Contribution
I will speak in favour of Amendments 2, 13, 25 and 28. Amendment 2 is an all-purpose amendment saying that the treaty should not come into force until other conditions in amendments are incorporated. Amendments 13 and 28 call for consultation, and Amendment 25 for a referendum.
As I have mentioned previously, the advisory ruling of the International Court of Justice was based on a non-binding UN resolution about the process of decolonisation. That ruling explicitly says that a colonial state can sever part of a territory if it is the freely expressed and genuine will of the people of the territory concerned that they be separated.
The Chagossians cite the example of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands. The parallel between the Gilbert and Ellice Islands and the situation of Chagos versus Mauritius is striking. When the Government consulted the people of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands before ceasing to be the colonial power, they found that there was considerable opposition in the Ellice Islands to being lumped in with the Gilbert Islands. The parallels between that and the Chagos Islands and Mauritius are very striking. The Chagos Islands are 1,339 miles away from Mauritius, and the Ellice Islands are just 800 miles away from the Gilbert Islands. The Chagos Islands have a different ethnic mix. They are basically populated by people from the African continent, whereas that is not the case in Mauritius. Likewise, with the Gilbert and Ellice Islands, one was Polynesian and one was Micronesian. The disparity of numbers is, if anything, even greater in the case of the Chagos Islands versus Mauritius than it was in the Ellice and Gilbert Islands.
After consulting, the British Government rightly decided that they should test the views of the people concerned. They had a referendum, and the vote was very striking. The people of the Ellice Islands voted to separate from the Gilbert Islands by 3,799 votes to 293. This is a comparatively small number of people—fewer, in fact, than the diaspora of Chagossian peoples in the UK, the Seychelles and Mauritius itself. It surely is possible for us to consult with them and seek their views, ideally through a referendum. The Government may say, “Why have a referendum? It’s so difficult. We can’t do it”. But the Chagossians themselves have today given the results of an opinion poll they have carried out, which 3,500 people responded to out of roughly 10,000 potential respondents. That is a very high proportion. Of those 3,500, an overwhelming proportion were against being lumped in with Mauritius.
The Government may well say that it is still only a minority of the total population. That is fair enough. Again, suck it and see—have a referendum of the total. Who would be the potential electors? The Chagossian nationals would be, as defined in this Bill. We have done that bit for the Government, so that is already there. It is clearly possible over a period to consult them if the Chagossians can organise a poll like this fairly rapidly and with such a high response rate.
The Government often argue that the Chagossians are “not really a people and in any case they’re no longer there”. However, there are precedents in history for people being removed from a place and allowed back. The Acadians were shipped out of Canada because they were thought to be unreliable French-speaking Catholics but subsequently were allowed back and are still a distinctive community in that part of Canada. Similar things have happened with the Chechens and the Crimeans more recently, after the Second World War. In history, we all know the displacement that was suffered by the ancient Israelites. It is possible to say that people who have been removed from a territory still have a right to that territory and should be consulted about its sovereignty.
These amendments seek to ensure that we do have a referendum. Failing that, if the Government can convince us that it is impossible in some way to organise a referendum, let us have a thorough and prolonged period of consultation. I would like to hear more from the Government on what they are doing now, having been provoked into it by the amendment to the committal Motion to ask the relevant Select Committee of this House to carry out a consultation. How are they envisaging that being carried out, and how will they define the Chagos consultation groups and so on? I think your Lordships’ House would almost certainly welcome greater information about that process and how the Government see it happening. If they do not satisfy us on this, I think we need to press ahead with Amendments 13 and 28 on the consultation, but ideally let us go ahead and have a referendum under Amendment 25.