Lord Lilley:

Moved by Lord Lilley

10: Clause 1, page 1, line 7, at end insert “, subject to subsection (2A).(2A) Sections 2 to 4 of this Act come into force only when the Secretary of State has—(a) sought to undertake negotiations with the Government of Mauritius on whether Mauritius will establish a right for Chagossians to return and reside in the Chagos Islands, and(b) laid before both Houses of Parliament a report on progress on establishing such negotiations with the Government of Mauritius and the outcome of any that have taken place.(2B) Within two months of the report being laid under paragraph (2A(b), the Secretary of State must table a substantive motion in the House of Commons on the contents of the report.(2C) In this section “Chagossians” are defined as those eligible for British citizenship under section 4 of the Act, and their descendants.”Member’s explanatory statementThis Amendment requires that the Government must undertake negotiations with Mauritius on a Chagossian right of return, with a report laid before Parliament on the outcome of the negotiations. The Government must subsequently table a substantive motion in the House of Commons on the content of that report.

My Amendment 10 deals with the issue of resettlement. This is a very sensitive issue, one that Chagossians feel very deeply about. But Article 6 of the agreement, which is entitled “Resettlement of Chagossians”, fails to give any right to Chagossians to resettle. The wording of Article 6 is:

“In the exercise of its sovereignty over the Chagos Archipelago, Mauritius is free to implement a programme of resettlement on the islands of the Chagos Archipelago other than Diego Garcia. Such resettlement shall be implemented in conformity with the terms of this Agreement and the Laws of Mauritius”.

Let us be clear: there is no right for Chagossians to resettle; there is no obligation on Mauritius to resettle the Chagossians. Mauritius is simply free to do resettlement but it does not specify that that resettlement has to be by Chagossians. It could resettle it with Mauritians—just as, when I used to work in Indonesia, it resettled Javans on the various islands such as Borneo and Sumatra. All we are doing is saying that Mauritius can do what it likes—it can do or not do anything that is to the benefit of the Chagossians, or it can give away their former lands and islands to other people—and we will effectively sanctify that through our agreement to Article 6.

Back in 2015, the British Government looked at the possibility of resettlement and asked KPMG to do a study of how much it would cost and how feasible it was. A year later, KPMG came out with a report which stated that resettlement was possible. It would cost certain sums depending how much resettlement was done. If there was a pilot community of 150 people, that would cost in those days £63 million—in current money, that would be about £80 million to £90 million. If there was a medium-sized settlement of 500 people, that would cost about £200 million in today’s money, and if there was a large community of 1,500 people, which is more than the population of Chagos in 1965, that would cost in today’s money £570 million. That is a large sum, but it is much smaller than the sums we have committed to pay Mauritius over the life of this deal. They are largely one-off sums, whereas we are talking of paying Mauritius initially an average of £110 million, inflation adjusted, plus some lump sums and some bringing forward of money in the early period.

We could certainly start a pilot community of Chagossians back in the Chagos Islands for a fraction of what we are otherwise committed to spend on this agreement, so I understand why Chagossians feel really let down and sold out that we are prepared to pay so much money to Mauritius and to designate none of that to their potential resettlement. We pretend to by having this Article entitled “Resettlement of Chagossians”, but it gives no guarantee that the money will be spent in this way.

The study by KPMG looked into the practicalities. The reason it costs money is that we will have to rebuild facilities. On some of the islands there was a church, a hospital, buildings and so on that have fallen into rack and ruin. They would have to be re-established, and there would have to be transport facilities for the envisaged resettled communities to link up with each other and the outside world, but I again point out that these are not huge sums. This is not impossible. It is something that many in the Chagossian community, in the UK, in Mauritius even more, in the Seychelles and elsewhere would like to undertake, but they are not going to be able to undertake it unless Mauritius says so, and one gets the feeling that Mauritius is not terribly well disposed to the idea, otherwise it would not have negotiated such harsh terms in Article 6, which imposes no obligation on it to do so.

