UK-Mauritius Agreement on the Chagos Archipelago

Lord Mancroft Excerpts

Monday 30th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mancroft (Con)]

My Lords, the speakers’ list appears to be almost as fictional as the agreement that we are discussing, so your Lordships will forgive me for jumping up earlier.

The international court’s advisory opinion is clearly based on its conclusion that the sovereignty of Mauritius and the Chagos Islands is indivisible; hence they must now be returned to Mauritius. The noble Lord, Lord McDonald, just gave us a little history on that. But my reading of it is slightly different: the Chagos Islands were never part of Mauritius, although they were jointly administered from Mauritius and, in part, directly from London from when they came under British control in 1814 to 1965. However, joint administration is not the same thing as collective sovereignty.

While no two examples are ever the same, there are some other similar examples. The Turks and Caicos Islands were annexed to Jamaica in 1873 and administered as a Jamaican dependency until 1962, when Jamaica was granted independence, at which point the Turks and Caicos became a Crown colony administered from the Bahamas, in exactly the same way that the Chagos Islands were administered from Mauritius. When the Bahamas gained independence in 1973, no one suggested that the Turks and Caicos were part of Jamaica or the Bahamas, and they remained a Crown colony until they attained full independence.

The Cayman Islands have a similar history. They were uninhabited until occupied by Europeans and they came under British control from 1670. They were administered as a Crown colony of Jamaica until Jamaican independence in 1962, when they became a separate Crown colony. At no point did either Jamaica or anybody else attempt to argue that either the Turks and Caicos or the Cayman Islands were part of Jamaica. Whatever the International Court of Justice may say, it is very difficult not to conclude that its opinion is based on a misunderstanding of the facts. Mauritius has never had sovereignty over the Chagos Islands; while they may have been jointly administered, they have always been completely separate entities.

That the Chagos Islands are of great strategic importance to the United Kingdom and, to an even greater extent, to the United States, is agreed by all parties. They are clearly valued; beautiful and environmentally valuable though they undoubtedly are, they have little or no economic value. It is therefore as a base from which to conduct naval and air operations, and as a communication hub, that they must be valued. For some pretty uninhabitable islands in the middle of the Indian Ocean, they do seem to be quite valuable.

The ICJ’s opinion is that the UK should return them to Mauritius—although, as I said, Mauritius has never actually owned them—but it says nothing about the UK giving Mauritius eye-watering sums of money. Of course, in return for giving eye-watering sums of money, we are buying a lease.

Much has been made of President Trump’s apparent approval of this deal, which is not at all surprising. The UK has bought a very expensive lease, to which the United States does not seem to be contributing, to acquire an airbase largely for American use. It is a great deal for the United States but less so for us.

There is, of course, a better way of doing this but, unsurprisingly, this commercially ignorant Government do not seem to have thought of it. The British and Mauritian Governments have agreed that a 99-year lease of Diego Garcia is apparently worth £3.4 billion; everyone else thinks the real figure is £30 billion. As my noble friend Lord Howell said, we need a bit of clarity, because that is an extraordinary stretch of figures. Let us assume that the Government’s figure was reached using Rachel from accounts’ wonky pocket calculator. Either way, it is going to make the black hole inherited by the noble Lord, Lord Livermore, a great deal blacker.

Governing, like everything else in life, is always a question of priorities. In this case, the Government have decided that obeying the edicts of an international court and paying a great deal of money to do it is the priority. The Prime Minister and the Attorney-General—both lawyers but of demonstrably poor political judgment—have decided that settling a legal dispute in a far-away court between people of whom we know nothing, takes priority over the interests of the British people, for whom this is not a good deal. They have got their priorities wrong.

Surely a better solution is to sell the Chagos Islands to Mauritius for whatever the market deems a fair price for the freehold, which will obviously be rather greater than the leasehold value. If the Americans want their base, let them negotiate a new lease with the Mauritian Government, who will in any case be looking for a big mortgage to fund their freehold purchase. Is President Trump, with his lifetime of expertise in property, not the ideal man to do that deal? Thus, Mauritius will get the Chagos Islands, the international court’s opinion will be adhered to, the Americans will get to keep Diego Garcia, and the British taxpayer will not get fleeced again and may even make a buck or two, which would be a nice change. That way, everyone is a winner.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.