We live at a time when it feels like the UK Labour Government is losing its moral bearings in a way that threatens its connection with the electorate, a particular problem when one remembers it received less votes than when Labour lost the General Election in 2019. Indeed, notwithstanding its majority the current administration is backed by the votes of fewer British people than any government in recent times.

One of the ways in which it seems to have lost its bearings is undoubtedly in relation to the Chagos Islands.

We live at a time when many argue that colonialism was thoroughly bad thing, something that the UK and other colonial powers should now repent of.

It is regarded as inconsistent with human dignity because it involved one country being governed by another, rather than being afforded self-government.

The wrong done us, however, was of an entirely different order.

We did not just have self-government taken from us but our homeland and thus self-government in relation to it.

We were forcibly removed and taken to what we regarded as a foreign country, over a thousand miles away, the distance from Kent to North Africa.

The utterly extraordinary thing is that while the current government is happy to join in with the general critique of colonialism as if it was in the past, it is asking Parliament to make decisions now in 2026 that authenticate not only colonialism but colonialism in an extreme form.

If you take something from someone and you are sorry then the way you put that right is to return it to them.

You do not give it to someone else, least of all in the context of large numbers of the disposed opposing you in doing so.

And yet that is the policy of the current broken, and I am sad to say, increasingly dysfunctional UK Government.

They are giving the islands not back to the Chagossian people but to the Republic of Mauritius.

The people of Mauritius were not forcibly removed from their islands between 1968 and 1973. In fact, they made themselves an accessory to our forced removal agreeing to be the place to which we were forcibly removed. In so doing they eloquently demonstrated that the Chagos Islands were never a part of Mauritius but were treated as (in the words of the International Court of Justice) ‘a dependency of Mauritius’. Had the Mauritians been our brothers and sisters they would have no more tolerated the events of 1968-73 than would the true mother of the baby boy presented to King Solomon have permitted his being cut in two.

In this, however, we make a fatal error if we try to trace the wrong done to my people by going back to 1968.

In order to get to the root of the wrong we have to go back to 1965 and confront the fact that the wrong committed against us was not the detachment of Chagos from Mauritius but the fact that this was done without a self-determination referendum.

Had such a referendum been offered us as it was offered the Ellice Islands then we would have voted overwhelming for detachment from Mauritius just as the Ellice Islands voted overwhelmingly for detachment from the Gilbert Islands.

Some people get in a muddle and believe that you can only self-determine to become a fully sovereign state but that is not correct. UN Resolution 567 (VI), Resolution 648 (VII) and 742 (VIII) all make provision for self-determination to become a largely self-government British Overseas Territory.

We are clear that we are British Chagossians and while we want to be resettled on our islands as quickly as possible, and to enjoy a significant measure of self-government, we want to remain under UK sovereignty.

This is critically important for the United States because it means that the UK-US military base can remain and operate completely without subjection to the Pelindaba treaty. If sovereignty is transferred to Mauritius, as proposed by the Mauritius treaty, it will be illegal for nuclear submarines to be taken to Diego Garcia, something we know China has its eye on.

At Third Reading in the Lords, I have no doubt that there are those who pretend that peers must pass the Diego Garcia Treaty because the Mauritius Treaty has been signed and that not to do so would be improper.

We need to really clear that this is completely untrue.

The reason why there is a distinction between a government signing a treaty and ratification is because they need to take it back home and subject it to Parliamentary scrutiny and domestic due process.

This is vital in a democracy for reasons eloquently set out by, among others, the Labour Peer Lord Glasman.

In a constitutional form of government where government is not simply a matter of rule by the executive, this means that the legislature can object and prevent ratification.

There is nothing improper in this if a government signs a bad treaty.

The respective governments will either have to abandon their treaty or renegotiate it and try to come up with something their Parliaments can accept.

The question for the House of Lords at Third Reading today will be whether or not it can accept the imposition of a far-reaching change in relation to the territorial integrity of the homeland of my people without either a prior, binding Chagossian self-determination referendum or a commitment to return our islands to us.

Of crucial importance in this regard, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, a key organ of the rules based international order, has issued a decision calling for the Mauritius Treaty not to be ratified.

In campaigning for justice for my people I have never liked talking about reparations because I have no wish to seem grasping and if our islands our returned to us, together with a binding self-determination referendum, I would rather think about the future. However, I am quite prepared to talk about reparations to use this as leverage if the current UK Government continues to treat us as if we do not exist. In this I was shocked to read the comments of the Government Minister in the Lords, Baroness Champman responding to reparations amendments last week.

The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination raised concerns about compensation on 2 December and Lords Morrow and Lilley responded by tabling reparations amendments to the Diego Garcia Bill.

Baroness Champman summarily dismissed these saying ‘the claims of Chagossians in relation to their removal from the archipelago have been definitively settled through the payments made under the 1982 settlement. This and successive Governments have made it clear that there is no basis for any further claim for reparations or compensation.’

This is extraordinary.

In the first instance, the Baroness Chapman completely misses the point that reparations payments would not just pertain to our forced removal between 1968 and 1973 but the withholding of our homeland from us from 1973 until the present. They would have to look at the cost to us economically, socially and culturally of being deprived our home until it is restored to us.

In the second instance, the payments made in 1982 were made in the context of the UK Government refusing to accept any liability, something that governments have since done by means of publicly expressing remorse for the actions of the UK Government between 1968 and 1973. Indeed, in this Baroness Chapman has played an important role, telling Parliament on 4 November: ‘this Government deeply regret the way the Chagossians were removed from the islands.’ The reparations that flow from admission of liability are necessarily of a wholly different scale to those associated with a denial of liability.

In the third instance, the above point is massively compounded by the fact that the Government is proposing paying the Mauritians a fantastically larger sum just to lease one of our islands, most say around £35 billion. In this context, notwithstanding inflation, the £4 million provided in 1982 – much of which never reached the Chagossian people – plainly comes nowhere near what would be appropriate in terms of compensation for being deprived of our homeland for over fifty years.

In the fourth instance, this puts into focus the fact that if sovereignty transfers to Mauritius, and Mauritius does not immediately return our islands to us, it will necessarily be subject to a reparations liability until it does so. Of course, it already has a reparations liability in relation to us because of its complicity in our forced removal.

These are matters that need not become an issue if justice is done, our homeland is returned to us, and we are afforded full self-determination in relation to them.

In order to achieve this, the first step is for the House of Lords to reject the Diego Garcia Bill today.