§ Lord Kennetasked Her Majesty's Government:
Further to their Written Answers of 7 November (cols. WA 192 and 205), whether on the principle of obtaining money for value they will charge appropriate rents to the United States for its uses of Ascension Island and of Diego Garcia, and whether they will determine the notional and/or actual values of those sites and balance these sums against the annual payments on war debts from the United Kingdom to the United States which currently stand at $1,124 billion and which the United Kingdom will not have paid back before the year 2006.
§ Baroness Chalker of WallaseyThe sites on Ascension and Diego Garcia are provided to the United States under the terms of agreement signed in 1956 and 1966 respectively, and which were signed for specified, long-term periods. We have no plans to seek to amend the terms of these agreements. Similarly, the United Kingdom's war debt to the United States is fixed, as are the terms and rates of payment. We have no plans to seek a change to the terms of the agreement covering this debt.