I ask Ministers to think again about this and to go back to the Mauritians and say, “I’m sorry, we have”—as they will have done by then—“consulted the Chagossians. We found how eager many of them are to resettle. Many more are eager to have the right of return to visit the graves of their ancestors, the places where they were born and the churches where they worshipped, and we feel they should be given that right, and if we’re going to settle a trust fund on you, we want to be sure it’s going to be used for those purposes as well as perhaps a chunk of the money we’re paying you in rent”. I hope the Minister will look at that in a positive way, given her evident sympathy for the Chagossians, and tell us that there is going to be a little hint of some more positive news that we can give the Chagossian community. I beg to move.

I will speak briefly in support of the amendments tabled by the noble Lords, Lord Lilley and Lord Callanan, in this group. On resettlement, what we have in the treaty may be described as less than useless. I say that because, to a certain extent, it confers a right that is already there, but it underlines it in such a way and denies others that right. The treaty explicitly says that there is a right for Mauritius to resettle people.

If we have handed over sovereignty to Mauritius, people implicitly have a right to resettle on the other islands anyway but, actually, it very much underlines that Mauritius is completely in control; it is completely in the driving seat. There is a lack of reference to the Chagossians: yes, Mauritius may choose to allow some Chagossians back, but it may choose also to deny them. There is no specific right for the Chagossians.

If, as has been mentioned across the Chamber, we are to try to rectify some of the many ills that we have done to the Chagossian people over the years, having at least some level of right of return is the bare minimum that we should be looking for here. The concern is that, from the point of view of Mauritius, the implication will be that, if it is to allow back some Chagossians, they will be the hand-picked Chagossians who have played ball with the Mauritian Government. If you are a good boy or a good girl, yes, you may be allowed back. If, however, you have been part of the awkward squad, you may have a much lesser chance of being resettled on the Chagos Islands than, for example, Chinese contractors. That is the problem.

These amendments would at least take a step towards trying to ameliorate and rectify that situation. If we cannot give the Chagossians an opportunity or a right, which is completely missing in the treaty and missing in the Bill, we are not giving them anything.

My Lords, I just want to add my voice to those of my noble friend Lord Lilley and the noble Lord, Lord Weir. If the Chagos Islands had remained inhabited, this issue of sovereignty would not have arisen. They would have been in the same category as Gibraltar, the Falklands or any other territory with a permanent population that had expressed its right to self-determination.

Now, you could argue that that would solve our problem in terms of the base. Equally, you could argue that it is the obvious way of making restitution; it is the way of giving back what was taken. But if you flip that around and look at it from the point of view of Mauritius, is that not precisely why you would not want to have a Chagossian population—or an exclusively Chagossian population—in a doughnut in the outer atolls around Diego Garcia?

The last thing you would want is to risk a Chagossian secessionist movement, where the people who had returned to their ancestral homes had made it very clear that they felt no loyalty to the state of Mauritius and that—in most cases, with a few exceptions, as the noble Lord, Lord Weir, said—they did not want to be part of it. Therefore, you would have every incentive to settle the place with your own citizens, or with others, so that they were at least a Majority.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hannan, for his remarks. Picking up a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Lilley—I have a subsequent Amendment on the supplementary list, so we may get to it at some point but it is not on today’s list—does the noble Lord, Lord Hannan, agree with me that what makes this lack of provision for resettlement of the Chagossians worse is that we actually have a blueprint, albeit not necessarily perfect, of how this can be achieved, through the KPMG report in 2015? It is not as though we are doing this against a vacuum. We are not only ignoring the right of Chagossians to return but completely ignoring the pathway through which this can happen.

The noble Lord makes an extremely good point. If you see this purely in fiscal terms, depending on whether we take the Government’s or my noble friend Lady Noakes’s figures, it is an obviously disastrous thing to spend either six times or 60 times as much as in the KPMG report, simply to give to another country.

We keep hearing from the Chancellor of the exchequer that growth is her priority and so on. Here is a very good way of making a saving: by not giving money away for territory that we already have but, instead, using a much smaller fraction of that sum to make restitution to the people who were removed. It ticks every box.

I mentioned earlier that the Falkland Islands were saved, paradoxically, by the experience of war because it led to investment, it led to fishing and hydrocarbons being exploited around the coasts, and it led to employment opportunities and better transport links. If we had a settled Chagossian population around the base, they would be the obvious people to work as the contractors on the base. Instead of having to import all these Filipinos from Singapore by air, we would have a population there doing the non-military, non-sensitive jobs.

