Chagos

BRITAIN’S Chagos Islands handover will cost taxpayers ten times more than Sir Keir Starmer let on, newly unearthed figures claim.

Official estimates reveal the bill for giving the British Indian Ocean Territory to Mauritius is not £3.4billion as promised, but actually close to £35billion.

2

The figure, which was released to the Conservative Party under Freedom of Information laws, is far higher than the £3.4 billion figure the Prime Minister had previously stated in public, according to The Telegraph.

Ministers are now facing allegations that they misled Parliament with a controversial “accountancy trick” to hide the size of the bill from taxpayers.

Britain is to hand over sovereignty of the British Indian Ocean Territory while paying billions of pounds to continue using the Diego Garcia base, a key military facility used by Britain and the United States.

Negotiations for a deal to hand over sovereignty of the island began under the Conservatives and was concluded by the new Labour government.

Back in February, Sir Keir Starmer dismissed Tory warnings of a £30billion cost and branded a £9bn to £18bn estimate “absolutely wide of the mark”.

But an official document produced by the Government Actuary’s Department shows the cost of the deal was first estimated at ten times the stated figure, at £34.7 billion, in nominal terms.

Tory leader Kemi Badenoch said: “Add that to their £50bn black hole, and it’s clear – when Labour negotiates, Britain loses.”

A government spokesman said: “The deal is supported by our closest allies, including the US, Canada, Australia and Nato.

“The costs compare favourably with other international base agreements, and the UK-US base on Diego Garcia is larger, in a more strategic location.”

2

A UN panel has urged the UK to renegotiate a deal returning the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, saying it “fails to guarantee” the rights of the Chagossian people.

The deal, signed last month, returned sovereignty of the Indian Ocean archipelago to Mauritius, but the UK retained the right to run a military base on Diego Garcia, the largest of the Chagos Islands.

By preventing the Chagossian people from returning to Diego Garcia, “the agreement appears to be at variance with the Chagossians’ right to return,” the UN experts wrote.

A Foreign Office spokesperson said the UK-Mauritius deal had been “welcomed by international organisations including the UN secretary general”.

The panel of four experts were appointed by the UN Human Rights Council, but are not UN staff and are independent from the UN.

They said by the UK keeping the military base of Diego Garcia, the Chagossian people were hindered from being able to “exercise their cultural rights in accessing their ancestral lands from which they were expelled”.

The panel called for the current deal to be suspended and for a new agreement to be negotiated.

Under the agreement, the UK would pay an average of £101m a year for 99 years to continue operating the military base on Diego Garcia, in concert with the US.

The Chagos Islands are located in the Indian Ocean about 5,799 miles (9,332km) south-east of the UK, and about 1,250 miles north-east of Mauritius.

The UK purchased the islands for £3m in 1968, but Mauritius has argued it was illegally forced to give away the islands in order to gain independence from Britain.

Diego Garcia was then cleared to make way for a military base, with large groups of Chagossians forcibly moved to Mauritius and the Seychelles, or taking up an invitation to settle in England, mainly in Crawley, West Sussex.

Since then, Chagossians have not been allowed to return to Diego Garcia.

Before the UK-Mauritius deal was signed last month, two Chagossian women living in the UK – who were born on Diego Garcia – launched a last-minute legal bid to stop it, saying the agreement did not guarantee the right of return to their island of birth.

The deal includes a £40m trust fund to support Chagossians, a component that the UN panel also questioned would “comply with the right of the Chagossian people to effective remedy… and prompt reparation”.

“The agreement also lacks provisions to facilitate the Chagossian people’s access to cultural sites on Diego Garcia and protect and conserve their unique cultural heritage,” the panel added.

The Foreign Office spokesperson said: “We recognise the importance of the islands to Chagossians and have worked to ensure the agreement reflects this.”

Shadow Foreign Secretary Dame Priti Patel said the Conservatives “have been warning from the start that this deal is bad for British taxpayers and bad for the Chagossian people”.

“It is why I have introduced a bill in Parliament that would block the [agreement] and force the government to speak to the people at the heart of their surrender plans,” she said.

Both the House of Commons and House of Lords have until 3 July to pass a resolution to oppose the deal being ratified.

May 22 (UPI) — A signing ceremony ceding the British Indian Ocean Territory of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius on Thursday was called off at the last moment after Britain’s High Court granted an injunction in the middle of the night to islanders opposing the deal.

