Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)

My Lords, I have in my hand a BBC News report of Jeremy Corbyn welcoming the Government’s decision on the exercise of sovereignty of the Chagos Islands. It reports that he was “very pleased” that the UK Government had backed down and said that the Foreign Secretary’s announcement was a “good step forward”. That report was from 3 November 2022. Jeremy Corbyn was welcoming the Liz Truss Government’s announcement in Parliament that negotiations would open on the ceding of sovereignty. What has happened since then—one would think that any agreement between Jeremy Corbyn and Liz Truss is not one that we would follow—was a shambolic process in which the Chagossian community was denied its rights under the Conservative Government and not consulted sufficiently by the Labour Government. There has been insufficient information about the trust fund; the money was not going to be provided by the previous Government and there is a lack of detail from this Government. There is no feud between me and my Commons colleagues, because the position is perfectly apparent. When this House had an opportunity to secure a concession from the Government to have more information about the funding and to include the Chagossian community in a much better way, because it had been let down by the previous Government and this Government, we took the opportunity to try to end the shambles. When will we see the Statement that the Minister promised me on Monday?