UK-Mauritius Chagos Treaty: Future Spending

2. Whether his Department has budgeted for future spending on the UK-Mauritius Treaty on the Chagos archipelago.

This Government inherited a situation from the previous Conservative Government where UK control over the vital UK-US military base in Diego Garcia was under threat. This is about the long-term safety and national security of the United Kingdom and the British people. Maintaining the long-term operational control and security of the base remains a top priority; that is the entire basis for the UK-Mauritius agreement. A financial element was a crucial part of that deal.

We have heard that line for the last two years. The question that the public want answered, and the one I asked the former Defence Secretary, the right hon. Member for Barnsley North (Dan Jarvis), before the summer, is: where is the case? The former Defence Secretary said that he was looking at the details closely. Six weeks on, can the Minister confirm that the deal is now dead, as it should be?

The hon. Gentleman asks about the payments, but he knows that this is about the long-term safety and national security of the United Kingdom and the British people. Diego Garcia is a key strategic military asset for both the United Kingdom and the United States that has protected our shared security for nearly 60 years. At the time, the Conservative Government held 11 rounds of negotiations with the Mauritians; at the time, they argued that Britain’s defence was best served by having legal certainty over the Chagos islands. Funding for the treaty will be provided within the existing spending review settlements for the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and the Ministry of Defence.

I call the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee.

I begin by welcoming the Foreign Secretary and his new team to their places. In particular, I welcome the Minister; I am cross with her for leaving the Foreign Affairs Committee and we will miss her very much. She was a formidable member of our Committee, and I am proud to see her take such a well-deserved place on the Front Bench. Now to the work. On the issue of islands that the UK—and now supposedly the United States—takes a great interest in, will the Minister provide an official response to President Trump’s latest nonsense that he might withdraw support for UK sovereignty over the Falklands?

I thank the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee for her warm words. The UK has no doubt about its sovereignty over the Falkland Islands: they are, and will always remain, a British overseas territory, in line with the wishes of the Falkland Islanders. The UK is steadfast in our support of the Falkland Islanders’ right to self-determination. While I have seen the comments that the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee referred to, our position remains unchanged.

I call the shadow Minister.

I welcome the new Foreign Secretary and his Ministers to the team, and I convey the apologies of the shadow Foreign Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge (Tom Tugendhat), who is overseas. May I associate Conservative Members with the Government’s condolences following the devastating floods in Nepal and Tibet? Our thoughts are with all those who have lost loved ones, those who are still missing—including British nationals—and the emergency workers undertaking extraordinarily difficult rescue operations. In April, after the US withdrew its support, Ministers admitted that the Chagos treaty had become: “impossible to agree at political level”. However, the Government now say that they are again trying to push the deal forward with Washington. What has changed? I will give the Government another change to answer the question. Has the US agreed to amend the 1966 UK-US agreement governing Diego Garcia, and why is the Department budgeting for a deal that remains blocked by our closest security ally?

We worked in lockstep with the US in developing and testing the deal to ensure that it meets both UK and US security requirements. I am not going to give a running commentary on this matter. The US Administration have repeatedly supported this agreement, and nothing in this treaty has changed since the US originally gave its endorsement to the deal. We have always been clear that the US Government must be content with the agreement before we proceed in ratifying the treaty, and we will continue to work with the US and Mauritius to find a way forward that is in the UK’s best interests and protects our national security.