Contribution
My Lords, I will speak to my Amendment 78 and in support of the amendments of the noble Lords, Lord Hay and Lord Weir, the noble Baroness, Lady Foster, and my noble friend Lord Callanan. The crux of this debate is about ending the dream of return for most British Chagossians. As long as they were British citizens, there was always the possibility of resettlement, but we know that Mauritius denies their nationality, treats them as so many Mauritian citizens and is certain not to allow a general right of return to the Chagossian population.
One or two Chagossians who have said all the right things, as the noble Lord, Lord Weir, says, may be allowed back as part of that general migration, but we can be pretty certain that they will not be our fellow subjects watching now from the Gallery, stoical and silent, ignored and overlooked in a grisly symbol of these past five decades.
My amendment deals specifically with the rights of employment at the base, but I want to widen it a little to what would make an economically viable community in the Chagos Islands. The Minister has said several times at the Dispatch Box that our priority is maintaining the base and that by implication, therefore, we cannot do the right thing by the Chagossian population. I do not believe there is a contradiction. Maintaining sovereignty would meet both our strategic and our moral obligations of stewardship as the sovereign power and the focus of loyalty of the Chagossian population, and it is economically viable. We heard in our last debate that it could not happen because it was too far away, too distant and too expensive, but as we have just heard from the noble Lord, Lord Weir, it is a fraction of what we are paying in direct transfers to Mauritius, let alone any associated costs. We can take the Minister’s figures and say that it is six times more expensive to hand the archipelago away, or we can take my noble friend Lady Noakes’s figures and say that it is more like 60 times as expensive. Either way, it is extraordinary that we are not considering the option of resettlement.
I want to explore how that would work. I mentioned last week that the Falklands War was, paradoxically, the beginning of the economic revival of that archipelago because the regular link to the UK and the impact on the economy, as well as our readiness to start exploiting some of the resources, made an island that until then had been suffering from emigration viable and hugely attractive. It has nearly doubled its population since. At the moment we are flying in civilian contractors for all the non-military jobs on an occasional flight from Singapore. These contractors come from the Philippines, Sri Lanka or India, and they do the many non-military jobs on a base of that size—the construction, cooking, cleaning and so on. There is no reason why those jobs could not be done by local people. It would make sense both economically and in security terms, as well as giving a viable economic option to the British Chagossians who return.
But I would not want to leave your Lordships with the thought that this would be a population wholly dependent on the existence of the military base. That is not a position that anyone wants in the long term. It is not a position that the Falkland Islands would want to be in. We will come on to our other overseas territories in a later group, but the economy of Gibraltar has been transformed since the 1980s. Having been almost completely dependent for GDP on our naval base there, it has now become a hugely successful territory through private enterprise. There are lots of other things. What would those other things be? I have said before in this House that it is not for politicians to second-guess the private sector and I am conscious of sitting next to my noble friend Lord Moynihan, who has written a wonderful book making this point at greater length, but here are some ideas off the top of my head after conversations with British Chagossians who had been kicking around a couple of these ideas. Here are seven or eight ideas. Maybe one or two of them might be viable. That is all you would need.
First is the extraordinary marine resource. What about establishing a marine and oceanographic university on Peros Banhos? There has been a lot of interest from academic institutions here and elsewhere. Lancaster University, the University of Exeter, the University of Western Australia in Perth and Dalhousie in Canada have all been involved in ecological and maritime projects around the archipelago. Is it so unthinkable to have a permanent base there that in time could take visiting students and have accommodation for them?
Secondly, the obvious one is tourism. People put a great premium on both novelty and isolation. Here is the last undiscovered tourist archipelago. It can be reached by seaplane from the Maldives which, it is worth reminding ourselves, is closer to the Chagos Archipelago than either the Seychelles or Mauritius. It is perfectly feasible to see snorkelling, birdwatching, scuba-diving and exploration of the marine fauna becoming viable. There are wealthy people who would spend a great deal of money for the additional seclusion and the new frontier.