The UK has denied claims from the prime minister of Mauritius that it could end up paying double under a new Chagos Islands deal.
The Foreign Office has said the figures being quoted are “entirely inaccurate and misleading” after Navin Ramgoolam said the new agreement would mean payments from the UK are “inflation-proof”.
It comes after Sir Keir Starmer was accused of “bending the knee” to Mauritius after Mr Ramgoolam said the UK prime minister “intends to push ahead” with the new agreement.
Britain reached a deal last year to transfer the Indian Ocean archipelago to Mauritius after a decades-long dispute.
The agreement included the tropical atoll of Diego Garcia, home to a UK-US military base that plays a crucial role in the region’s stability and international security.
Under the proposed agreement, the UK would lease back Diego Garcia for 99 years at a reported annual cost of around £90m.
However, Mr Ramgoolam told his country’s National Assembly on Monday that a renegotiated deal on the return of the archipelago would mean payments from the UK for the lease would be linked to inflation and frontloaded.
This suggests the amount Britain would pay could double.
Mr Ramgoolam described the previous deal as a “sell-out” and said the new agreement was “unambiguous”.
He said: “We have to be inflation-proof. What’s the point of getting money and then having half of it by the end? This is what would happen, we have made the calculations.”
However, the UK Foreign Office said in a statement this morning: “The figures being quoted are entirely inaccurate and misleading.”
Mr Ramgoolam also said the previous deal, negotiated by his predecessor, had allowed the UK to unilaterally extend that lease for 40 years, but the new terms would require Mauritian consent, effectively giving the island nation a veto.
The Foreign Office said in its response: “There has been no change to the terms of extension in the treaty.
“The UK will only sign a deal that is in our national interest.”
Mr Ramgoolam has also referred to a phone call with Sir Keir last Friday in which he said the UK prime minister “informed me that he intends to push ahead” with the new deal.
He added: “We remain confident that it will reach a speedy resolution in the coming weeks.”
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PM ‘bending the knee’
Conservatives in the UK, who opened negotiations on returning the Chagos Islands in 2022 but have been critical of the deal since it was announced by Labour last year, seized on Mr Ramgoolam’s remarks.
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said the prime minister should “come to parliament and be honest with MPs” about what she called a “foolish deal”.
Meanwhile Dame Priti Patel, the shadow foreign secretary, accused Sir Keir of “putting his leftie shame of our country’s history over our national security and our longstanding relationship with our closest ally”.
She said: “He has the audacity to tell the British people they will foot the bill and pay for the indignity of his surrender of the Chagos Islands, as he isolates the new US administration by bending the knee to Mauritius and emboldening our enemies with his disastrous surrender deal.”
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Meanwhile, Mr Ramgoolam has said the deal is being reviewed by the new US administration, where senior figures have expressed concern that ceding control of the islands could weaken Western influence in the Indian Ocean and strengthen the reach of China.
Mr Ramgoolam told the National Assembly: “President Trump is not a wolf. Let him see if the agreement is good or not.
“Now the British have, late in the day, decided that, yes, it is better to let the new administration have a look, that is what the situation is.”
Although Mauritius has sought to build relations with China, it remains one of only two African nations not to have signed up to Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative and is a close ally of India, which has frosty relations with Beijing.
