The UK has denied the cost of handing over the Chagos Islands could rise to £18 billion and disputed claims made by the Mauritian Prime Minister about the renegotiated deal.
Mauritian Prime Minister Navin Ramgoolam told his country’s National Assembly that he had rewritten the deal to ensure payments from the UK rose in line with inflation and to give his country an effective veto on extending the terms of the agreement beyond 99 years.
Sir Keir Starmer’s Government plans to hand the British Indian Ocean Territory to Mauritius but pay to lease back the strategically important US-UK military base on Diego Garcia.
The Government argues that international legal rulings on sovereignty over the archipelago mean the UK has to cede the islands to Mauritius.
Mr Ramgoolam said the previous deal, negotiated last year by his predecessor, had allowed the UK unilaterally to extend the lease on Diego Garcia for 40 years, but the new terms would now require Mauritian consent.
And he suggested not linking payments to inflation would have halved the amount heading from UK taxpayers to Mauritian coffers.
A Government minister will be forced to appear in the Commons on Wednesday afternoon to answer an urgent question from Reform UK leader Nigel Farage on the situation.
The UK has denied reports that the deal was originally worth £90 million a year for 99 years, or almost £9 billion – which, if the cost doubled, would rise to £18 billion.
The Foreign Office also insisted there had been “no change” to the terms for the extension.
A Foreign Office spokesman said: “The figures being quoted are entirely inaccurate and misleading.
“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.”
On Tuesday, after Mr Ramgoolam’s remarks, Downing Street had not disputed what he had told Mauritian politicians.
The proposed deal still needs to be considered by Donald Trump’s administration in the US, where senior figures are nervous about anything which could weaken the American position on Diego Garcia.
The Tories have also condemned the proposals, while there are also signs of unease within the Government about the planned deal.
The BBC reported that senior government figures had described the proposed deal as “terrible”, “mad” and “impossible to understand”.
Describing the previous agreement reached with his predecessor as a “sellout”, Mr Ramgoolam said on Tuesday the new deal was “unambiguous” on Mauritius’s sovereignty over the islands and that the UK’s annual payments under the lease would be linked to inflation and frontloaded, suggesting this could double the amount Britain was due to pay.
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.”
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.
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.”
Tory leader Kemi Badenoch said the Prime Minister should “come to Parliament and be honest with MPs” about what she called a “foolish deal”.
