Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)

My Lords, I gave very careful consideration to the points raised in these amendments by both noble and gallant Lords. They raise significant issues, which I am very sympathetic to. I am also very keen to hear the Minister’s response, given her commitment in Committee, especially in relation to the consequences of Article 1 of the treaty, as the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig of Radley, has indicated. There are, however, elements of the amendments which I am perhaps not entirely persuaded by. They are the conditions within the bailiwick of the Mauritian Government that could give rise to the circumstances where we would seek to stop payments. They are not covered by this amendment, per se. They would, however, be covered in subsection (4) of the proposed new clause in my Amendment 50, which will be discussed much later during our considerations today and which would create the conditions where, if the Mauritian Government by their actions were putting at risk the consequences of our payments, Parliament would be able to pause the payments. If there are reasons unspecified by Amendment 1 which are non-defence related, there is the potential for UK funding for resettlement support, the trust fund operations or Chagossian community-specific support to be put at risk, so it is worth while to separate out the defence interests from the other elements of the treaties. As the mechanisms in Amendment 50 are preferable in our view, we would find it difficult to support these amendments.