Alex Ballinger

I thank the Minister for his speech earlier, although he is no longer in this place. We have heard clearly from those on the Opposition Benches that they are opposed to this deal, so it is first worth outlining what sort of deal they are opposed to. They are opposed to a deal that secures our vital national interest on probably the most important base in the country’s history in the Indian ocean. They are opposed to a deal that is supported by every one of our Five Eyes closest security partners. As we have heard from many of them, they are opposed to a deal that they spent 11 rounds negotiating over two years, and we have not quite heard from them why they started negotiating that deal in the first place. They spent 11 rounds negotiating it, but they have not yet told us—the shadow Minister or otherwise—why they felt it was necessary and why they think this Government might have come to the same conclusion as they did at that time. I believe, as many of us do on the Government Benches, that that dangerous rhetoric puts the security of our base in Diego Garcia at risk. It is playing politics with our national security. I want to take us back in history for one moment to look at a similar situation. During the second world war, the UK established another airfield in the Indian ocean known as RAF Gan. RAF Gan was the southernmost island in the Maldives, and it was secured in 1942 by the Royal Navy, and then taken over by the Air Force, to secure our operations all across the Indian ocean into the far east, combating the Japanese threat we were facing there. It was such a successful base that the Japanese did not even discover its existence until close to the end of the war, once their expansion plans had ended. Later, in the cold war, it became a vital staging post for the UK and our allies to get our forces across to Singapore and other bases in the far east. In fact, my father served there in 1974, and it was a great shame that two years later we closed that base and handed it over to the Maldivian Government at the same time that we secured our base in Diego Garcia. I mention that case in particular because it was a vital strategic secure base of ours in a similar situation to Diego Garcia. As soon as the Maldivian Government took possession of that base, the Russians began to exert influence to try to take it over. They were attempting to take over the base that we occupied—that we spent decades developing—and turn it into a secure base for the Soviet Union. They are doing exactly the same thing again on Diego Garcia. They are trying to influence the Mauritian Government to claim the base for their own use.