Extract from Westminster Hall debate on Chagos Islands: UN General Assembly Resolution - Jul 3

Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP):...The Minister will be aware that the Select Committee on Home Affairs called on the Government to back the British Indian Ocean Territory (Citizenship) Bill introduced by the hon. Member for Crawley (Henry Smith), which would give all Chagossians the opportunity to register as British nationals. The Foreign Affairs Committee has also called for urgent reforms to citizenship law for people from other overseas territories. At the very least, the Minister should grow his consultation and engagement with the Chagossian community. The Chagos archipelago was and is their homeland and, as the SNP has always held, sovereignty should ultimately lie with the people.

Even if the Minister moves on, this issue is not going away; he or his successor will continue to be held to account. I am afraid that I have not run out of written questions to keep Ministers busy. I still live in hope that the BIOT Administration will take up the permission so proudly granted by Her Majesty’s Treasury for overseas territories to mint their own commemorative £1 coins. There are lots of ongoing issues with the management and development of the marine protected area—not least, perhaps, the fact that the people best able to exercise stewardship of it might just be the communities that lived on the islands for generations...

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