Actually, as transport links have improved since the original wrong was done at the end of the 1960s, I can easily see a luxury holiday industry developing on some of those atolls. It is not so far from the Maldives, there is a premium on both novelty and exclusivity; it would be the last frontier. One could see all sorts of viable industries developing there. It need not be a long-term burden on the British taxpayer. But even if it does end up costing us something, it will be a fraction of what we are paying now. There is the vision of having the Chagossians back among the frangipani and the bougainvillea, the churches growing again, with the coral stone and the crash of the surf; all of them loyal to the Crown and therefore putting utterly beyond question the issue of who has the sovereignty over the archipelago.

My Lords, I think Article 6, “Resettlement of Chagossians”, is the most misnamed article in this treaty. It tells us that,

“Mauritius is free to implement a programme of resettlement on the islands of the Chagos Archipelago other than Diego Garcia”.

I am thankful to live in a democracy where I am free to do all manner of things; sometimes I choose not to do all manner of things for various reasons. I am quite sure Mauritius will take the same view in relation to resettlement of Chagossians on the outer islands.

There is no right of resettlement or return in the treaty. I have a later Amendment, on the Second Marshalled List, which deals with this. According to the treaty, there is no right of return or no right of resettlement—we need to be very clear on that. I think that is morally wrong. The language in this Bill deals with what I think is a failure of negotiation, to be honest, because I do not think it would have been beyond the wit of man to have had at the very least a right of return, if not a right of resettlement, in the treaty. With the Mauritian AG here in London, what better time to have a discussion about the right of return and the right of resettlement for the Chagossian people?

Amendment 72, in the alternative, seeks to have some accountability for the current aspiration in the treaty—in other words, after it is implemented—to look back and see what is happening in relation to the right of resettlement. That will give some transparency to why the wording in the treaty has been chosen and, again, get to the purpose of the article.

In conclusion, I strongly support both these amendments. It is wrong not to have a right of return and a right of resettlement in the treaty and the way in which it is presented in the treaty is wrong also.

I thank my noble friend Lord Lilley for leading on this group. The Chagossian community overwhelmingly wants to see a scheme for the resettlement of the archipelago, reversing the forced removal of the islanders in the late 1960s. As we know, many Chagossians living in Mauritius feel that they are treated, even now, as second-class citizens, and this should not be an acceptable situation. We will probe the treatment of the Chagossians in Mauritius more fully when we debate amendments relating to the trust fund.

Many Chagossians still want, understandably, to return to their homeland. The treaty is clear, sadly, that Mauritius shall be free to arrange for resettlement of Chagossians on all the islands of the archipelago except Diego Garcia, but it is not clear in the treaty what this might look like; nor is it clear how likely resettlement actually is in practice. My Amendment 72 is very simple. It merely requires the Government to publish the findings of a review of all discussions between the UK and Mauritius in respect of the resettlement of the islands. The resettlement under the treaty would be for the islands other than Diego Garcia, so this is not something that should undermine the operations of the base. Given that, we cannot see why the Government would be unwilling to share details of their discussions with the Mauritians on resettlement.

Can the Minister please set out clearly how often resettlement was discussed with the Mauritian Government during the negotiations ahead of the treaty, and what her department’s assessment is of the likelihood that Mauritius will establish a scheme for the resettlement of the islands? Would the UK support a resettlement effort financially? Could some of the existing funds that we are giving to Mauritius be used for resettlement? If not, what is the estimated risk that the Mauritian Government would refuse to undertake a resettlement on cost grounds?

In essence, our question to the Government is: what does this treaty mean for the Chagossian community’s hope of resettlement? If, in the Foreign Office’s view, this treaty effectively kills any hope of resettlement, does the Minister not accept that the Government should manage the expectations of the Chagossians and be very clear and transparent with them that that is what they have agreed? We want to end the lack of transparency around the Bill and I hope that the Minister will be able to do that today.

