Member

Amendment 81C, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Kempsell, seeks to put the Chagossian contact group on to a statutory footing. The Government welcome the challenges to increase the participation of Chagossians in the political process. The noble Lord made some really good points about this. We have already established the contact group to give Chagossians a role in the UK Government’s support for their community. Following debates in Parliament, we have already announced that we will explore opportunities for enhancement to this group, as he suggests, including increasing its transparency and frequency; it is meeting quarterly at the moment. However, we are clear that any decisions about the contact group must be made in agreement with existing members of the group, and we do not want to impose things that we think would be right for them. This is one of the reasons why we are resisting this amendment, but it is a good opportunity to raise this, and the noble Lord made his case well.