Mark Francois has claimed the Government’s plan to handover the Chagos Islands to Mauritius is “close to collapse”.
Speaking to GB News, the Conservative Shadow Defence Minister stated that the “whole thing is unravelling before our eyes”.
The judicial review into Sir Keir Starmer’s deal with Mauritius has been frozen for almost four months, with Chagossian representatives being forced to seek a new judge.
Speaking to GB News today, Barrister for Keystone Law James Tunbridge and head of Communications at Friends of the British Overseas Territories Robert Midgley explained that the Chagos deal has been “completely destroyed” and Labour’s plan has been “undermined” by an article within the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea.
According to Mr Francois, Mr Midgley’s analysis “proves conclusively that there is no credible legal threat to our sovereignty of the Chagos Islands, as the government has been claiming for over a year”.
He told GB News: “The whole thing is unravelling before our eyes. Robert Midgley proves conclusively that there is no credible legal threat to our sovereignty of the Chagos Islands, as the Government have been claiming for over a year.
“So we don’t need to pay Mauritius £35billion to rent back an island that belongs to us in the first place. We don’t need to pay anyone anything, because there is no legal threat.”
Mr Francois outlined his legal case against the Government’s position, noting that ministers have repeatedly shifted their justification for the substantial payment.
Mark Francois has declared that the Chagos deal is ‘unraveling before our eyes’
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PA / GB NEWS
Mr Francois explained: “Now, ministers have kept changing their argument for what this threat was, that we have to pay £35billion to avoid. First they said it was because of an advisory ruling by the International Court of Justice, a UN court. Well, point one, that’s an advisory ruling. It’s not binding.
“And point two, even if it were a mandatory ruling, when we signed up to the jurisdiction of the court, we had an opt-out very clearly that said we would not be bound by any judgments of the ICJ that related to either current or former Commonwealth countries. So that means, legally, they can’t touch us on this.
“So in other words, there is no credible legal threat to the Chagos Islands.”
Mr Francois revealed that he and fellow Conservative MP Iain Duncan Smith directly challenged Defence Minister Luke Pollard during the second reading of the bill relating to the Diego Garcia military base, which remains stalled in the House of Lords.
The treaty transferring sovereignty of Chagos to Mauritius was signed last May | GB NEWS
The Tory minister told GB News: “We’re proposing to pay £35billion to stave off a threat that doesn’t exist. Now I’ve raised this in Parliament.
“So other MPs, including me and Iain Duncan Smith, put it to Luke Pollard, the Defence Minister, when we had the second reading of the Diego Garcia bill that is now stalled in the Lords, he completely ducked the question.
“He didn’t deny it, he just didn’t answer it. We then had an opposition day debate on Chagos a few weeks ago, my boss, the Shadow Defence Secretary James Cartlidge, asked him exactly the same question.
“Pollard started ranting at him. He was yelling at him in the chamber so he wouldn’t have to answer the question.”
Mr Francois told GB News that the deal will ‘soon collapse’
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GB NEWS
Mr Francois argued: “They can’t answer the question because if they answer the question, they have to admit there’s no threat and the whole thing disappears. It’s all coming out into the public domain.
“We’ve raised it in Parliament numerous times, but now you guys in the media are really picking up on this, so the Government’s case is collapsing, and that may or may not have something to do with Jonathan Powell’s decision, I don’t know.”
Predicting that the deal will “soon collapse”, Mr Francois concluded: “Their last line of defence, their last trench has been overrun, as it were.
“They are going to have to admit the truth to Parliament, and once they do admit it, instead of screaming and yelling in order not to answer direct questions, once they have to answer that direct question, this whole thing will then collapse.”