Stuart Anderson

I am delighted to be called so early. I will speak to the amendments in the name of the official Opposition, specifically on the reports going to the Intelligence and Security Committee, especially on security of the buffer zones, foreign security forces, military operations and personnel movements. The ceding of Diego Garcia is a monumental strategic error that will diminish the UK’s standing on the world stage, and I will gladly set out why I believe that is the case. If anybody thinks they can predict what will happen in the next five years, they have learned nothing from the last five years. When we start extending that to 10-plus years in the current global geopolitical situation, that is so hard to look at. Everybody is playing by a set of rules and working to a past system, which is currently changing. Strategic leadership is the ability to shape the environment we are in. Let us take two strategic leaders, regardless of our view of them at the moment: President Trump and Xi Jinping. They both want the world to change from where it is, and they want to adjust the shape of what it looks like. The world is currently seeing a disruption to the world order as we know it. The international rules-based order is being challenged. We are setting out a deal and a treaty based on an older system that we being asked to believe will be honoured for the next 99 years, but I do not believe it will be.