“On-call” judge, Justice Goose, granted the temporary stay at 2:25 a.m. local time to two Chagos petitioners, ruling that the defendant, the Home Office, must “maintain the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom over the British Indian Ocean Territory until further order,” pending a further hearing during working hours Thursday.

The 11th-hour legal action forced the ceremony with Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Mauritian government representatives to be put on hold.

Stuart Lake, legal counsel for Beatrice Pompe, one of the claimants, told the Financial Times that his client was “deeply concerned that the government has chosen to give up sovereignty of the Chagos Islands without any consultation or protections for those that are indigenous to the islands.”

A British government spokesman declined to comment but insisted the deal with its former colony was “the right thing to protect the British people and our national security.”

Under the agreement, Britain will transfer sovereignty to Mauritius of the archipelago, home to a giant U.K.-U.S. military base on the island of Diego Garcia, but retain control of Diego Garcia by leasing it back on a 99-year, multi-billion dollar deal.

The United States pays Britain for use of the base, but the figure has never been made public.

Diego Garcia inhabitants have been engaged in a decades-long legal battle against their forcible displacement during the construction of the base throughout the late 1960s, mainly to Mauritius, the Seychelles and Britain, with the Chagos Islands split off from Mauritius when it became independent in 1968.

Joining a protest by Chagos people outside Parliament, the opposition Conservative Party’s shadow foreign secretary Priti Patel called Thursday’s legal intervention “a humiliation” for Starmer and Foreign Secretary David Lammy.

“Their rights, views and voices over the future of Chagos have been ignored by Labour which continues to cause distress and uncertainty for this wonderful community,” she wrote in a post on X.

“Labour’s Chagos Surrender Deal is bad for our defence and security interests, bad for British taxpayers and bad for British Chagossians,” said Patel.

The deal has also been condemned by Human Rights Watch, which has demanded Britain and the United States pay reparations after a 2023 report alleged the “forced displacement of the Chagossians and ongoing abuses amount to crimes against humanity committed by a colonial power against an Indigenous people.”

The United States initially welcomed the deal when it was struck in October and will see the other 57 currently uninhabited islands in the archipelago opened up for settlement. Diego Garcia, however, will remain out of bounds to its former residents and their descendants on “security grounds.”

U.S. President Joe Biden called the deal “a clear demonstration that through diplomacy and partnership, countries can overcome long-standing historical challenges to reach peaceful and mutually beneficial outcomes.”

But the deal was delayed after Donald Trump won back the presidency in November, pending his approval, and after the elections days later in Mauritius over the value of the lease.

Trump gave his backing in February during a visit to Washington by Starmer, despite warnings from Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other senior Republicans who said Mauritius’ links to China posed a “serious security threat” to U.S. national security.

Decision comes after two British nationals born on Diego Garcia, the largest island in the archipelago, claimed the islands should remain under UK control. 

A British High Court judge has temporarily blocked the government from transferring sovereignty over the Chagos Islands to Mauritius.

The last-minute injunction on Thursday morning came hours before the agreement was expected to be signed at a virtual ceremony with representatives from the Mauritian government.

The High Court decision was granted after action was taken by Bernadette Dugasse and Bertrice Pompe, two British nationals who were born at the Diego Garcia military base on Chagos and claimed that the islands should remain under British control.

High Court judge Julian Goose temporarily blocked the British government from taking any “conclusive or legally binding step to conclude its negotiations concerning the possible transfer of the British Indian Ocean Territory, also known as the Chagos Archipelago, to a foreign government”.

“The defendant is to maintain the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom over the British Indian Ocean Territory until further order,” he said.

Another court hearing is set for 10.30am (09:30 GMT).

Earlier this year, the lawyer for the two nationals, Michael Polak, said on his chambers website that the government’s attempt to “give away” the islands without formal consultation with its residents is a “continuation of their terrible treatment by the authorities in the past”.

“They remain the people with the closest connection to the islands, but their needs and wishes are being ignored,” Polak said.

The UK, which has controlled the region since 1814, separated the Chagos Islands in 1965 from Mauritius to create the British Indian Ocean Territory.

In the early 1970s, the government evicted about 1,500 residents to Mauritius and Seychelles to make way for the Diego Garcia airbase on the largest island.

In October, the government announced a draft agreement to hand the islands to Mauritius and allow Britain and the United States to continue using the Diego Garcia base under a 99-year lease.

US President Donald Trump’s administration, which was consulted on the deal, gave its approval. However, finalising the agreement was delayed by a change in government in Mauritius and reported last-minute negotiations over costs.