Ascension Island

Part of the debate – in Westminster Hall at 9:30 am on 15 February 2006.

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Photo of Vincent Cable Vincent Cable Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, Liberal Democrat Spokesperson (Treasury) 9:30, 15 February 2006

The hon. Gentleman has captured in a sentence the essence of what I am going to say at rather greater length. His reference to the lady mayoress raises the interesting issue of what constitutes a resident of the island. The Foreign Office doctrine, which it often repeats and which the Minister has echoed in his parliamentary answers, is that there is no indigenous population of islanders. That is a fundamental Foreign Office principle and it certainly reflects the intention, but the problem is that the truth is more complicated.

The situation was captured for me in an e-mail that I received from Mr. Martin Cole, who told me about his great-grandmother, Flora Wilson, who apparently was born on Ascension Island in the middle of the 19th century and always considered herself an Ascension islander. She wrote many times to the Foreign Office and the authorities on Ascension for documentary proof of her birth, and they always refused to answer her letters. On one occasion, she was told off the record that it would be rather embarrassing if they had to acknowledge that people had been born on the island, and that they were committed and attached to it, because that would blow something of a hole in the official definition of an islander.

Over the years, many people have been born on the island. The average is five a year, which is not an enormous number, but people have been born there, and there are grandchildren of residents. The extent of settlement is therefore rather more substantial than the official definition would suggest.

My final point by way of introduction, which is crucial to an understanding of how the place works, is that the island has long been a centre of communications and military activity. On the British side, it has long been an RAF base. As Mr. Hollobone said, it was used during the Falklands war, when it was described on one occasion as the busiest airport in the world. It is also an important base for GCHQ and for British military and communications activity. It is also important for the Americans. In particular, there is the Wideawake airfield, which I shall discuss later.

That leads me to the question of governance and administration. For many years, Ascension was managed by the Admiralty, and in 1922 it was passed to St. Helena, of which it remains officially part. However, the practical point is that it has been run for most of the past 80 years as a company island. Public and private sector users of the island formed a committee or consortium to manage and run it, using contract labour from overseas. They provided services and charged islanders for using them by means of what amounted to a poll tax.

All that came to an end in 1999, when the late Robin Cook issued his White Paper on dependent territories, which created new expectations about how dependent territories should be run. A key passage says:

"Discussion of constitutional change is already under way. We are planning, for example, to consult the people of St Helena and Dependencies about how to develop the democratic and civil rights of people living on Ascension Island".

A lot flows from that, politically and economically.

The next key step was that the Government encouraged a study to set out a plan for the island. It was called the Portsmouth study, after the university of Portsmouth, and I met one of its authors yesterday to discuss its continuing relevance. The Portsmouth report initiated its argument with a key passage, which said that

"decisions must be made about whether this island becomes normal or another Diego Garcia".

That is exactly the issue. Normality consisted of three main developments, and the logic of the proposals was that each development was interlocking.

The first element was the development of a proper economy based on what the report called the public finance option. In other words, public services should be provided by the state and people should pay taxes for them—a simple principle, but it had not operated in Ascension until then. That was acted on, and by April 2002 a system of income tax and property taxes for business had been introduced to finance the embryonic services on the island. The islanders then said, "No taxation without representation." They wanted democracy. Democracy was agreed and a council elected in November 2002. Much of the feedback that I have received has come from the islanders' democratically elected representatives.

The third element of the package is the crucial one, but it has caused the greatest difficulty. The Portsmouth report argued that it was not possible to have a meaningful economy or democratic polity without the wider liberalisation of the island. What was meant by that was property rights, the right of abode, the privatisation of assets—so that there could be an embryonic business system, with the growth of small business—and opening the island to visitors, with limited specialised tourism.

Since then, all three elements of the package have been gradually put into place, with the full and active support of the Government. A lot has happened. A land registry has been established, which is crucial, because there can be no property rights without the designation of land. The implicit assumption throughout has been that the islanders would be given property rights. Houses were built for the first time—there used to be only barrack-type residences for contract labour—and there has been privatisation, although we are talking not Railtrack, but the privatisation of the launderette, among other things. None the less, important assets have been created for private business, in terms of the scale of the island.

