Priti Patel

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for granting this urgent question. It is incredibly disappointing that, only a day after Foreign Office oral questions, Ministers have had to be hauled back to the House to explain what is going on. Yesterday at lunch time, Downing Street briefed that the agreement between the UK and Mauritius, under which the UK would give away the Chagos islands and pay for the privilege, has been finalised. That was not said in this House yesterday. The Prime Minister of Mauritius has also issued a public statement confirming that. Despite being interrogated on this botched deal in the Chamber yesterday, Ministers gave no indication of this very significant development. We are still completely in the dark about fundamental questions of enormous importance. How many billions of pounds of hard-pressed British taxpayers’ money will we be expected to fork out to lease back territory that we already own? This comes as vulnerable pensioners are having their winter fuel payments ripped away, and family farms and businesses are being punished with new taxes by this Labour Government. What safeguards will be in place to protect the military base on Diego Garcia from other states that may try to establish a foothold on the archipelago? Ministers have so far refused to publish even a map of the buffer zone. What happens to the vital military base on Diego Garcia at the end of the treaty, and what kind of sovereign rights, if any, will we be able to exercise over Diego Garcia in the meantime? The Prime Minister of Mauritius says that he forced changes to the arrangements on the exercise of sovereign rights and the lease extension. Will the Minister finally confirm that the account given by the Prime Minister of Mauritius is correct? He cannot simply stand here and avoid these questions. The House does deserve answers; so do the British public—the taxpayers. Put simply, the British Indian Ocean Territory should remain British, but Labour has prioritised appeasing the whims of left-wing lawyers and activists, rather than standing up for our national interests. It is high time this deal was ditched. Finally, there have been reports of implied military threats to the Chagos islands, a British sovereign territory—Labour Members may laugh, but this issue is fundamental to the security of our country—from the regime in Tehran. The Iranian regime has threatened this space. These purported military threats are important. We understand that, in response to such reports, there has been an unusual build-up of American bomber aircraft and equipment-carrying aircraft at the joint UK-US military base on Diego Garcia. This is very serious, and we clearly need to take these threats seriously. We would welcome clarity about the Foreign Office’s diplomatic response on this issue.