British Indian Ocean Territory

Lord Selsdon Excerpts

Wednesday 27th November 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Selsdon (Con)]

My Lords, about an hour and a half ago a charming lady came up to me and said, “I wonder if I could persuade you to speak in my debate”. It was the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker. I realised that the rest of my party had gone off to some smart dinner, while I was going to eat quietly here, but what the noble Baroness did not know is that I have a great affection for Mauritius.

When I was in the banking world we dealt with most of the world’s countries, including the Commonwealth ones, and I used to allocate Easter for an adventure and take my small son with me. One year, that adventure was to Mauritius to see whether we could help it compete with the Seychelles on tourism. I happened to mention it to Lord Jellicoe, who was the Leader of the House. He said, “They’ve got sugar over there. Go and have a look round, will you?”. Anyway, I went with my family, including my five year-old son.

I arrived at the airport to find a crowd there, rather as it was for the noble Lord, Lord Luce. The crowd was clapping, cheering and waving and a man came up to me and said, “How nice to meet you. My name’s Ramgoolam—I am the premier. How nice of you to come. Have you come to look into sugar? But why don’t you enjoy yourself on holiday? I’ve made a booking for you in a hotel and here’s my driver Dypoo, who will take you around and show you things”. We had a really wonderful time and 10 years later, Dypoo became one of my international spies—he was driving the ambassadors in Washington. However, I fell in love with the place. It was not really the most suitable for sugar but, at that time, tourism was on the make. The Seychelles had grabbed everything, rather as the Maldives have now, and Mauritius was a bit flat. However, we happened to own Thomas Cook and managed to do some help out there.

Being an islander, I have always had affection for islands. I love the sea and coastlines. One thing I keep citing in your Lordships’ House is that if you take the coastlines of the Commonwealth, it has 60% of the total in the world. In the Mauritian area of the Indian Ocean there are 112,000 kilometres of coastline. What do the seas mean to us? In fact, they mean fish, which is effectively one of the highest added-value products in the world at the moment. Your Lordships will be aware that illegal fishing is now estimated to be at between $10 billion and $24 billion per annum, and that there is worry about the depletion of fish stocks. Going with that illegal fishing, there is then the piracy and extortion taking place worldwide. If you take a view of the islands in that part of the world, it becomes quite a significant business.

I speak of Mauritius but I do not know the other islands. I have them all plotted on a map; I have the coastlines and the population of each, the distances they cover, whether the coral is good or not and whether any underground cables were laid there. But it is an important place as a staging post, as the United States reckons. We should not forget that RAF Gan, as I think it was called, used to be there. As an island nation, dependent on the sea and with our own large fishing fleet, we cannot ignore it. At the moment, our own fleet is 21% of the world’s fleet and has 27% of its gross tonnage. Mauritius has 49 vessels totalling 53,000 tonnes.

It is in the maritime sector that we could attach much importance to our relationship with this place, which I love and to which I would like to find a reason to go back again. There was a moment there when I saw someone on a stick and a bit of board, windsurfing. I had never seen a windsurfer before. In a short time, I had fallen in again and again but there was my small son, aged five, windsurfing on the back of some door or other with a Mauritian boy. I fell in love with that place, as I do with any islands. When I look at the whole Indian Ocean I say that we should have a political, economic and commercial strategy of our own. The Indian Ocean is important. I have not come to piracy yet, which is a favourite subject, but that will be for another day.