Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)

I am sure that the noble Baroness heard me—I am sure she was paying attention to the early part of my contribution—when I said that we moved that very Motion in the House of Commons just a few days ago but did not get support from the Official Opposition. So I appeal to the noble Baroness to wait until the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, makes her contribution and then to intervene on her with the same question. The noble Lord, Lord Murray, made an interesting contribution. It was a post hoc breach of collective responsibility when he referred to his letter of opposition to that policy choice of his Government. I was going to intervene on him to ask politely whether he would place that letter in the Library for us all to see; I am very curious about it. I would be interested to know how many of his colleagues made the same complaints. I have mentioned the fact that one of those colleagues was the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie; of course, another of his ministerial colleagues at the time was the noble Lord, Lord Callanan. He did not intervene on the noble Lord, Lord Murray, so I assume that he did not write a letter of complaint at the time; I am sure that we will find out in due course. Ultimately, we have to recognise, to be fair to the previous Government, that they entered into negotiations in good faith. I do not think a British Government would likely enter into negotiations on the ceding of sovereignty if they knew that the conclusion of that was not the ceding of sovereignty, so I give credit to the previous Government for acting in good faith about that. The question now is how we seek to raise our concerns on those very aspects of the Chagossians’ right to self-determination and on the scrutiny and operation of the trust fund. I hope we can continue to raise these concerns during the passage of the Bill in good faith.