The Chagos deal remains one of the worst foreign policy disasters in our history. It is short-sighted and incredibly naive. I have opposed it at every stage.
Time and time again, the Labour Government has sought to silence and ignore the Chagossian people and dodge scrutiny for this outrageous deal. The deal would have surrendered British territory and cost the British taxpayer £35 billion.
I was therefore very pleased in January when Conservative Peers in the House of Lords defeated the Government, forcing through critical amendments to Labour's shameful Chagos Surrender Bill.
The Chagos Islands have been a British territory since 1814, right in the centre of the Indian Ocean. This is the UK’s only military base in the Indo-Pacific and is of huge strategic importance. Keir Starmer proposed giving the islands away to Mauritius, a country that has never owned them and which is deepening their ties not with our allies but Russia and China. To top it off, we would have been expected to pay to lease the base back from them for the next 99 years.
Publishing the Treaty, the Government claimed this would cost £3.4 billion, and I said at the time that this number was a work of fiction. Due to Conservative Party efforts, documents revealed the true cost of this deal in cash terms was much nearer £35 billion.
Meanwhile, at home, this Labour Government raised taxes by £40 billion in its first few months in office, welfare spending has spiralled out of control,