Baroness Hoey (Non-Afl)

My Lords, I will refer briefly to my Amendments 17 and 49. I tabled one of them in Committee and want to probe a little further on some of the questions to which I did not get satisfactory answers. What can we do, how do we know and what can the Government do if a country leases an island ostensibly for a non-security or defence purpose but then gradually introduces security and defence functions from Mauritius? In other words, what power do we have over what Mauritius does to the islands once we have given up our capacity other than for Diego Garcia? Turning to the deployment of security and defence personnel on islands on the Chagos Archipelago beyond Diego Garcia, what UK approval is required? I have raised this before, but I want to know the detail. Given the announcement on 12 September that India had paid Mauritius to secure a defence presence on a Chagos island, would the Minister please tell the House today whether the Republic of Mauritius asked the UK Government ahead of doing that deal with India? If they did not bother to ask, this provides a good reason for not ratifying the treaty at this stage. If the Republic of Mauritius sought UK approval and it was given, why did the UK Government agree? Surely it was completely inappropriate for the Republic of Mauritius to enter deals on what will happen to the islands in the future when the UK Parliament had not yet agreed to the transfer of sovereignty of the Chagos Islands, as the treaty is still not ratified. Many of us in this place hope that it never will be. I have no intention of moving my amendments to a vote. I would just welcome the Minister’s response on those two points.