Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what recent discussions he has with the UK Ambassador to the UN regarding the UN vote on the legal status of the Chagos Islands.

Ministers and officials have discussed the question of the UN vote regularly. Those discussions, where appropriate, have included our Permanent Representative to the UN. The UK has no doubts about our sovereignty over the British Indian Ocean Territory. In my Written Statement of 26 June, I made clear that this is an inappropriate use of the International Court of Justice advisory mechanism and should be resolved bilaterally between the UK and Mauritius.