We know that they have been consistently mistreated, and, as the committee report makes very clear, we accept that there is some basis in reality that, over many years, the interests of the Chagossians have been subordinated to the national security interests of the United Kingdom and its allies. That is an undisputed fact.

I had the pleasure, as we all had, of listening to the valedictory speech of the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, who many of us know. I entered the other place at the same time as he did. His has been a period of service dedicated to the notion of humanity and decency. That is what we all try to uphold in this place, do we not? As we consider this treaty, we have a duty to uphold those values of humanity and decency when it comes to the people of the Chagos Islands.

I am bound to say to the Minister, who has done so much for this country and its reputation in Africa and the wider world, that we need a greater degree of certainty that the Chagossians are, in fact, going to be treated better now than they have been in the past, because they have been promised compensation in the past and they have not had it. We want to know that any procedures, any committees, any trust fund established under this treaty will be supervised in a way that ensures that the Chagossians benefit from it because, in the past, others in Mauritius have benefited, but the Chagossians have not. Certainly, the Chagossians in this country and the Seychelles have all too often been left out of consideration altogether. I hope the Minister will give us that assurance. If he does, we can welcome this treaty as an end to a period of colonial rule that has not always done this nation any credit. On the contrary, it has devalued our commitment to humanity and decency, and the people of the Chagos Islands are entitled to some redress for that.