INDIAN OCEAN (BASES)

HC Deb 16 November 1970 vol 806 cc983-9

9.16 p.m.

Mr. Tam Dalyell (West Lothian)

rose—

Mr. Speaker

I understand that the hon. Member has given notice to the Minister concerned that he wishes to raise a matter on the Adjournment.

Mr. Dalyell

Yes, Mr. Speaker.

I have already had the indulgence of the House this afternoon, at some length, on Rolls-Royce, and therefore in raising the issue of a possible base at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean I shall seek merely to inquire about facts rather than to raise wider issues of strategy. An Adjournment debate is not the moment at which to raise wide strategic issues, and I shall therefore be brief and stick to the facts and ask factual questions.

I had the good fortune earlier this month to be in the United States for six days in Maine with Senator Ed Muskie. Rather to my astonishment I heard from a member of that conservationist senator's staff that his country and mine were involved once again in considering the possibility of staging posts or bases in the Indian Ocean. Let us not quibble about definitions. When I heard about that in Maine, I was doubtful, and I thought that there was a mix up with a past controversy over Aldabra Atoll, which I thought had been buried in history.

Having heard what I considered to be a rumour in the United States, I came back to Britain and found that it seemed to be confirmed by a short article in The Times of last week. I therefore put down a series of Questions, and on Thursday of last week I had down a Question to the Minister of State for Defence, and one to the Prime Minister. The right hon. Member for Barnet (Mr. Maudling) replied on behalf of the Prime Minister, who was absent at General de Gaulle's funeral. I asked the Prime Minister at Question 16 what discussions he has had with President Nixon about a joint British-United States base at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. The right hon. Member for Barnet replied: I have been asked to reply. The details of my right hon. Friend's exchanges with President Nixon are confidential. Those who are connoisseurs of Prime Ministerial answers know that that is a fairly Delphic answer, and I should have thought that had there been nothing in the proverbial wind there would have been an outright denial by the Deputy Prime Minister.

I also had down a Written Question to the Ministry of Defence. I asked the Minister of Defence what plans he has for building bases in the Indian Ocean territory. The hon. Member for Hertford (Lord Balniel) replied: None. He then went on to say, as if to cover himself: The British Indian Ocean territory remains available for the construction of defence facilities by the British and United States Governments under the Agreement signed with the United States Government in 1966 (Command 3231)."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 12th November 1970; Vol. 806, c. 239, 255.] The purpose of this short Adjournment is to ask the Government frankly to say what they are up to in the Indian Ocean. It will be within the recollection of the Department that I was deeply interested in the issue of Aldabra, and, without going into too much detail on the Aldabra situation, I should like to say to the Minister tonight that it was my information from the former Minister of Public Building and Works, now the Opposition Chief Whip, that my estimate of the cost of a staging post at Aldabra of £100 million was much nearer the mark than the estimate given by my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey), then the Secretary of State for Defence, of £20 million.

Granted the nature of coral limestone and granted the difficulties of currents in the Indian Ocean—I have been only to Mauritius, but I know something about these matters from a number of people, Dr. Stoddart and others, who have been to Aldabra—any kind of staging post or base in the Indian Ocean is an extremely expensive construction, and we are talking here about many millions of £s.

I would like to know first, therefore, what is in the wind between Britain and the United States of America. Secondly, what costs will accrue to Britain? Has any realistic estimate been made either by the former Ministry of Public Building and Works or by the Defence Ministry? Thirdly, I restrain myself from going into the strategy of this, but I would like to know what consultations have taken place with neighbouring Governments, because nothing infuriates the Governments of the developing world so much, as we know from Indonesian confrontation and from many other conflicts in which this country has been involved, as the fact that no one in London has consulted them.

I had a Question today to ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs What discussion he has had with the Government of Madagascar on British/United States bases or staging posts in the Indian Ocean. The Foreign Office answer was, "None." I say to the Government that if we are indulging in what I regard as ludicrous propositions of this kind, at least it might be wise to consult Governments such as those of Malagasy, Tanzania and other neighbouring countries.

I ask the Government in these matters not to rely on quibbles or on the details of absolutely literal Parliamentary Answers.. Mr. Macmillan, when he was Prime Minister, said that he had had the habit of very often trying to help hon. Members by assisting them to frame the right Questions. If the Questions are wrongly phrased, I hope that this will not prevent the Government Front Bench from being very frank about these matters.

I serve notice here and now that until we get the truth of this matter and it is thoroughly discussed, I will go on endlessly putting down Parliamentary Questions to the Government Front Bench and to the Prime Minister asking him to make an official visit to every conceivable atoll in the Indian Ocean. We can go on doing this in December, January, February and March on the Prime Minister's Questions until we know exactly what the Government are up to.

9.23 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr. Anthony Kershaw)

The hon. Member for West Lothian (Mr. Dalyell), who was good enough to give notice of this Adjournment debate, has raised some important points. I regard with a great deal of trepidation his final threat to put down a lot of Questions. I remember with some anxiety that he put down, I think, 60 Questions about Aldabra to his own Government, which, no doubt, had a lot to do with the General Election, and I very much hope that I do not find myself answering a similar number from him about these other matters.

The hon. Member has asked two specific questions: what would be the cost of a hypothetical operation and what consultations have taken place? I will try to answer these questions during the course of my remarks, because I thought that I would give a short review for the benefit of the hon. Member, who said that he wants a factual statement about what is going on in the Indian Ocean, rather than a defence survey, which in any event I am not competent to give.