I agree with the noble Lord that transparency and frankness with the Chagossian community is vital, which is why I have resisted some of the discussions around consultations and referendums. To give the impression that a consultation or referendum can elicit change to a treaty that has already been negotiated in a state-to-state negotiation is wrong. On the noble Lord’s question about how often we have discussed resettlement, it has been discussed throughout and repeatedly—of course it has. It is a very important part of the negotiation that we have had with the Government of Mauritius.

We are coming to some amendments on the operation of the trust fund in the next group, but some news will come from Mauritius shortly on exactly how that will operate. I think that will be reassuring for noble Lords and I hope that we get it very soon so that we can include it in our considerations.

I would point out that resettlement now is non-existent. It has not been possible. They have not even been having heritage visits since Covid; the previous Government did not get round to sorting them out. Having said that, it is good that the Conservative Party is now turning some attention to this.

The noble Lord, Lord Hannan, said, “But consider if the islands had not been depopulated”. In response, I point out that if the islands had not been depopulated then there would not be a base and we would not have a treaty. They probably would have been returned to Mauritius, as part of decolonisation, and be Mauritian now anyway. I am at a bit of a loss—but the noble Lord is going to tell me now what he was getting at.

Forgive me, but I am not sure that is quite true. I do not think the Americans wanted the entire archipelago voided of population; they were satisfied with having Diego Garcia. The Minister and I were not born then, but our predecessors went ahead and volunteered the complete evacuation, which was the beginning of all our problems.

But that is what happened, and it cannot be undone. We are in a situation where there is clearly no prospect of resettlement now on Diego Garcia—I am glad that that has not explicitly come up in debate—but there is the possibility of resettlement on the other islands and the prospect of visits to Diego Garcia in a way that has not happened for some years.

Specifically on the amendments in this group, I do not think that Amendments 10 and 72 are necessary, but I should explain why. Under the terms of the agreement, Mauritius is already free to develop a programme of resettlement on islands other than Diego Garcia. It will be for Mauritius to decide whether it takes that forward. We have already committed to making a ministerial Statement in both Houses, providing a factual update on eligibility for resettlement. The agreement gives Mauritius the opportunity to develop a programme of resettlement on its own terms, without requiring the UK taxpayer to pick up the bill. We know that would be considerable, because of the KPMG report.

Our Governments over the past 30 or 40 years refused to allow the Chagossians to go back. Why does the Minister think the Mauritian Government will ever allow them? What if they say, “Absolutely no”. Have we any say? Can we do anything?

It is for the Mauritian Government to make that decision. I understand the noble Baroness’s scepticism, especially given our reluctance to undertake this. To serve citizens living in such a remote place with so few services is a considerable thing to do, which is why we are very careful and mindful of the warnings that we have heard about not wanting to give false hope or a false impression, or to make this sound straightforward. That guides us all in our discussions. It is, of course, an incredibly difficult prospect and very expensive. There is the trust fund. I do not know how that would operate and whether it would enable some of this to happen. This is for the Government of Mauritius to determine; we are completely clear about that. The noble Baroness might not wish that to be so, but I point out that the UK Government, for over 50 years, have made it absolutely clear that we would not facilitate return to the islands, for security and financial reasons.

On Amendment 72, it is important that negotiations between the UK and Mauritius on this matter—which I completely accept is sensitive—can take place in confidence. Publishing the records of confidential negotiations such as this would be damaging to trust in the UK keeping matters confidential in the future. That relates not just to our negotiations with Mauritius; it would obviously relate to the prospect of our negotiations with other states on other equally or more sensitive matters. With that, I ask the noble Lord to consider withdrawing his amendment.

I withdraw my Amendment.

Amendment 10 withdrawn.

Amendments 11 to 13 not moved.

Before the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, stands up, I want to make a statement. Noble Lords will be aware that grouping processes are well established. The deadline of 5 pm is always communicated to all Peers when the groupings are sent out. Late degrouping is discouraged, I am afraid. For this group, the groupings were sent out at 11 am with a deadline of 5 pm and no changes were made. The changes sought by the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, were requested shortly before 6 pm. There is nothing procedural to stop the noble Lord degrouping the amendments for separate debate during proceedings today—I am sure he is doing so—but it is inconvenient for the Minister, who might not be able to respond to some of his degrouping.