On Monday we debated the Government’s Diego Garcia Military Base and British Indian Ocean Territory Bill. This is the measure that will enable the Government to cede sovereignty of these Islands to Mauritius and then lease them back for the next hundred years.
Only one government back-bencher spoke up in favour of the measure. Little wonder, given that we are being prepared for a tax raising budget, when this leasing arrangement on something that we own will cost us some £35 billion. It enables Mauritius to cut its taxes whilst we are raising ours.
The Bill is riven with what, in the jargon, we call Henry VIII clauses: powers conferred on ministers to subsequently change the law without parliamentary amendment or full scrutiny.
Parliament, should always be very wary about letting minsters have almost unrestricted powers.
One of the things left entirely unresolved, is what will the future hold for the important marine protection zone that surrounds the islands. It is one of the world’s largest and most pristine of such zones, a haven of rare biodiversity.
Illegal fishing is already rife across the Indian Ocean. Mauritius simply does not have the capability, experience or expertise to manage or enforce the zone. There is a real risk that the zone will be plundered by industrial scale illegal fishing, including by Chinese vessels.
The territory is more commonly known as the Chagos Archipelago. The Chagossians, who, should they want it, under the UN Charter, ought properly to have the right to self-determination. But they haven’t had their say. They are certainly very unhappy with the proposals which give them no right of return to the homeland from which they were evicted in 1968. They ought to have been given a referendum.
The reality is that it was for mere colonial administrative convenience that the Islands were administered from Mauritius, some 1,300 miles away. Handing sovereignty to Mauritius, where Chagossians complain they have been treated as second-class citizens, offends their sense of fairness.
The military base on Diego Garcia, the principal island in the archipelago, is critical to our defence. We own it. We police and protect its waters. Why would give it away and lease it back from Mauritius which is increasingly in allegiance with Communist China. It doesn’t make sense.
Or does it?
Perhaps my neighbour, Sir Julian Lewis MP, had the answer, when he said in the debate
“On the face of it, this does not make sense, unless we look at it in one particular way. If the Government have made a decision that they wish to have a strategic economic partnership with communist China, this makes sense, the closing of the case with the China spies makes sense, and the willingness for China to have the biggest embassy of any country in Europe makes sense. None of it makes sense, or all of it makes sense, as long as the National Security Adviser wants us to suck up to communist, totalitarian China.”
Sir Desmond Swayne TD