May I tell the hon. Member and the House that we already have in the Indian Ocean the staging posts of Gan and Masirah. No doubt, the hon. Member has been to both.

Mr. Dalyell

Only to Gan.

Mr. Kershaw

Masirah, too, is well worth a visit.

As the House is aware, the previous Government announced in July, 1968, that in order to maintain a number of route options across that area, they planned to keep the use of Gan and Masirah as staging posts in the Indian Ocean area after the withdrawal of British forces from their stations in Malaysia and Singapore at the end of 1971. As the House knows that policy is now in question, but these two staging posts remain, and at the moment they are the only staging posts which we maintain in the Indian Ocean. They are of continuing importance. In the light of the Government's decision to make a military contribution to Five-Power defence arrangements in the Malaysia-Singapore area after 1971, the importance of these staging facilities to Her Majesty's Government hardly needs to be questioned.

They are also relevant to the fulfilment of our continuing responsibilities to our remaining dependent territories in the Far East and the South-West Pacific, notably Hong Kong, and nor can their importance be overlooked in relation to the rapidly expanding Soviet naval presence in the Indian Ocean.

The hon. Gentleman will have seen in today's newspapers reports of the Prime Minister's reply to the Archbishop of Canterbury in which he said: During the last decade the Soviet Navy has grown into a modern and well-equipped force, second in size only to that of the United States, and now operating as a politico-military force on a global scale. We have seen the threat it has been able to pose in the Mediterranean. We have seen its influence extending to the Indian Ocean and to parts of the African littoral. With the closure of the Suez Canal, a large part of all our trade in both directions, including about half our oil supplies, is borne over the sea routes round the Cape. As the hon. Gentleman knows, because of the political siutation in the Suez area and because of the size of tankers today, the amount of oil going round the Cape cannot be calculated to diminish to any important degree in future.

The facilities to which I alluded are in Gan and Masirah and they are by no means new, at least not in Gan, for we used that as a staging post in the 1939–45 war. We revived its facilities again in 1958 and it was subsequently the subject of an agreement in 1960 between Her Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom and the Government of the Maldive Islands. We now have facilities on Gan as a result of a further agreement concluded with the Maldive Government in 1965. Article 4 of this agreement stipulates that these facilities are for the purposes of Commonwealth defence. The facilities have been constructed and are maintained solely by the British Government.

As for the cost of constructing such facilities on islands made from coral, I am not charged at the moment, because of having had rather short notice of the debate, to give the exact cost, but I can assure the hon. Member that in my brief time at the Ministry of Public Building and Works I had the opportunity to observe the experimental station at Cardington where the necessary research has been satisfactorily completed into making very good cement out of the coral, which is the only natural mixture to be found in that part of the world. As the hon. Gentleman said, one would not choose coral for making a runway, but, nevertheless, the technical problem has been overcome.

The previous Government created, under an Order in Council in November, 1965, the Crown Colony of the British Indian Ocean Territory by the transfer of certain small islands previously administered as part of Mauritius—Chagos Archipelago, including Diego Garcia, and the Seychelles—Aldabra, Farquhar and Desroches. This was with the full agreement of the Mauritius and Seychelles Governments to whom compensation was paid.

The hon. Gentleman referred to consultation with developing countries in the neighbourhood. Those most closely concerned, Mauritius and the Seychelles, were not only consulted but were part of the agreement. How far one extends this consultation beyond that must be a matter of judgment. In the last resort the ultimate consultation is the interests of this country, and those we have consulted as best we can.

As has been explained to the House on many occasions by the previous Government, the British Indian Ocean Territory has always been envisaged as providing potential sites for transit, communications, and support facilities.

The hon. Gentleman will know, as a consequence of his Question to my hon. Friend the Minister of State for Defence, that under an exchange of Notes with the United States Government of December, 1966, published in April, 1967, Cmnd. 3231, the territory was made available for a period of 50 years for the defence purposes of both the United States and British Governments.

Turning to Aldabra, with which the hon. Gentleman was previously so busily concerned, the previous Government proposed at one time to establish an air staging facility there. This proposal was abandoned in November, 1967, as a result of the United Kingdom's defence cuts following devaluation of the £.

In June, 1968, permission was granted for the Royal Society to establish a research station on the island, which has since been classed as a nature reserve by the British Indian Ocean Territory Administration.

Diego Garcia is a different island from Aldabra. There have been scientific surveys of that island since the colony was established. It was visited by an Anglo-United States survey party in July, 1967. Two British scientists—Dr. Stoddart of the Department of Geography at Cambridge and Mr. Taylor of the Department of Palæontology at the British Museum—accompanied the Diego Garcia survey party. Dr. Stoddart's report on the visit, which he submitted to the Southern Zone Research Committee of the Royal Society, states that, unlike Aldabra, the ecosystem of Diego Garcia had been much disturbed by man and was, therefore, not of such scientific interest as Aldabra.

I turn to the present position regarding the use of the British Indian Ocean Territory for defence purposes. The islands of the British Indian Ocean Territory remain available for development for defence purposes by Her Majesty's Government and the United States Government under the exchange of Notes of December, 1966. Whether or how we shall use them is a matter which is kept under constant review by both countries.

There is nothing further that I can add at present.

Mr. Dalyell

The hon. Gentleman says that it is kept under constant review. May I ask whether the article by Mr. Ross Mark, Dateline Washington, Saturday 14th November, in the Sunday Express, which said that discussions were actually taking place on site plans for Diego Garcia, is as yet somewhat premature?

Mr. Kershaw

I have no comment to make about a newspaper article. To say that it is premature implies that it will arise. I have no comment at all to make about the article.