The Department for International Development has been actively involved in the development of the island, spending £500,000 to support a nature reservation, with some unique turtles and bird life being protected with the help of British taxpayers' money. All that has taken place on the assumption that the island will develop a tourist industry and that the islanders working on the island will acquire long-term residence and become stakeholders in the process.

The Americans were co-operative and agreed to the idea that there should be a limited number of flights to the island. There was no problem at that stage and, most crucially, legal advice was sought on how property rights and the right of abode could be consolidated in law. A leading lawyer, Michael Bailey QC, was commissioned to do that legal work. I received a slightly odd parliamentary answer when I asked how much that legal advice cost, which said that it was £2,500. My information is that it cost at least £60,000. There may have just been an accident in the Foreign Office, but that fits with the story that has emerged of the attempt to minimise the extent of the Government's commitment to the process.

This happy story was evolving very nicely and coherently until the end of November, when a delegation from the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence went to island, supposedly to consult—in fact, an announcement was simply made—on what was described as "new thinking" in the Government. A statement was made that said, among other things, that

"the UK Government could face unacceptable risks", and that

"UK Ministers were . . . moving . . . towards the view that it would not be appropriate to grant . . . right of abode and rights to property . . . ownership to people . . . living on Ascension."

That was followed by a letter from the governor, who said that he was reluctant to proceed with the reforms, and a letter from Lord Triesman about significant new risks that had emerged.

The islanders were horrified. They felt badly betrayed and have expressed themselves forcefully in letters to the Government. I shall read not some of the more emotional comments, but a low-key statement that captures, in essence, why the islanders have a powerful sense of grievance. A letter from the island council to Lord Triesman says:

"Expectations of right of abode and land tenure have been raised by a whole raft of Ministers, FCO Desk Officers, our previous Governor and Administrator and there must now be some accountability for this. Tax Payers' money has been spent on the construction of . . . houses with the full knowledge of the Administrator and Governor, neither of whom challenged this development at any stage and Individuals on Ascension Island have invested money, time and effort in small businesses and now face losing everything."

So, we come to the question, why have the Government done this? Why has there has been such a brutal and abrupt U-turn? If the Government had openly said, "Look, we have a serious problem here. It's all connected with security—we're sorry," they would have had some sympathy. Instead, they have hidden behind opaque Foreign Office language, which I am familiar with. As a former member of the foreign service, I used to use and manufacture such language in my day.

The first argument that is employed is that there are so-called contingent liabilities to British taxpayers. As my party's finance spokesman, I should be aware of contingent liabilities and duly deferential to such arguments, but the Government have never spelt out what those contingent liabilities are. They have been asked, but they have not said. One can guess what the contingent liabilities are. I think the Government are worried that if islanders are given the right of abode, some may stay and become old and sick, and somebody may have to pay for that. The Government consider five or 10 people becoming destitute on the island a rather horrific prospect for the Treasury.

Apart from being a little petty, that position is economically wrong, because if the island were to be run down, the contract workers would return to St. Helena. St. Helena would lose its remittances and the destitution would appear there instead, so we are not talking about additional cost to the Government. It would be interesting to know what the Government believe the contingent liabilities to be and to have them properly examined by the Public Accounts Committee, which is where I believe the issue will end up.

On the other hand, there are some contingent assets. As I said, the Government have spent more than £500,000 on environmental improvements such as a nature reserve. What will happen to that now? Will the money be written off because there will not now be a tourism industry?

More seriously, there is a direct link with the controversial development of the full-scale airport on St. Helena, which I understand will cost the taxpayer between £150 million and £350 million. The link is that Ascension Island could provide many activities that the St. Helena airport is due to provide. There is complementarity between the islands. None the less, the Government have decided, through DFID, to spend large amounts of money on the St. Helena airport. It is difficult to find out what the options were or whether they have ever been examined, because the Freedom of Information Act 2000 has been repealed on the island of St. Helena to disguise such information, so we cannot have a proper analysis.

The situation is worrying, not least because if the full-scale airport on St. Helena goes ahead, there will be no cross flights to Ascension and the Ascension islanders who are left will have to get back to St. Helena via London. There are some strange arguments being used. I do not know what the underlying facts are, because they are not being revealed and the Government will not reveal them. However, when we talk about contingent liabilities, we need to know the interaction between the cost to the island of maintaining its current path and the cost of terminating it. Many of those costs are involved in the St. Helena parallel development.