Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)

I agree with that. It is a clearer proposition than we have heard—a better proposition, in my view. Actually, “better” is the wrong word; it is a more convincing proposition because of its origination. The reality of how we define self-determination and the rights of the community—and where I think the debate has bled into previously—is that it has been used without that clarification, as a different political impetus with regard to the overall desirability or otherwise of having a treaty with Mauritius. That is where I come to it. The most vociferous of speeches that we have heard deny the reality of what happened just last year. We can talk about the denial of rights. If we are talking about referendum statistics, I agree with about 90% of what the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, said about rights in her speech. But we do not have to go back to the 1960s to look at the denial of rights. It was in January 2024 that the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, as Foreign Secretary, restated government policy that there would be no right of resettlement, and that was while negotiations on the basis of a treaty were carrying on. If it is an argument to suggest that we wish to restore rights of resettlement and rights to self-determination, I accede to that argument. I think it should be in the acknowledgement that the previous Government and this Government refused to do so in the absence of a treaty with Mauritius. The context that we are in now is that the first opportunity that we may have for limited right of resettlement and acknowledgement of some form of self-determination is by virtue of a treaty. The Minister knows that these Benches do not consider them to go far enough, and we want to use these stages to see how we can go further. But it is worth recognising that the only opportunity that we have for some form of resettlement is by virtue of there being a treaty.