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A plan to wind up London’s control over the Chagos Islands has cleared its first Commons hurdle.
Debating the Diego Garcia Military Base and British Indian Ocean Territory Bill, several Conservative MPs warned that the deal with Mauritius could aid Chinese authorities in achieving their goals in the Indian Ocean.
But defence minister Luke Pollard insisted the draft new law would see off a legal “threat” to the UK-US military base in the archipelago.
MPs voted by 330 to 179, majority 151, to approve the Bill at second reading.
The UK Government signed an agreement in May to cede the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, but will retain control over the Diego Garcia base for at least 99
years, at an average annual cost of £101 million in today’s prices.
If agreed after further scrutiny at a later date, the Bill will put parts of the deal onto the statute book, including “dissolution of the British Indian Ocean Territory”.
Former Conservative Party leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith, who is a co-chairman of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, warned that the Bill would bring Beijing “two or three steps further forward”.
He added: “China has its eyes on that very important flow of commercial traffic that runs just below the Chagos Islands and which they have always wanted to have the ability to block, to control or to intercede with.”
Sir Iain also told the Commons that “there is no way on Earth that China does not benefit from this” deal.
Conservative shadow foreign secretary Dame Priti Patel had earlier said it “comes as no surprise” that the UK’s “enemies are now queuing up to, guess what? Make friends with Mauritius”.
She said the government in Port Louis had been “courted extensively” by Iran, Russia and China, who could set up projects “just a handful of miles away” from Diego Garcia.
“But despite warnings, this inept Labour Government has failed to act to safeguard our interests,” Dame Priti added.
Peter Lamb was the only Labour MP to vote against the Bill.
He had warned he could “see no logical reason why Government would go through the painful process of bringing this Bill to the floor today if they were not 100% convinced that it was in the UK’s national security interest”, and added he did not believe MPs had “the right to override the Chagossian people’s right to self-determination”.
Mr Lamb, whose Crawley constituency is home to a large community of Chagossians, said: “I believe that we cannot vote to give away these islands, because they are not our islands to give away in the first place.”
He added: “This House has done enormous harm to the Chagossian people, all the way from their enslavement to the present day. I believe that handing these islands to Mauritius without their consent risks making some of that harm permanent.
“Nevertheless, it is within the Government’s power to address many of the consequences of forceful deportation so long ago.”
The UK and Mauritian governments have noted they are “conscious that past treatment of Chagossians has left a deeply regrettable legacy” in their agreement, with Mauritius “free to implement a programme of resettlement on the islands of the Chagos Archipelago other than Diego Garcia”.
Mr Pollard said the base on Diego Garcia had been used to “disrupt high-value terrorists, including Islamic State threats to the United Kingdom”.
He told MPs: “You don’t accidentally rock up one day to the Foreign Office and decide to start international negotiations, you do so because there was a clear risk to the future of that military base.
“That is why the Conservatives started the negotiations, it’s why you had 11 rounds of negotiations, and it’s why we had to conclude the deal.”
Opposition MPs shouted “from what” when the minister said: “The base on Diego Garcia was under threat.”
He warned legal rulings against the UK, including linked to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), could hit the UK’s “ability to protect the electromagnetic spectrum from interference, for example” and patrol waters near Diego Garcia.
The Conservatives failed to block the Bill, after they argued in a motion that the “measures in the treaty leave the base vulnerable, and therefore represent a threat to the strategic interests of the United Kingdom; and because the treaty does not properly protect the rights of the Chagossian people, or the future of the Marine Protected Area”.
MPs rejected their bid by 333 votes to 116, majority 217.