Diego Garcia Military Base and British Indian Ocean Territory Bill

Debate between Phil Brickell and Luke Evans

2nd reading
Tuesday 9th September 2025 Commons Chamber

[Dr Luke Evans]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Phil Brickell]

I will make some progress, if I may. I wanted to intervene on Opposition Members earlier, but was not allowed to.

It was the Conservatives who rightly described the situation in 2022 as unsustainable, and it was they who held 11 rounds of talks on sovereignty. In 2023, when he was Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Richmond and Northallerton (Rishi Sunak) said that he wanted to conclude a deal soon. At the time, when they were in government, Conservative Members recognised that the base’s legal status was under serious threat, and that an interminable sovereignty dispute risked paralysing operations.

Let me make a quick point about international law. In reflecting on the ICJ advisory opinion, the right hon. Member for Witham (Priti Patel) said that it is an international court that few have heard of. Those kinds of reckless throwaway remarks undermine the United Nations’ highest judicial organ. She mentioned that we are a permanent member of the UN Security Council. There are judges sitting in the ICJ who are elected by members of the General Assembly, and through the Security Council. Although we have had judges sitting in that international court since its inception, we have not since 2018, which is a source of much shame for the country at large. I hope that she will take back those remarks denigrating the international system of law that underpins our international work. Let us not forget, after all, that in the 1940s, the United Kingdom was the first country to submit a case for arbitration by the ICJ. [Interruption.] I ask those Opposition Members who are chuntering: where were you when those 11 rounds of negotiations took place? I know that two years is a long time in politics, but have you already forgotten—