British Indian Ocean Territory

Debate between Tim Roca and Julian Lewis

Wednesday 28th January 2026 Commons Chamber

[Tim Roca]

I disagree with the hon. Member, because the two situations do have parallels. In the South China sea, people are challenging Chinese sovereignty, and it has been proved not to have standing in international courts. At the moment, ambiguity is starting to arrive in our position over the Chagos islands. This treaty would remove it and remove cause for the Chinese navy to take advantage.

Against this backdrop, I want to restate the tests that I set out in an earlier debate on this deal. Does the agreement protect our national security? Does it command the support of our allies and professional security community? Are the costs proportionate to the benefits? On each of these tests, the answer remains yes. Diego Garcia is a keystone of our joint security architecture in the Indo-Pacific. It is where UK and US forces operate together against terrorist threats. It is a logistics, communications and intelligence hub, and it is central to safeguarding the global trade routes on which our economy depends. Without a secure base, all of that is placed at risk.

Our Five Eyes allies in Canada, Australia and New Zealand support this deal, and our strategic partner India supports this deal. I want to address briefly the noise around President Trump’s social media posts, which the Minister dealt with very well earlier. Social media is not statecraft. What matters is the settled position of the United States, its military leadership and its security agencies. On that, there has been clarity for some time. The Pentagon, the State Department and successive US Defence Secretaries—Republican and Democrat—have supported this agreement.

As I said at the beginning, interconnectedness is incredibly important and we cannot ignore the fact that international opinion matters. Yes, the world has changed. Power today is exercised through force—hard power has become incredibly important—but it is also still exercised through legitimacy, alliances and rules. If we expect others to respect international rules where it suits us, whether in Ukraine or the South China sea, we cannot be seen to apply them selectively elsewhere, except in the supreme national interest.

[Sir Julian Lewis]

I am a great admirer of the hon. Gentleman; he is courteous and thoughtful, and I always listen to what he says with great focus and attention. He is criticising the dangers of ambiguity, and I agree with that point. Does he accept, however, that we have not cleared up the ambiguity about whether nuclear weapons could ever be on Diego Garcia if the Americans and the British wanted them to be? It is no good saying, as the Minister did, “We never talk about deployments of nuclear weapons.” We are not asking about deployments of nuclear weapons. We are asking about the legal position if the case was that the Americans or the British wanted to have nuclear weapons, temporarily or permanently, on Diego Garcia. If we transfer sovereignty to a country that is signed up to be part of a nuclear-free zone, that is bound to call into doubt the ability to have nuclear weapons there in the future. Can he clear up that point?

[Tim Roca]

I cannot clear up that point for the right hon. Member, but I have great confidence that ministerial colleagues would be able to. We have been told at all points that this treaty would ensure the continued effectiveness of the base in the way that it is run now. There was an Ohio class submarine there in 2022, and I hope those arrangements continue under this treaty. From what I have heard from Ministers, there is no reason that they would not.

Let us turn to the costs of the deal. It will cost a fraction of the defence budget for an irreplaceable asset—

Diego Garcia Military Base and British Indian Ocean Territory Bill

Debate between Tim Roca and Julian Lewis

2nd reading
Tuesday 9th September 2025 Commons Chamber

[Tim Roca]

I thank the hon. Member for raising that important aspect. We should all be honest that, as was put powerfully by my hon. Friend the Member for Crawley (Peter Lamb), our country’s history with the Chagossians has been very poor—if we look at some of the diplomatic cables from the 1960s, we see that disgraceful language was used—but I was reassured by what Ministers said about the preamble of the treaty and some of the provisions put in place.

It is a matter of fact that the previous Government were in negotiations with Mauritius over this issue. That was the case, and there will have been motivations for their doing that. I am worried about how our other overseas territories are being dragged into this. A couple of months ago, I was in Gibraltar with colleagues who privately told me they were horrified that party politics were being played with their communities. I am glad to see that Gibraltar’s Chief Minister was clear on the record that there was “no possible read across” to Gibraltar, and the Governor of the Falklands said that the

“historical contexts…are very different.”

I am confident that we meet the three tests.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Tim Roca]

No, I am afraid that I will not.

In closing, I believe that the three tests have been met: the treaty meets our national security requirements, it has the backing of our allies, and it comes at a reasonable cost. It would be very dangerous for us to dither or delay any longer in view of the potential threat to that base.