Contribution
I understand that that is part of the treaty, but I hope that when the Minister winds up, he will address the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) that the requirement to “expeditiously inform” Mauritius, even after an operation, presumably means that we must do so as soon as possible, and that that will presumably apply to whatever kind of operation has taken place using the base. Perhaps he could tell us whether that might compromise decisions about the use of the base.
The other aspect I raised with the Minister when he was in front of the Committee was Mauritius being a signatory of the Pelindaba treaty. The Pelindaba treaty states that signatories will not have nuclear weapons on their soil. Britain, the UK, is not a signatory of it, but, as I say, Mauritius is. Again, the Minister told the Committee that there was no way in which anything in the agreement would affect the operational use of the base, but he would not go further and comment specifically on the aspects of potentially nuclear weapons on the Diego Garcia base. That is something of real concern, and I hope the Minister might say a little more about that conflict between his assurance and Mauritius’s membership of the Pelindaba treaty, which specifically says that there should not be nuclear weapons held on the sovereign territory of signatories.
I turn to the cost of the treaty to the UK. We are told that there is some disagreement about the precise figure. I have to say that even £3.5 billion seems pretty large to me, let alone £35 billion, which is universally believed on the Opposition side to be a more accurate figure. It has been suggested, nevertheless, that this is a relatively small amount of money and it is a good deal. I recall that when this was first suggested, a different Mauritian Government were in power. The Prime Minister of Mauritius at that time had signed a deal, which the current Prime Minister of Mauritius described as a terrible deal and that as soon as he was elected, he would reopen the whole discussion. It certainly appears that he was successful in doing so: the sum that has now been agreed is, the Mauritian Prime Minister has told us, considerably bigger than his predecessor had originally agreed, and this was a great success of the new Prime Minister of Mauritius that he managed to squeeze even more money out of the British Government. That does beg the question: at what point does it stop being a good deal? The impression given is that the British Government were so keen to sign up to this deal, they basically have signed away to almost any sum advanced by Mauritius. As one or two of my hon. Friends have made clear, that will be a difficult message to sell on the doorstep at a time when the Government are having to make significant savings and to raise taxes.
In particular, I am concerned—the Minister will understand why—about the impact on the Foreign Office budget, because the Foreign Office suffered the biggest cuts of any Whitehall Department in the last spending round. It is already unclear about how those savings will be met, and there is speculation that the budgets of the British Council or the World Service, or our representation in embassies around the world, will be reduced. Despite those pressures and potentially very damaging cuts to Foreign Office expenditure, the Foreign Office appears to be expected to meet part of this bill. The Minister was unable to tell the Committee how the bill would be divided up between the Foreign Office budget and the Ministry of Defence budget. Perhaps that is something else that he might say a little more about when he winds up.
I will also touch on the other aspect of the consequences of this deal: the impact on the environment, which has been referred to by one or two Members. I pay tribute to the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, the right hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry), who is, I think it fair to say, engaged in other projects at the moment. She was assiduous in raising with the Minister her concern about the treaty’s impact on an incredibly important marine environment—that is recognised around the world. She wrote to the Minister, as he will be aware, and said:
“My principal concern is that there is now no funding mechanism in place to ensure Mauritius will properly resource marine protection in the Chagos Archipelago… Without any dedicated funding mechanism…there is nothing to ensure that this protection will continue other than the on-going willingness of the Mauritian Government to allocate resource”.
As has been observed, the archipelago is 1,250 miles away from Mauritius, and we are not entirely convinced that that willingness in Mauritius, on which the Government appear to be pinning their hopes, exists.
Finally, I wish to acknowledge the presence of the Chagossians in the Public Gallery. They have been very badly treated over years, and it is of concern to me that they appear to have had virtually no input in this agreement, and that there has been no consultation with them. I know that a contact group is being established in the Foreign Office, but there is some scepticism about whether it has ever met, and about how many staff will be allocated to it. Perhaps the Minister might give details in his reply. [Interruption.] I am pleased to hear him say that it met last week.
I am grateful to the Government for answering questions so far, but an awful lot remain, and the answers that I have heard have failed to convince me that this treaty is in the economic, strategic and environmental interests of this country or the Chagos islands.