Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, how many (a) meetings and (b) discussions (i) he and (ii) Ministers from his Department have had with their Mauritian counterparts since July 2024.

The Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary met the then Mauritian Prime Minister in London on 23 July 2024, and negotiating rounds led to political agreement between the Prime Minister and then Mauritian Prime Minister on 3 October 2024. The Prime Minister's Special Envoy for BIOT negotiations, Jonathan Powell, and Prime Minister Ramgoolam met on 25 November 2024. The Attorney General met with the Mauritian Attorney General on 16 January 2025, and I also had a separate call with the Mauritian AG on this date. The Prime Minister spoke with Prime Minister Ramgoolam on 31 January 2025. This engagement has been supplemented by numerous official level meetings, and joint statements from the UK and Mauritian governments were issued on 20 December 2024 and 13 January 2025. We do not hold a centralised list of all meetings relating to Chagos sovereignty, and the number of such meetings, and Ministers and senior officials involved, would make it disproportionately costly to put such a list together.