Oral Answers to Questions

Tom Tugendhat Excerpts

Tuesday 27th October 2026 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Foreign Secretary.

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge) (Con)]

Mr Speaker, I hope you will indulge me as I say a very quick thank you to the Clerk of the House, who is in his place and who was my Clerk on the Foreign Affairs Committee. He is probably more to blame for me standing here today than many other people in the House.

May I ask the Foreign Secretary whether he now accepts the Bill in the name of Lord Weir that has passed in the Lords?

[Ed Miliband]

Let me add my congratulations and thanks to the Clerk of the House. On the Chagos islands, which the right hon. Gentleman is referring to, we have always sought to find a way forward that protects our base at Diego Garcia; that is the most important thing, and I would have thought that aim was shared by Members from across the House. As has become clear, under this US Administration, we will not get consent for the current arrangements, but we continue to work with the US and Mauritius to safeguard our security interests.

[Tom Tugendhat]

I thank the Foreign Secretary for his comments. The reason I asked about the vote in the Lords is this: there seems to be a real problem with the way that we approach this debate. The will of Parliament, as expressed in the Lords only last week and in treaties signed in the ’60s and ’80s, is being superseded by courts that have no mandate over the issues that are being debated. I ask him again: does he accept the will of this Parliament—the elected will of the British people—or does he instead seek to accept the now politicised will of courts that have Russian and Chinese judges, and are fundamentally mis-shaping and distorting agreements that were signed decades ago? We have seen what China has done, from locking up Jimmy Lai to threatening the Marine reserves that he claims to champion. Whose side is the Foreign Secretary on?

[Ed Miliband]

I gently remind the right hon. Gentleman that the House of Commons has primacy in our legislative arrangements. That is a long-standing convention, I would say. On his point about the courts, at a time when international law is under threat across the world, we should be defenders of international law, and we absolutely believe that maintaining a base at Diego Garcia is consistent with that.