Sir Alec Shelbrooke

It is worth reflecting on the entire geopolitical situation that the world faces. Many treaties simply are not worth the paper that they are written on; if it suits our adversaries to ignore them, they will. Is not the old maxim, “To stop a war, be ready to fight a war”, more true today than it has ever been? If we decide that we are going to rely on pieces of paper, rather than the ability to say, “We will defend, at war if need be”, we weaken our position. Let us consider the whole Indo-Pacific region. The NATO Parliamentary Assembly made a visit to Pacific command back in August. The admiral of the base made it crystal clear that in a very short space of time, the Americans would be outnumbered in the Pacific arena. Limiting what weapons can be used, when those weapons currently can be used, simply will not work. There has not been a satisfactory answer on whether nuclear weapons can be stored on Diego Garcia when it is under the authority of the Mauritians. Despite the conversations about what Pete Hegseth said and what other treaties may have been negotiated along the way, we have the commander in chief, who outranks the US Secretary of State for Defence, saying, “I do not want to do this deal.” We have the deputy Prime Minister of Mauritius saying, “You will not be able to hold nuclear weapons there.” What makes Ministers so convinced that those leaders are wrong, and that they are right? That is the greatest and deepest concern. We live in a world that is rapidly changing, not just in its disregard for the rules-based order, but in its energy demands. Those energy demands are shifting the geopolitical situation. Given where a lot of the materials that we need for renewables are, the focus is shifting more towards that hemisphere and away from the Gulf. The geopolitical positioning of the Chagos islands is therefore becoming more and more important. It is absolutely right to say that our Government started negotiations, which went on and on, but that does not mean that there is a victory in ending them overnight by just giving way on the red lines that we would not cross. That is a very important point, because we should recognise the situation that we face, rather than crowing about some diplomatic “victory”. Time and again, we see the Government kowtowing to Beijing, rather than standing up to it. We see that today. Where is the strategic plan? My right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) was exceptionally critical of the golden era of relations with China under David Cameron. The criticisms coming forward are not new; my right hon. Friend warned at the time of the security risks that China posed. The Prime Minister has signed off on the super-embassy, despite all the things we know about, and the things that we have seen in its blueprints, and for what reason? This seems to be almost—