Lords debate self-determination as Chagos Bill faces scrutiny 

 The issue of self-determination and whether Chagossians were entitled to a referendum on the UK’s controversial decision to hand sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius was debated in the House of Lords this week. 

Under the agreement signed last May, the UK will cede sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, in a deal that will cost the UK £101 million a year as it leases back a crucial military base on Diego Garcia, the largest of the islands, for 99 years. 

The agreement followed long-running negotiations started under the previous Tory administration after a 2019 advisory opinion by the International Court of Justice said the UK should cede control. 

As well as establishing a £40 million fund for Chagossians expelled from the islands, the UK has agreed to pay Mauritius at least £120 million annually during the 99-year agreement, a total cost in cash terms of at least £13 billion. 

The Bill, which is needed to implement the treaty, has already been approved by MPs in the House of Commons but has faced a bruising ride in the House of Lords. 

On Monday. peers were discussing proposed changes to the draft law, with the stage now set for a parliamentary tussle known as “ping-pong” as legislation is batted between the Commons and the Lords until agreement is reached. 

Among the proposed changes backed by the Lords this week was a Liberal Democrat amendment requiring a referendum among the Chagossian community on whether the transfer deal adequately guaranteed their rights to resettlement, consultation and participation in decision-making, along with a government response to the result. 

The amendment, proposed by Lord Purvis of Tweed, calls for a written referendum of the Chagossian community within six months of the legislation being passed, focused on whether the implementation of the UK–Mauritius treaty must guarantee specified Chagossian rights in law. 

Non-affiliated peer Baroness Foster of Aghadrumsee proposed an alternative amendment requiring a referendum of the Chagossian people before any transfer of sovereignty of the British Indian Ocean Territory could take place, but it was rejected by a margin of 10 votes. 

A key question under debate was whether Chagossians enjoyed the right to self-determination under international law. 

“Of course, the Chagossian community did not leave their islands by choice,” Baroness Foster said. 

“They were removed by the British state and scattered across the world.” 

“Since that moment, decisions about their future, and about a homeland they were forbidden to return to, have been taken over their heads, in rooms to which they were not invited.” 

“If there was ever a community entitled to the clearest expression of self-determination, it is this one.” 

Conservative peer Baroness Meyer was one of those supported Baroness Foster’s amendment. 

“Giving the Chagossian people a say before their homeland is transferred to Mauritius is not an unreasonable demand; it is basic justice,” she said.  

“At its heart lies the principle of self-determination embedded in international law and central to the United Kingdom’s own foreign policy tradition.” 

She cited Article 1 of the United Nations charter, which affirms the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples. 

“It is the very principle on which the United Kingdom has relied in relation to the Falkland Islands and Gibraltar, where referenda were rightly held and the will of the people to remain British was respected,” Baroness Meyer told the Lords. 

“Self-determination is not a modern invention. It has underpinned the constitutional settlement of all Britain’s overseas territory. There is no principled reason why it should not apply here.” 

But there was disagreement on whether Chagossians enjoyed the legal right to self-determination. 

Responding for the UK Government, Baroness Chapman of Darlington, Minister of State for International Development and Africa at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, said she recognised both the importance of the islands to Chagossians and the different views within the Chagossian community on their future.  

She said the British government “deeply regrets the way the Chagossians were removed from the islands” and wanted a relationship with the Chagossian community that was “built on respect and an acknowledgment of the wrongs of the past”. 

But she cautioned on calls for a referendum on a deal that had already been agreed, adding this could misrepresent what was possible in reality. 

“To give the impression that a consultation or referendum can elicit a change to a treaty that has already been negotiated and signed in a state-to-state negotiation is wrong,” she said. 

She added: “The negotiations on the treaty were necessarily state to state, with our priority being to secure the full operation of the base on Diego Garcia.” 

On the question of self-determination, Baroness Chapman set out the UK government’s view that neither a duty to consult nor a right to self-determination applied in law.  

“Chagossians have been critical of the failure to consult them,” she said. 

“The view of successive governments, and of the courts to date, is that there is no duty to consult.” 

She said a report by the Lords’ International and Defence Committee also acknowledged that international law did not provide a right of self-determination to Chagossians. 

“This has also been the long-standing view of successive UK governments and domestic and international courts,” she said. 

Liberal Democrat peer Lord Purvis of Tweed, whose amendment sought to give Chagossians a voice only after the legislative Bill was passed, said that to try and do so beforehand would break parliamentary convention and fetter a government’s powers to make treaties. 

He also acknowledged the lack of definitive legal rights for the Chagossians in either Mauritian or UK law and said there was a need to formally seek their views on whether they consented to the implementation of their rights as set out in the treaty, adding “that is the essence if we are talking about self-determination”. 

“There is no point simply referencing self-determination if there are no legal rights to back it up, and that is the essence of what I am seeking to achieve,” he said.  

“That would include the resettlement to the archipelago, distinct from Diego Garcia, the right of participation in opportunities of working in Diego Garcia and statutory involvement in the decision-making of the trust fund for their overall rights as the treaty is implemented.” 

The Lords also backed a Tory measure which would force the UK government to publish the total cost of the payments to be made to Mauritius, including the full methodology used in the calculation. 

Peers went on to narrowly support a Liberal Democrat provision that would ensure parliamentary oversight over UK government spending linked to the treaty, which would also allow MPs to halt payments if Mauritius was judged to have breached the terms of the deal. 

They also voted in favour of a demand by former military chiefs that payments linked to the agreement would cease if the military base on Diego Garcia could no longer be used for a range of reasons, from environmental changes and legal restrictions to an attack by a hostile state. 

Following third reading in the Lords, the Bill will return to the Commons where MPs will consider the string of amendments made by peers in the upper House.